Are you a purist?
Hey Greg, can't help but feel like this thread was inspired by our little disagreement in another thread lol. I hope I didn't attend you any or get under you skin too much.
Caleb
Yes, it was. You didn't get under my skin, I'm not that sensitive. :D
But, your replies to the other thread did get me thinking about this stuff for sure. Again, I am attempting to understand why someone would choose to modify an older car with newer technology that essentially changes the character of it. Honestly, I think its fine whatever someone does to their car. But specifically for me, the big wheel style is just wrong on an older ride.
Someone said before that there have always been those who go to an extreme when they modify their cars, no matter what period in time we're talking about. That's totally true. You know the guy who has every add-on gee-gaw you can buy at Auto Zone, garish paint and on and on. There's just no thought to this type of stuff. I guess I just associate the big wheel phenomenon with that sensibility.
Sure, there is a purpose for some of it. But when you're putting components in a car like big brakes, overdrives, bolstered seats etc., then you're altering the true character of it. I've been saying this a lot here, everyone wants everything all the time. Are these cars really made better with all this modern stuff? Isn't their draw the simplicity of them? Why add all this complexity for the
perceived benefit of modern performance?
If it wasn't for my wife who argued with me relentlessly to have a newer 'reliable' car, I'd be daily driving an older car or truck. (Can't win 'em all, gotta pick your battles)
I was a tech. I worked on modern cars for a living. I've driven them all, including Hemi SRTs, etc. Sure the horsepower is there but they are kind of boring to drive. They're bulky and have a numb feeling. To me they have no character, just the ultimate compromise. Basically the opposite of an older car. I would imagine that guys working on cars back then probably hated the ones they worked on as well. Goes with the territory.
The reason I think all this comes from the tuner side of modifications is from when I was in tech school in the mid 2000s. Almost all the kids were into Hondas. Turbo this, camber kit that yada yada. The first thing they would do though was put a fart can exhaust, 'high-flow' intake and the requisite big wheels. This was probably not unlike the guys who put slot mags, glass packs and Gabriel Hijackers on their cars back in 1975.
But hardly any of the kids knew anything about real performance driving or why they needed this or that. No one had any sense of history or did any real research but big wheels were somehow better. The wheels invariably screwed things up, they'd all have some sort of handling or braking problem when they'd put these things on their cars. I couldn't help but think that it was all advertising driven.
I was friends with one kid though who knew his stuff though and was serious about modifying his car 'the right way'. He worked from the inside out and his ideas were function over style. He probably had the fastest car in the school. He ran the stock wheels.
It was around that time that I started seeing this type of stuff on older cars. Frankly, it bugged the crap out of me, I couldn't believe guys were putting tuner-influenced parts on an older car. Its hard for me to separate the two ideas I guess, what can I tell you.
Again, I could care less what people do to their own cars, I'm not the car fashion police or have some rigid set of rules that guys should adhere to. I'm sure I contradict myself to some extent as well. This is all just discussion and banter, take what you want from it.
