Yeah, but do you DO anything with it?

Had a big company Town Hall meeting yesterday, with a social afterwards. Free food and booze! Yay!

Anyway, started chatting with a guy who had identified himself as being "into cars". So I had to chat with him.

I asked what sort of things he was into: auto-x? track? drift? something? He said he was more into the "import tuner" stuff. Which apparently meant he had a Prelude (not bad) that he was "doing upgrades on". He "wants to supercharge it to get it up to 240 wheel horsepower."

"So have you used it for anything? Tracked it? Done any autocross?"

"No. I want to get all the upgrades done before I do any of that."

"But if the car runs fine now, why not enjoy it now for what it is? Then, when you do upgrade it, you can appreciate the stuff even more, because you can compare its performance to a base line."

"I really want to get the upgrades done first."

Argh! You've got it. It drives. You're into "car stuff". Do car stuff!

Which was then funny when he asked me about what I drove. So I was telling him about my Miata.

"Do you have any upgrades on it?"

"Just some basic suspension stuff. A roll-bar. The previous owner put a few bolt-ons; intake, headers, exhaust."

"Are you thinking about doing any more upgrades to it?"

"I dunno. Probably not. I'd like to do the bushings, and could probably swap in some beefier sways."

"Are you thinking of turbocharging it, or anything?"

"Probably not. By the time I'm at that level, I'd probably rather spend the money to start a spec racer. Spec E30 or Spec Focus, some series that pretty inexpensive and chill.

"Besides, I kind of enjoy having a gutless little car. That way, when I run down an S2000 at the track, it feels like a big accomplishment because i know it's all me."

I kept trying to prompt the guy to look up the SF SCCA chapter and run his car in a few auto-xes. Or to hook up with NASA and take it out to Infineon. I doubt he'll do it. After all, you need 200+ whp before you can do autosports.

Hmm either he's really afraid of losing or he's more ricer than racer.

+1 ricer

some people just dont get it.

although with a lot of intervention he just may come around.

maybe invite him to an auto-x and have him ride along with a few different people.

I have the same problem with my best friend. He looks at horsepower numbers and zero to sixty, I look at how much fun is it to drive? And he doesn't understand why I like my 318 better than moms volvo... the volvo is faster... but the volvo has torque steer and the bmw feels faster.

I don't understand ricers... its more fun to drive a slow car fast than a fast car slow.

Whew! I'm glad having a Prelude isn't "bad"!

Sounds like he enjoys the "upgrades" more than the thrill of the drive. :shrugging shoulder emoticon: I don't get it either. My policy has always been to drive the hell out of it and only put money into things that break or fall off, but then, I'm not winning any races either LOL.

It's hard not to snicker at the kids who show up with heavily riced out stuff that then get their a$$ handed to them by a H Stock Civic. Or the guy who shows up with an AMG Mercedes and gets sknned alive by a beat up primered C4 'Vette. The looks on their faces when they check out the results sheet and see how bad they got whooped is priceless.

At the same time, we all start off knowing absodamnlutely nothing when we first start, so I try not to dump on them. A couple have wound up being pretty good in their classes after they got over the initial shock.

Sounded like he more had drag race thoughts... but didn't sound like he ever got out to a drag strip.

I got the distinct impression that he did not actually understand motorsports and how much more of it is the driver than the car.

Or, as my girlfriend put it, "Same planet. Different worlds."

EastCoastMojo wrote: Whew! I'm glad having a Prelude isn't "bad"!

I like preludes. Even if I'm more of a RWD guy. My only thing kinda-sorta against them is that they're bigger/heavier than a civic. When it's easy enough to swap engines between Hondas...

Still, I think they're one of the best "all-around" cars. A great blend of sporty, practical, efficient, dependable, and safe.

I remember being at an event a few years ago, and one of the "ricer" brigade showed up in some sort of winged Honda. He was all mouth during walk-throughs and driver's meeting, but of course got his butt more than handed to him by all the "crappy stock" cars out there. A few guys tried to explain it to him, but it seems everyone else was cheating, and all his ricer friends and him instead got in the middle of the street and did massive burnouts as they left the place.

