Quote:
Originally Posted by Atlas
I understand what your saying, but the soldier analgoy is pushing it. Motorsports isn't a life or death affair. I'll leave it at that.
I stated there are significant advantages to certain platforms. Yes I've competed in open track. My previous car was a 2ZZGE MR-S. The point I was trying to make was that learning the merits of an FF platform gives you a wider grasp on different methods of car control. Like I said before, FF is more forgiving to novice drivers, but it takes a skilled one to make it go fast. Isn't that why we do this hobby? To further improve our skill set? Now im not defending all FF owners here, nor am I for or against certain platforms, but to answer your original question more plainly, some drivers choose to modify and race an FF platform simply based on the feel and handling characteristics. Not always to be the fastest. Its a layout that suits them. Who are we to judge.
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I understand what you're saying, however your arguments only reflect the motivations of a very small percentage of people who "rice up" their FWD econoboxes.
I only have experience with this sort of thing with 2 people: one person is my friend (Civic) and the other I know of(Fit), but haven't bumped into him to really talk to him. The Fit guy has a Fit that looks almost identical to the one pictured on the first page, except with metallic blue rims.
So I talked to my friend and asked him about things without being too direct about it lest it be construed as rudeness. He owns an S4 now, so I feel more at liberty to ask him since he owns a "real car" now. He was given the Civic as a teenager from his mom and being a car enthusiast he modded it with a turbo. From the outside, it is completely unmodified aesthetically.
I get that. In fact this thread isn't really targetted at financially challenged and image-conscious teenagers. It's targetted at presumably mature, self-confident and financially secure adults. When you're young, you're experimenting with life to determine your preferences; you wear fake branded t-shirts. When you're working, presumably you want to live a real life. In Russia, you can actually pay people to give you virtual vacations: they take a pic of you and photoshop you into a scene of a landmark from another country; the goal being you pin it up and everybody thinks you've been on a real vacation.
What's the point of that? It isn't real. Your life isn't better than the Russian next door who didn't go on a vacation either.
Anyway, the answer I think to my question is "ignorance". The guy with limited means cannot afford to experiment with the "real thing" and so doesn't realize there is actually a functional difference between his fake and the real thing. That's why we hear stories on the net about people driving unmodified Civics who think they smoked a Camaro (who wasn't racing); the only reason anyone would say something as ludicrous as that is because they've never been inside a real performance car to know the difference. Similarly people with financial means who do rice up their car do so because they don't have the desire for performance and therefore have never stepped into a performance car to understand the functional differences.
Youtube is full of ignorant people who think that because a Civic is lighter, even though it has less HP than a Camaro, it can still smoke a Camaro. Such ignorance can easily be solved by merely googling the 1/4 mile times of both cars but ignorant people like to make "gut-feel" ignorant statements and decisions.
The solution to ignorance is to ask people. "What do you think about my car?" When they realize that people think it's ridiculous, then their ignorance is lifted. Ignorant people stay ignorant because they make decisions without feedback. The world's best leaders are not the ones who come up with the best ideas, but the ones who know how to solicit ideas from the best people.