Paul M. wrote:
> Poseurs are everywhere. But the "ricers" take more
> heat, and I honestly believe it's because they're
> young and loud and admittedly kinda obnoxious
> sometimes. But they're just having fun, doing what
True, the poseurs are present in every area. But my gut feeling is that
they're a lot more prevalent in the import tuning arena. The guy in the
clapped out Cutlass frequently doesn't have enough money to truly do
what he want with his car, so he has to make do. But the kids these
days...(I suddenly feel old)... ;) In the import tuner crowd, you see
all kinds of new or nearly new cars with a lot of these cosmetic mods
which they're spending loads of cash on. So they _could_ make a good
performance car, but they don't.
Now, is this any different than every previous generation? My dad and
his friends street racing in the 50's? The jacked-up rear ends of
Camaros in the late 70's? Were there a lot of cars done up with bolt-on
parts then that either didn't help or actually hurt performance? Most
likely.
But I think Paul touched on the root of the issue: loud and obnoxious.
The coffee can mufflers sound like absolute crap. It's all rattle and
buzz, with no pleasing tone whatsoever. There's one in my neighborhood
that I keep contemplating stuffing a potato in, since you can hear that
noise for several blocks.
Kai wrote:
> Then there is the commercial side of this whole thing. The
> Fast and the
> Furious is a perfect example of kids being shown what they
> should strive to
You know, I thought the concept of F+F and the sequel to be really
stupid. Showing very unrealistic driving, landing from a large jump
with no serious consequences, etc. But then it hit me: Smokey and the
Bandit. So this is nothing new. Not necessarily any less stupid in
terms of realism, but at least Smokey was basically a comedy, so you can
give a little more slack when it comes to that.
Mike wrote:
> Gee, this sounds like a page out of the J.C. Whitney catalog.
> Every product they sell is supposed to "Lower E.Ts",
> "Increase Horse Power" and "Improve Gas Mileage".
And don't forget that those improvements all are cumulative. Pretty
soon you've got about 500 hp.... ;)
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