That'd be great. If I was on LSD, I might actually buy one!

 

 

I love the way the new Impala looks from the front and side. the rear is ok. but the MC is now basically an Impala Coupe with Impala's nose job that didn't quite make the cut for the Impala itself. They should have made it more distinctive.

Anyone have any good pictures of the interior of these yet?

 

my friend just bought an 05 monte.


i was surprised how nice it is.it does need more power and RWD.



these are a step in the right direction.you have to like 303 HP.

 

I still cannot believe that GM left out the Alt and Oil Press. gauges on the SS Monte. I hate the look of 2 gauges. Says cheap to me.

 

those guages are useless about 99% of the time. the oil guage is especially useless since it has a total of 1/4in of operation for a 1in+ scale. wooo, look i just slightly tapped the throttle, the engine is 200 rpm off idle and the guage is already maxed out. If the pressure goes LOW, then a light should come up indicating so. the alt guage is equally useless beause the only time you will have to know any information about current is if there is none in which case a again a light would do. if you need to know the current for diagnostic reasons, i hope you won't be using the guage inside the guage cluster and instead a properly calibrated multi-meter.

I'd trade in an accurate fuel guage for both the oil and amp guages yesturday. also a tire pressure guage would be infinitely more useful to have because it's more of a safety issue. i've seen people drive with low tires and when i mentioned it to them they didn't even realise their tires were low. at least this thing could tell them by using a flashing light or a n audible warning of some kind.

btw, I think it would be a great idea to have the car actually TELL you what's wrong rather than just show you. it doesn't have to nag or anything, but it could just alert to a possible problem once or twice. i think people are that much more likely to pay attention to someone that tells them in plain english "this and this is wrong..." than just a light flashing in the dash. we're half way through the fist decade of the 21st century, this would require an extra 20kb of code and what, 2mb of solid state memory to store the compressed audio for all possible conceivable errors to be reported?? any junior java monkey could whip that up in 2 days. it would take a real developer at most 2 months to develope this in machine code and test it theroughly. DO IT.

 

My 02 Monte SS had both gauges.

I know when they put the SuperCharger on the SuperCharged SS models, they took one of the gauges away to put a boost gauge in...

With the V8, ther'd be no need for the boost gauge, so I'd imagine the full compliment of gauges would be back on the V8 SS.

They didn't really "re-do" the interior as much as "touch it up", so I gotta assume all the guages will be there on the SS.... figure a few cosmentic touches to the gauge cluster, but the same basic layout. The only shot I have seen of the dash shows the gauge pod more broken up, but the gauge layout could still be the same, there was room to break up the gauges of they wanted to before without actually moving them (different, more seperating bezel/overlay)

The previous base Monte did not have a full gauge setup, but SS did.

 

I think totally the opposite from this post.. I am a gauge person and would rather monitor the gauges myself than have a computer tell me what to think.. And the oil/alt/temp gauges can help you see a potential problem before it happens, unlike a dummy light.. They are called dummy lights for a reason.

The one thing I do agree with this post is the fuel gauges that actually work accurately, are not common still today.

 

same here
i'd rather watch the gauges myself than take a chance on some idiot light working
and yea, an accurate fuel gauge would be nice
kinda gets old seeing your tank go from 3/4 to 1/4 just because you go down a hill

 

The one thing in the new monte interior that is completely new piece other than the steering wheel , is the guage cluster . Tach , speedo and fuel level is all u get now across the board .

 

It does'nt matter, really. Most newer auto gauges don't show the actual condition. The raw data goes to the computer and then the computer tells the guages to display "Normal" unless there is a major swing in the data.

Oddly, it seems like everyone likes gauges, but they don't like moving needles. People would complain that their temperature gauge was moving all over the place (due to that crazy thermostat thing) and it would negatively impact quality and customer satisfaction, so the newer temperature guages pretty much peg that needle in the middle and it doesn't move unless there is a major swing. Thus, you can't forsee any problems. The other gauges are similar. I call them Idiot Gauges, because they work the same as Idiot lights, basically. I absolutely hate them, BTW.

If you want to know whats actually going on instead of what the computer thinks you should know, you'll have to install aftermarket guages.

Still, the one thing that would be nice is if the 'check engine' light was triggered, they'd tell you what's wrong with the car. I mean, most GM cars already have a display screen and you can call onstar and find out what the check engine light means, so obviously, the car already knows the problem. Why can't they link them with a few lines of code? As a customer, I'd be much happier if the light came on and the message center said something like: "Please schedule a dealer appointment, your emissions equipment is malfunctioning" or "Please schedule a dealer appointment, your cylinder just broke in half." So I could at least get an idea of the problem and urgency.

 

They do have cars that do this. A guy I work with was describing how his Malibu informed him of a problem with his power steering pump on a display.

 

Hmmm... That is interesting.

Do we have any pics anywhere? I can't find a head-on shot of the dash or gauge cluster.

 

same here
sorta sucks you only have those 3 though (even if the other ones aren't entirely accurate like werm stated)

 

An amp gauge is very useful if you are running a serious stereo in your car.
Something they should make standard with any manual tranny car is a programmable shift light. It would not be very difficult, just a light and a rotary **** that is attached to a pointer on your tach. Wherever the pointer is pointing, the light will flash when you reach that RPM.