All he needed was a little understanding of how it all worked and little less attitude, and he would have had a great time. I don't understand that mindset, but then I suppose that's why drag racing is so popular, not that drag racing is not fun, but it requires a different set of skills.

I've talked to people before who aren't "ricers" that are into cars, but have this image in their head of what needs to be done to a car before you can actually do anything with it.

People seem under the impression that you need to have forced induction and a significantly upgraded suspension before your car is ready to take on a track.

Which blows my mind given the cost of a forced induction system! If it costs you $3k to put a cheap turbo in a car, that's at least 10 track days! I want to enjoy my car now. Not imagine how much I'll enjoy my car once I finish saving up.

Hehehe... plus it's nice to have the dead-nuts reliable almost-stock car. When I drifted the Miata, everyone was finishing up before me and having to fiddle with crap. One guy had a supercharged G35 that was giving him all kinds of trouble.

When I came off the skid pad and popped my hood next to all the other cars with popped hoods I got:

"Are you having a problem with your car?"

"Hell no! I just need some food, water, and to relax in the shade for a while. I berkeleying LOVE that new radiator! My engine temp is rock steady! Have fun wrenching. I'm gonna get some fries and ice cream."

racerdave600 wrote: I remember being at an event a few years ago, and one of the "ricer" brigade showed up in some sort of winged Honda. He was all mouth during walk-throughs and driver's meeting, but of course got his butt more than handed to him by all the "crappy stock" cars out there. A few guys tried to explain it to him, but it seems everyone else was cheating, and all his ricer friends and him instead got in the middle of the street and did massive burnouts as they left the place.

Yep the ricers always leave after the first round of any event. Reminds me of a guy at the last dexterity I was in, one minute he was talking about how the police can't catch his winged wonder and he's the most badass thing to ever sit behind a steering wheel, just a couple of minutes later he's leaving, driving like an idiot of course.

GameboyRMH wrote: Yep the ricers always leave after the first round of any event. Reminds me of a guy at the last dexterity I was in, one minute he was talking about how the police can't catch his winged wonder and he's the most badass thing to ever sit behind a steering wheel, just a couple of minutes later he's leaving, driving like an idiot of course.

You might be able to outrun a cop car. It's a whole other matter to outrun the cops.

Even if they can't catch you, they just need to catch your license plate.

No one believes your crap if you're talking about outrunning the cops.

Well... I might believe it if you had a gray '98 Camry with invisible power/handling mods and James-Bond style plates that flipped.

One of my favorite says at an HPDE is "If the car is already faster than you can drive it, making the car go faster doesn't help".

Here in the Bay Area we used to have a whole contingent of guys with very modified (and well set up) Starlets, 70's era Corollas, and AE86's that showed up at all the SCCA autocross events. I began calling to them as the "Ego Test." When someone would show up with a high dollar Porsche or Ferrari and get their ass handed to them by a Starlet, you learned a lot about their charactor. Most of them don't seem to come back. The few that do, get respect. We have one member with a Porsche GT-2. His talent has catching up with the car in the last few years and he is very fast in ASP now.

Way back in about 2000, I went to my first autox with a buddy from work. Some middle-aged jerk in a Viper showed up and had the attitude described above. After (predictably) getting his @$$ handed to him (by pretty much everything there), he sulked off, driving like an idiot (and without doing his turn working).

However, he did have a smoking hot 20-something girlfriend/wife/whatever, at least he did when he showed up.

EastCoastMojo wrote: Whew! I'm glad having a Prelude isn't "bad"! Sounds like he enjoys the "upgrades" more than the thrill of the drive. :shrugging shoulder emoticon: I don't get it either. My policy has always been to drive the hell out of it and only put money into things that break or fall off, but then, I'm not winning any races either LOL.

