Ok then before we launch into today's rant :) I feel a little background information on me might make the vehemence of my viewpoint on today's subject a little more understandable...yes? Ok then...my dad is an engineer, he owns his own garage and has done for as long as I remember...i've spent many happy times there tinkering away with cars, trucks, buses and anything with an engine...now because of my dad's obvious love of cars and me growing up in such an environment the same ideals passed on to me...ie. i'm a car snob :)

With all that in mind i'd like to pose this question to everyone as I consistently fail to understand the reasoning behind it (although given some of the people in question here I think that crediting them with 'reason' may be a tad generous)...what is the fucking point of 'modifying' a car that is, essentially, a motorised shopping trolley? no matter how much money you spend on it you'll only ever have what you had to start with in the first place...you can spend 20p (which is all some of the laughable efforts you see burbling around town look like they've had spent on them) or £20,000 on a car for all I care but if the car in question is a Vauxhall Nova (*shudder*) then it's *always* going to be a Vauxhall Nova, no matter how many stupid bits of plastic you stick on it!

It's not that i've got anything against modifying cars either...I think it's a great idea...provided that the car you're starting with is actually worth doing anything to, otherwise why bother? I could understand it if it was simply an issue of money, that they wanted to get a fast car but couldn't afford it and got an Astra or a Punto or something instead...but it's not...they buy new or nearly new 'mum-mobiles' for about £8000 then spend another £2000 on wanky bits of plastic, stupid flashy lights and tossy bits of drainpipe to make it *sound* good...WHY! you could get a real car for about £5000 and not look like a complete simpleton when you're driving around in it. And that's the other thing, they spend thousands on these trumped up hairdryer powered pieces of tat...but the vast majority don't do anything to actually make it go faster...they just make it look faster! wow! that's really cool that is, cruising the streets in your mums car, which is still a 1.0 litre piece of shit of course, but it's a 1.0 litre piece of shit that looks like it's been covered in glue and ram-raided Halfords...woooooowww!

I don't know what's worse really...the amusing efforts that fart their way around towns with bits dropping off them, badly done paintwork, and 60% of the body being filler...or the ones that have tons of cash thrown at them, now personally if I had £50,000 or so spare to spend on a car i'd get something worthwhile...I mean for that kinda cash you could get a pristine '67 Shelby GT500, perhaps a Plymouth Hemicuda, or a Buick Riviera, maybe a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 8, or an RX8, maybe an RX7 (like mine yay!) or any one of countless other 'real' cars and have a lot of change to spare...but what do so many of them do? buy some boring piece of humdrum shit and waste *thousands* on it...I saw one a while ago where a guy had this car that he'd spent years modifying, spent over £30,000 on it, and what was the car in question? A Citroën Xantia...oooooooohhhhhhhh! Yes that's right, the kind of car that reps get forced on them when they've been naughty...the kind of car that says 'Hi, i'm consistently average'...and *that* is what he throws his money away on! Hhhhhmmmmm clearly insane I think :)

Perhaps i'm missing the point here, maybe there is some higher reason behind all of this apparent idiocy (dunno what it could be? Perhaps these people think of themselves as modern day alchemists and think that they're carrying on the age old tradition of trying to turn cheap lead into gold? hhhhmmmm perhaps not!) but somehow I doubt it, I feel that they'd save a lot of time, money, effort and credibility if they just payed attention to an extremely apt saying..."you can't polish a turd!" ;)