For this week’s Your Shitty Economy Car of the Week (YSE), we present the Chevrolet Suburban. For years, Suburban was the only choice for families with four or five kids (or dogs) and a need for heavy towing. In recent times, the Suburban has seen some heavy competition. When GM doubled down on SUVs and created the GMT900 platform, they maintained the fuel hungry ‘burban’s class competitiveness. [Ed: Great landing, wrong airport.] Even with today’s economy and GM’s woes, a new Suburban doesn’t carry a huge discount: there’s $1,000 in rebate cash on the hood. A new base LS 4WD starts at $44,000. A flush customer can bling-out an L(u)TZ well into the $60,000 range. By comparison, this pictured one-year-old 4WD YSE truck clocks in at $24,987. Buyers looking for 2WD (or more miles) could spend less. The huge numbers of GMT900 trucks sold guarantees parts availability for years to come (hold the comments on GM’s bankruptcy). Before heading out to shop, toss in a copy of Dante’s Peak or Clear and Present Danger to watch some “like a rock” Suburbans tearing it up . . . .

For YSE (Your Shitty Economy) Car of the Week, we feature the first true competitor to the Porsche Boxster in the German Roadster Wars: the BMW M Roadster. When it was new (launched 1998), $42K bought you a 240 hp straight-six powered Palmetto pistol. The S54 engine, introduced in 01, provided an extra 75hp, but used examples netted an additional $8000-$10,000. Not any more! Prices for a pre-thrashed S54 Z3 M Roadster have sunk below the $20K mark. It survives as one of the last great driver’s cars. You know: the kind of vehicle that threatens to kill you should your nerve/skill/luck run out. Nav system, auto-HVAC, xenon lights, memory seats? Nope. The Z3 M Roadster put the Spartan in Spartanburg. But the two-door delivers plenty of raw driving feel, perfect for the smaller driver on a mountain road on a sunny day. Only 1600 S54 M Roadsters (and 690 M coupes) were produced, so off you go. [autotrader]

YSE (Your Shitty Economy) Car of the Week features the feature-packed Infiniti M35. When it sits new on the dealer lots trying to badge snob you away from the multitudes of BMWs and Audis roaming the crowded commuting lanes of our major cities, this M-car screams bargain at $50K. Option-out a 535i or an A6 with this much equipment and you’ll spend $10-15K more for a car with arguably less reliability, yet more soft-touchy plastics. Wait a few years (or not, for this one) and for not much more than a new Honda Civic Si, you can own one of the cleverest interiors (if strikingly weird) in the mid-size luxury class, as long as you can forgive the stray hard plastic panel.

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