Well it's another Monday, and as you may or may not know. It's that time where I tell you what really grinds my gears. Today's topic of gear grinding..."The Fast and the Furious." As an adolescent growing up in the stupid Fast and the Furious era. Our options were small, and most kids chose the import scene to be a fad of. Now, I was always a JDM kid, and I stuck with the mass of japanese imports. However, I want to put this out there now. I enjoyed the car scene before that stupid movie ruined everything for me.
You know what really grinds my gears. When the movie came out, you had celebrities...i.e Frankie Muniz, buying up on the import scene, changing and adding a cold air intake, and every exhaust system possible to any japanese/german vehicle. I watched the car scene that I had enjoyed reading and watching about for the last 17 years become a smorgasbord of spoilers, loud farting muffler sounds, and big flashy rims. I watched vehicles that should've have flown off the line and finish a quarter mile within 10 secs, become vehicles, that stayed stock, and finished the 1/4 at 17 secs. How devastating to watch a generation of young children, fast and furious types, crush an entire generation of the import scene that was trying to establish themselves against the domestic bearing, that they too can compete with the big muscle car era. *Sigh* where did it all go wrong? Oh that's right, The Fast and the Furious.
I decided, well better now to leave the scene, and go into something that no would know or even enjoy yet. I went to the whole drifting route. Yes another iteration of imports, but doing something, that other cars didn't do, going into a corner sideways. Oh the joys of drifting, I remember trying to drift my 97 Honda Accord at the time, going to an empty parking lot, and driving at least 40 mph, turn into a corner, and lift the e-brake, trying to shift the rear weight differential to the front corner of where ever I was turning into, this way I wouldn't waste any of the tire treads. Oh the idiotic things I did with a car. I loved it, I never thought drifting would ever get big, I even had a plan to buy a 1986 Toyota Corolla GTS. I wanted one so bad. It would have been the ultimate drift car. No way would Fast and the furious would ruin this for me. a few years later down the road, the Fast and Furious 3 came out. The title...Tokyo Drift. My heart sank, and another reason for me to hate the Fast and the Furious franchise kicked in.
So trying to get out of the whole idea of just following imports, I began trying to enjoy both the import and domestic scenes. I cancelled my already 10 year subscription to Import Tuner magazine, (god I loved that magazine) and started focusing on the domestic vehicles. Adding superchargers to cars, belt driven mechanics that faced against the air induction of the turbochargers, oh what a rush. My first domestic love was the 95 Impala. These cars were bad ass. And what dummy kid would be following along to that. And besides, how can that stupid movie franchise take this away from me? Well, it didn't and here I am today, trying to enjoy all facets of the motor vehicle world. I still want my 86 Trueno, I still want my 95 Impala, and I definitely now want a 2012 BMW M5. My love for cars haven't changed, and neither the fact that The Fast and the Furious still grinds my gears. However, who knows. It just maybe too soon junior...too soon.
Wei loves kina
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