Favorite car of all time?

Cool. I test drove one recently and liked it a lot. Still a little too much turbo-lag for my taste - but suspension settings were on the money.

BTW - here is my new race car.

 

How long have you lived at the shipping yards down by the river?

 

Easy choice for me. Gas mileage is a little shaky, but the rear jets with vector control and front-firing machine guns are a must whenever I get on the freeways here in Los Angeles.

 

My current car. Even red. Nissan Xterra. Got it a few months ago. 90K miles, $6k. Been a really, really fun hunting rig. Almost no wear on it. Well, until I got my hands on it.

Now it's rocking what I call "Idaho pinstriping," which is when you go down some fuck-awful mountain road and wind up scratching the doors by wedging past a couple of pine trees. A 4x4 isn't a real 4x4 without those delightful scratch marks.

I'd really rather own a nice, sturdy SUV over a sportscar. You go 0-60 in 4 seconds or 130 mph, and you stand a pretty good chance of eating a fat ticket. So you just rarely do it. You go up some insane muddy track, and you stand a pretty good chance of just having fun.

Unless I ever got really rich, I'd never want a truck over $10k. Things get a lot less "expendable" after that.

 

That's a nice rig. I always liked the way these look.

Well, it's been quite some time since I sold my last Jeep (I had 3) - so I can understand where you are coming from. Of course, the alternative - is to get a low-powered, light-weight sport car - they are fun just about anywhere, on the road or on the track.

My '93 Miata is just a fun, fun car - even if it has only 116 horsepower. It has fantastic chassis and can be thrown around with abandon. Of course, if you ever pursue road racing seriously - you realize that the good drivers can be a lot faster in a slow car than most guys with a big checkbook and the latest fancy machine with 400 horsepower...

There is an old saying "it's more fun to drive a slow car fast, than a fast car slow". I subscribe to this theory.

 

The first running race car I ever sat in, I was almost eleven years old. Jimmy Insolo was my father's friend...

 

It's actually a VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER

 

The creator of this based the design on his idea of merging together a Hummer H1 and a Lamborghini Gallardo.

 

Suby's legendary suspension. The car is awesome. I was never into hatchbacks but this one caught my eye. After driving my brothers turbo'd MazdaSpeed3 I wanted to give a hatch a try.

 

I would say he did quite well if that was his intention.

 

I'm nearly secure enough in my heterosexuality that I could show up at my redneck brother's house without it really bothering me that he called me a "fuckin' goddamn pansy" for buying a Miata. Nearly.

I honestly have always really liked the way they look and handle. It's more of a peer pressure thing for me.

That and I have a wife, two kids and a Labrador. We all barely fit in the Xterra.

I really hear you about slow cars fast. My other favorite vehicle was my 914, or as I called it "The Porkswagon." (Porsche design, Volkswagon bug engine.) Mine looked just like this, and I loved it every time it didn't die on me:



It's basically an insanely unreliable Miata with a mid-engine. A nightmare to work on if you don't have tentacles for arms.

 

I do not understand the logic of Miata is for the gay, to be honest (even if it was a bad thing, which I do not care about - not my business what people do in their beds, as long as they are happy and do not harm others doing it).

A guy in a big, bad ass truck once told me that since I drive a Miata I am gay because it is small and cute and feminine, while his truck was for real men because it was big and brute and loud.

So... I asked him why wanting to be inside something small and cute and feminine makes you gay but wanting to be inside something big and brute and loud makes you a real man. I think that over-fried a circuit in his brain.

Miatas, especially early ones with no power-steering are tons of fun. There is a good reason there are more Miatas running every weekend on road-courses in this country than any other car. They make for fantastic race cars. I started racing my Miata before moving to faster (and now older) things.

As for 914s. Always liked them. Their design survived the test of time a lot better than I thought it would.

 

When I was a kid there was a guy who had an Amphicar, and he gave rides in the Willamette River at George Rogers Park one summer.



Now they have sub-cars:

 

Hear! Hear!