There's drivers and there's builders. Some guys just like tinkering and getting more power out of the car. It's like a Lego set to them, something to take apart and put back together. That's part of my motivation with building the Dart - I just want to build something crazy to see if I can build it.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I like to tinker with stuff. I just don't have the funds to do "upgrades". I'm just jealous.

MadScientistMatt wrote: There's drivers and there's builders. Some guys just like tinkering and getting more power out of the car. It's like a Lego set to them, something to take apart and put back together. That's part of my motivation with building the Dart - I just want to build something crazy to see if I can build it.

Kind of like building model cars for many hobbyists. The car itself and what's done TO it is the hobby. Restorers are often like that, too. And many hot rodders.

My '63 Comet is being built with the build itself as the point, not what can be done with the car when done.

MadScientistMatt wrote:

EastCoastMojo wrote: Whew! I'm glad having a Prelude isn't "bad"! Sounds like he enjoys the "upgrades" more than the thrill of the drive. :shrugging shoulder emoticon: I don't get it either. My policy has always been to drive the hell out of it and only put money into things that break or fall off, but then, I'm not winning any races either LOL.

There's drivers and there's builders. Some guys just like tinkering and getting more power out of the car. It's like a Lego set to them, something to take apart and put back together. That's part of my motivation with building the Dart - I just want to build something crazy to see if I can build it.

It's also for those of us who love cars but can't drive worth a hill of beans.

I can understand the appeal of being a builder if you're doing the engineering work to design, fab, install and test your own stuff.

If all you do is buy things and install them, you're a buyer and an installer, but not a builder.

If what you're into is having a pretty boulevard cruiser, I can even understand that. If you do things to make a car look pretty, and it looks pretty, you have succeeded. If you install parts to make a car able to go fast, but it is never driven fast, those parts aren't actually doing anything.

The guy at the party said that he was thinking he'd like to pick up a 350Z, because they can run 13's stock. But he didn't mention ever actually running the 1/4.

So, it only matters that the car can run 13's. But it doesn't matter that it never will.

Hey, if I buy whatever the Viper turn-key race-car is. I can say that it's a car that can run Nurbergring in the low 7-minutes (or whatever the time was). Doesn't matter that I will never take the car to the Ring and do not have the skills to set those kind of lap times.

I ran into a variant of this while instructing at a "High end eye-talian car club driving event" by invite from a buddy who I now owe a huge favor. The guys there were very nice, decked out in the finest red Sparco suits money could buy but they didn't really want to drive fast. They didn't even want to hear what I was trying to say. They drove around a little then asked ME to drive it fast.

The catering was superb as well. Sometimes life throws you a bone.

Its also cool when you are instructing as a college student and get a tip while doing it as in monetary funds.

I remember seeing a merkur at school and I talked to the onwer once, and he said he was planning to build a 600 hp 2.5 engine for it, and cage it, etc so he could run it in hill climbs or something. About a year later I saw it in pick and pull. There are lots of fox body mustangs with 22 inch wheels and lots of engine mods that dont run well at all and arent emissions legal anymore, lots of SR20 swapped 240sxs that are slower at an autocross than a stock one, 2nd gen eclipses with huge turbos and blow off valves than run like crap, etc. I just dont see the point.

Some people don't "get it" until they're actually exposed to going somewhere other than a straight line.

I have a friend w/ an M6 who was hell-bent on adding power to it (pondering $3000 headers--no joke). I poked/prodded until I finally got him to do an auto-x school (w/ a 1 mile course). He was hesitant, but once he did it, he saw the light. I was so happy for him after that.

It's a big paradigm shift from the thirst for power to the thirst for faster laps.

I have a friend who is kind of like that. I keep nagging him to bring his evo out to the next autocross yet is is constantly telling me that: "its not ready yet I need to install PartX first".

Initialy I tried pointing out that the most productive part to upgrade is the nut behind the wheel. When that failed I moved to the more antagonistic:

"don't worry its not that embarrassing to be destroyed by a boring old Mazda..."