Take it easy and at minimum some aspirin/ibprophen. Years ago I got hit in my '93 Buick Century, I was standing still, little honda accord hit me at about 45 MPH in a 35 (that is from the police estimates in the report). Attached are a couple of pics. The car had less then 100K on it, bought to be a daily driver to allow me to park my '84 Camaro. The accident caused it to leak fuel, punctured the tires, buckled the floor pan. I used the ash tray for coins (as I don't smoke). The draw for the ashtray pushed out, the actual tray was next to me on the bench seat, coins everywhere. My glasses (which until I got lasik were essential as I could only see blurry shapes without them) were found by a friend in the BACK of the car. The pics attached are from when the car was in the impound lot.

Thanks to my seat belt, I was OK for the most part. The air bag did not deploy, I did not hit the wheel. I was sore for a couple of days. I did have some minor back pains and saw the doctor about them, minor therapy. I have one long lasting item I am aware of. About once every 6 months, I get a "discomfort" (really not painful, just uncomfortable), there under my left shoulder blade, feels like I am being poked with a wire, it's a very targeted location and very precise. It typically goes away if I can rub it (or better, have the girlfriend massage it) for about a minute. Long lasting, but easy to resolve. The doc at the time said it can be a muscular thing that is simply the way it is.

I feel I got very fortunate.

 

No worries sir, I'm still kinda surprised the GTOs are still that pricey and Camaros that cheap! I definitely didn't mean to sound douche-baggy if I did. Back before I actually needed something practical I was looking at GTOs and they were cheaper than what they are now.

 

Wow, that does look awful! 45 vs 0 is really hauling too! The worst thing about these wrecks is that it doesn't matter if you're Mario Andretti level good at driving, there usually isn't a thing you could do to prevent it other than just not drive. I've got a bad feeling this kind of stuff is going to get worse as more and more people play on their cell phones while driving.

I totally know what you mean about the glasses. I got lucky to find mine undamaged within arms reach on the passenger side, otherwise I would've needed someone else to look for them.

 

You didn't sound douche baggy at all! I definitely appreciate all of the feedback.

I was surprised about gtos and g8s seem to be about the same. Maybe it's the low production numbers combined with being the last Pontiac muscle cars? It's just odd as I had a friend buy one only 3 or 4 years ago and they seemed to be notably cheaper than today.

I did go out and do some car shopping last night. Local dealers have absolutely zero GTOs save for a few ultra high mileage ones at the tiny dealers. Camaro inventory in manuals was fairly low, but the few I was interested in specifically weren't as nice as the pictures showed.

I did see carmax had a red/black zl1 with 7k, optioned exactly as I would have. Of course it's $40k so it's out of my price range, but still a beautiful car.

 

When I got rear ended, I was waiting for traffic to clear so I could make a left hand turn. I heard noise behind me, saw it was a kid who locked his brakes up and I said "oh s---" and bam. Had I been a little faster, there was no traffic in front of me, if I released the brake and hit the gas, I am sure the kid would have still hit me but the impact would have been a lot lighter.

That would not have helped you case with cars in front of you and a semi barreling down on you.

 

5th Gen Camaros are plentiful and surprisingly comfortable cars as a DD. It would 100% be my vote. Check Camaro5 marketplaces, I believe more people try to sell theirs privately because trade-in values can be poor.

I would shy away from the ZL1 for a daily. You don't want to have to keep changing out those brakes. It's way too much $$$$.

Have you tried to find any Chevy SSs? That is the ultimate family car DD to me...

 

Ill definitely take a look, thanks for the tip!

I have, but they're horrifically expensive around here. There are a couple used ones for very high 30s, the rest are all 40-50+. I just can't justify that kind of money. Honestly, if it gets too much over $25k, I'll just buy an ls2 c6 and be done with it. I'd like something different since I already have a heavily modded c6, but it would make repairs easier, gets good gas mileage, and is reasonably quick.

 

I've definitely rerun the scenario in my head a lot of times. The only way I could see to get out of it would be to crank the wheel left and floor it, then jam the brakes as soon as the last wheel left the road (since you'd now be flooring it pointed at oncoming traffic with not a lot of space to stop in). The downside is the median here is mostly soft sand with some weeds growing in it so the chances of getting stuck are near 100%. I'd sure feel stupid doing something like that and then find out the truck ended up stopping in time.

What made this one tricky is that I didn't expect it to happen. This road is a 65 mph that turns into a 55 mph and then comes up to a stop light. He kept distance fine at the 65 to 55 drop. At the 55 slowing to about 30 or so coming up to the stopped traffic, I saw he was coming in hot at that point, but he did finally match my speed with a probably 2-3 car lengths in between. I rolled with traffic at this speed for a few seconds as we gently came to a stop in line with the rest of traffic, so I figured we were good as he had to be clearly aware at this point that we were stopping

From what I've heard after the fact, it sounds like when he made the hard slowdown coming down from the 55, his papers and water bottle fell on the floor. He reached down to pick them up while still rolling and that's when he started crashing into us. He literally was driving down the highway at 30+ coming up on a stopped line of cars not even looking out the windshield.
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Glad you are okay! Ctsv1 is a solid choice. If you look for a little higher mileage some ctsv2 are getting pretty cheap now a days also, still probably a little higher than you wanna go though. I like the G8, or the Chevy SS. Also I wouldn't rule out a clean trans am ws6!

 

I love the way the GTO looks, too, but the one test drive I had in one chased me away from them forever. Waaaaaaaay underpowered for what was under the hood (yes, it was an LS2). As disappointed as I am in my LS4, the Goat was worse.

Also, it made a bizarre beeping noise every time I accelerated from a stop.