no more young guns?! open your eyes!!

im tired of people saying no highschoolers take pride in there vehicals anymore. Im from alberta CA and i cant name one guy from any highschool that dosent have an 80's mustang or camaro, or a classic or muscle truck. I would have to say the average would be an 1983 - 99'gmc seirra with rims, air intake, rollbar cams and heads. keep in mind this is highschool and vehicals are always works in progress. anyways just because are dads didn't hand us the keys to a "hand me down" 67 mustang or ford f-100 don't accuse us of not taking pride in what we drive, if anything we take more, considering the circumstances!

also, car craft, if you want to attract young readers, show us how to clean and tune and old carb, or pull an engine, instead of just comparing witch 700$ cam is better. and throw in afew cool old trucks now and then.

but still love the mag  

I'm 23.  

cool?  

i agree. im 15 and a sophomore in high school. Ive been obseesed with automobiles since the day i was born. most people dont understand my passion at all. I got my first car when i was 11 or 12, a Pontiac Fiero. I instantly started modifing it. now i moved up to a 1981 El Camino 350. i take alot of pride in cars. i had to pay for this car my self. no hand me down.  

i also agree on the high budget builds. Most people in this world cant afford 2000 dollar aluminum heads. Try making some lower budget builds. Maybe with like a total goal for a build a 1000 or 1500 including engine price.  

its not the kids, its the fact that 20 years ago performance was painting R/T on a dodge neon  

no young man,  it's the fact that 20 years ago the fox bodied mustang, iroc camaro, and the buick grand national (the neon wasn't around just yet) WERE what the young guys drooled over and aspired to own (i was a young pup 20 years ago), there were older (real popular) cars to be had but the price was going thru the roof as they were being bought and sold by the wall street crowd.  the over-looked body styles (notice how the mid-70's GM A-body is starting to get noticed) were plentiful and the G-body assembly line had barely cooled from its last production run (those cars were/still are more popular than mid-70's A-bodies)

today the trend of the younger guys (not ALL, but most) is to get a ricer or the european equivalent and put stripes and "wings" (my wife calls them handles to carry the car with), and coffee can tailpipes...back in the day it was a set of wheels (15" was big...except for the corvette's 16"), a cam and intake, set of headers and cherry bombs if we couldn't afford a full exhaust system (muffler shops can't legally work on a car that was supposed to have catalytic converters if they aren't putting them back on, and the major exhaust players didn't offer full systems for "newer" cars yet)

its not that younger guys don't take pride in what they drive, they (not ALL, but enough to get stereotyped) do stuff to their cars that us older guys don't understand...i was at a major local car show roughly 18 years ago and overheard a guy that was mid-50's at the time (when pro-street was all the rage...and those crazy graphics paint jobs), comment on wanting to own a floor pan/frame rail supplier so he could make a fortune when all these "people" want to return these cars to their original frame/rearend configuration...he was of the street rod generation...i grew up around guys that were more of the street machine crowd, which is what my preference is, i can appreciate other build styles, even tuners if they have done more than cover every wire and hose with a decorative plastic sleeve and put a neon light kit under the hood. there used to be a guy at the local straight track with an old volkswagon rabbit that was running low 7's in the 1/8...it wasn't street legal but it WAS modified without nitrous...anybody can shove nitrous on something and go faster, that's the easy way, read a book or two, learn how to improve the internal combustion engine, do the mods necessary to your application make it better naturally aspirated, then shove the nitrous at it and have more fun

around 15 years ago the "in" thing to do was put 13x3 wheels/tires with no back-spacing on anything you could bolt them to...at that time i would like to have been a bearing supplier

give it twenty years or so and you to will wonder what the heck are those kids doing to their cars...20-25 years ago we thought the world was ending with the onslaught of computerized fuel management...now it's what those with the budget are using (and a laptop)

twenty years ago the first incarnation of nintendo was new

it's a revolving door generational question (what are those crazy kids doing)  in the 1960's when street rodding got its major foot hold (the 55-57 chevys weren't 10 years old yet) but the 15 million model T's hadn't all rusted away yet, were cheap and plentiful, that's what guys built

enough of my ranting  
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the red-headed step-child of the mailing list

fuzzy dice, air shocks & N50's rule

around where i live we dont count ricers as hot roders we refer to them as the more apropriate term " HEY LOOK AT THAT HONDA, BWAHAHAHAHA, I BET HE RUNS HIGH 23'S IN IT HAHAHAHAHAHAHA" " WHATS THE WING FOR!"  

im talking about HOT RODERS  

i didn't say that i liked or even counted ricers as hot rods, just that i could appreciate the effort to BUILD one...after all, most of us started out trying to modify the cars that were available when we were in high school...the sad fact is that there are more ricers available today than affordable rear wheel drive performance oriented cars...if a guy doesn't build an older american car, he likely builds a ricer...therefore the rodders have "lost" one and the ricers have "gained" one...add time, rust, and clunker programs and the material left available to rod diminishes rapidly while leaving way too many ricers

you are lucky to be in an area that has plenty of material avialable and the kind of people that appreciate it...a growing number of us find ourselves in areas that aren't that way any more

how many "pimp" rides y'all got up there...it's another thing i can do without  
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the red-headed step-child of the mailing list

fuzzy dice, air shocks & N50's rule

i am 19 and moved from a town home 2 a upper middle class area i was 15 started working 40 hours a week saved up and bought a chevelle when i was buying this all the rest of the kids are geting bmw's outtys and such for there birth days they didnt take pride and i understand where the older members are talking about they wreak a car and they say mommy and daddy will buy me a new one. i worked hard for this car and my project and would never abuse or destroy them like some of these young people.  
don't crush restore
chevyforlife

haha alberta has a rust problem as you can imagine but hot rodding got a late start here , so you can pick up a nice 4 dr roller for around $300 but as for camaros and stangs and such people didnt really warm up to them back in the day, we just have trucks, and forget about mopar. but alot of ranchero's.

one more thing, i was in an older biulding the other day and there was a 2001 nissan skyline with its front wheels rolled onto blocks of wood, when it dawned on me, not all imports and import drivers drive ricers, with the proper car, they bolt-on parts as they can afford them, then have fun. MORAL: some import drivers are kind of like us. they go fast on small budgets, they do it right.

anyways, we like fuzzy dice but other than that, I have never seen a pimpmobile around here  

ive had experiance with that, they get a shiny car, then drive it to fast, wreck it, dont care, then mommy and daddy buy them a new one. well us real hot rodders are still in our driveway with our heads under the hood and some grease on our face.

also, have you notice they use the term " how am i supposed to know what kind of motor it is, its just fast!"

o well when they break down on the side of the highway, they cant trust fund there way back onto the road.

when your 40, your car will turn heads, there shiny new BMW's will blend in  

i agree with that. at high school i see kids with brand new mustangs and foreign cars while the rest of us are in old trucks or in my case a old el camino. people like that dont respect the cars and dont no a thing about hot rodding. they just brush us by like a bunch of fools. well there the fools  

glad you saw the moral, ricersaretacky, they are kinda like us, but they work on things we don't, kinda like the retirement community builds only pre-48 rides and doesn't understand the love we have for "new" (1950-up) stuff

of course these are vague generalizations but the point is the same...they laugh at us, we laugh at them

if you're not careful, your car will turn heads because it's loud and ugly
i don't care...I did ALL the work...not many can say that anymore...but i will pay a body man for panel and floor replacement...someday  
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the red-headed step-child of the mailing list

fuzzy dice, air shocks & N50's rule