I'm the kinda kid who grew up on toy cars and racing video games. Yeah, I had the Lamborghini Countach poster on my wall, as well as that Vector poster, ubiquitous to many young kids' rooms. I played the hell out of Gran Turismo 1 and 2, and I still play racing video games today (Forza Motorsport 2 on Xbox 360). As long as I can remember, I've desired fast sport cars.
In college, my mommy bought me a used Honda Prelude Type SH. It was lowered, and had intake and exhaust. At the time, I thought that car was shiznit!! ..but that era was also my rude awakening to 4 banger imports. It's very hard to squeeze power out of such small displacement engines. I distinctly remember saving up enough money for a turbo for the 'lude and asking a well known Houston tuner how fast it would make my car. He said it would maybe shave 1.0 to 1.5 seconds off my quartermile. Haha, ridiculous! A freakin' $5000+ turbo kit, and my car would go from 15.5 seconds to 14.0 seconds. What's the point? Why bother going from really slow to just slow? So I bought a used Honda CBR 600 F3 (a crotchrocket / sport bike) with the money instead.
Ahh how young and naive, I was back then. My perception of the car often greatly exceeded its actual capabilities. Still, I loved that car and got into lots of trouble with it (pulling a 540 on 2222 comes to mind).
VTEC... what a joke. Of course, at the time, I was like every other young ricer who equated VTEC to a sudden large surge of forced induction boost. Hardly. It gives what? 10, maybe 15 lb-ft of torque? Even that is generous.
And yes, I was that ricer with the obnoxious exhaust. How embarrassing in retrospect! To my credit though, at least I didn't have the huge coffee can exhaust. I had the dual DTM style exhaust. It was Tanabe DMT Medallion to be exact. Heh, nothing like loud and slow, eh? Hehe.
Don't get me wrong, I mean no offence to anyone into this kind of stuff. It's just a style that I moved away from and I like to laugh at myself in the past. I respect all kinds of car enthusiasts and modders and think it's great that they are into it, regardless of what "style" they are into.
