and found pics of my first couple of cars/bike.



This was my first car. It's a '74 Ford Capri (made in West Germany!). 2.8L V6, 4MT, moded with cam, carb, headers. Drifting was so easy and fun. How I wish someone made a simple RWD car now.

Then when I got out of college I got this:




It's an 86 Dodge Shelby Charger. 2.2L I4, 5MT, ECU and intercooler upgrade (good for 175HP, which was very good for a 2600lb). Notice the huge hood - the folks at Mopar didn't tell me the intercooler wouldn't fit under the stock hood - I drove around for 2 months with this huge hole in the hood with the intercooler sticking out of it.

Then after I totalled the car (for insurance purposes) I had it put back together (the body shop basically replaced the back half of the car from the A-pillar back with a regular Dodge Charger coupe and tacked on the Shelby parts from my car) and it ended up looking like this:



Notice even back then we had "Intercooled Turbo" stickers that were good for 5HP.

The 600 Katana was my first bike.

Ahhh... to be young again.

 

You committed insurance fraud? I'm so disappointed.

 

I guess I didn't word it properly - the car would probably have been totaled had it had been fully insured - I only had liability. In the end it probably only cost me about $4,000 to fix a $7,000 car (which in the long run was still cheaper than having the car fully insured for the 5 years I had it + the hefty increase I would have had if the accident was on their books).

 

That brings me back.........My first new car was a GLH-T; I bet that there's more than a few people here that don't know what that is.

That car was directly responsible for my conversion from V8 muscle to imports. Prior to the Omni, I had a 5.0 Mustang, and one night I stumbled into a GLH-T, debadged (although it didn't matter-hadn't heard of it before then anyway) with 4 people in it, driving rather quickly. Being a 20 year old with a Mustang, I wasn't gonig to let a 4 door econobox pass me. I'll be damned if I couldn't catch the thing, (it wasn't stock, but even stock it was fast!) and a week later I was driving one.

A year later, and the car was gone, after 11 trips back to the dealer for various leaks-tranny, head gasket, oil pan gasket, main bearing, etc......I bought an '87 Civic Si, and while I gave up a lot of speed, I've yet to be back to the dealer with a Honda product for any type of problem

 

The GLH (people called it Goes Like Hell) was the then Neon SRT-4. 20 years from now very few people will remember the SRT-4. The GLH was even lighter than my Charger but had the same drive train.
Other than having to re-install the factory ECU everytime I had the car emission tested (it wouldn't pass with the upgraded ECU) I never had a problem with my Charger in 5 years of ownership.
It had pretty bad turbo lag and terrible torque steer, but that's another matter.

 

LannyM, if you look real close at the last pic (taken 1/91) - you'll see a brown 90 Civic in the background - my wife drives that same car today!

 

Ooh...Ford Capri...

Those are now a pretty popular collectors car. And yes, don't you wish someone would build a basic, simple, no frills RWD car?

 

I'm assuming BMW will want to fill that niche with the 1 series - although I think that a 30 year old Capri is better looking than today's 1 series.
It's kind of hard to have a simple no frills car today, what with it needing airbags all over, computers controlling everything, etc.

 

Not so much in North America, but I think one has better options overseas. The RWD comeback in North America seems to be still limited to higher-end models, although the Mustang and GTO come to mind as pretty good contenders.

 

Agreed. The 1-series really doesn't appeal to me and we won't get the stripped down model in the US anyway. I guess the only way today to get a no fills RWD car is to build your own.

 

nice Charger!! (2nd pic)

 

The most recent example, now also extinct, was the Nissan 240SX.
In today's world of mass production and watching every $, RWD and simple/no frills just don't mix. Simple/no frills always means some FWD econobox.