Rice or Muscle
- Thread starter DeepRumble
- Start date
i personally love both (look at sig. below). i respect anything that is/can be made fast. there are guys running 11's and 12's for dirt cheap in civics.
i had a friend in highschool that had his 87 monte burn to the ground due to an electrical fire. he bought a $1200 gsx for a beater till he could buy another monte. he put on a larger front mount and a manual boost controller and ran 13.2. last i talked to him he had bought a gsx shell to make into a race car...
i had a friend in highschool that had his 87 monte burn to the ground due to an electrical fire. he bought a $1200 gsx for a beater till he could buy another monte. he put on a larger front mount and a manual boost controller and ran 13.2. last i talked to him he had bought a gsx shell to make into a race car...
www.homemadeturbo.com has a like 1989 hatch with a non-vtec single cam motor running 11's for less than $1000 including the cost of the car.
I really LOVE the big RWD cars with gobs of torque in the low RPM's, but one thing I've noticed between those cars, and my car, is the 'feel'
I drove a 06 manual mustang GT recently, and yes, it felt powerful, had a great sound, but honestly, My swapped civic hatchback FEELS faster, even though I'm like 99% sure it is not. Small cars with swaps, or boost with a 'decent' amount of power, give the illusion of speed MUCH more so than big RWD V-8s in my opinion. I would rather drive my civic over the mustang I test drove for a number of reasons,
Gas mileage: even with the swap, my car still gets 30mpg no matter how I drive it. I know alot of the GTP's and Maro's still get 30's, but in the city you'd be hard pressed to get better than 15-16mpg.
Downtime: I can replace my entire motor and trans in less than 2 hours with the right tools, while many RWD V-8's have their motor kinda 'shoe-horned' into them
Easy Maintance:I can change my sparkplugs in 10 seconds, and they cost me less than a buck, i know many cars are this way, but I can't think of a single 4 cyl powered honda where spark plugs are more than a 30 second job.
Mod Cost: My swap was less than a grand, and I have half my turbo setup ready, so my final cost for a Turboed B18 Civic hatch will be about $1500 not including the cost of the car, and it should hopefully crack into the low 13's, maybe even high 12's if the car gods smile on it.
Initial cost: A perfectly good running and driving civic can be bought for less than a grand, while for example, a 1990's fox body mustang thats not leaking every fluid in it typically sells for 3 grand or more.
Potential: This is where I feel Imports hit a BIG wall, Sure, you can make a swapped civic break into the 12's without spending an insane amount of money, but 11's, 10's, etc, just become CRAZY money, Thousands of dollars just for suspension components to help hold the front tires down, and you need BIG power even despite the weight to help over come being FWD which costs BIG money, so if you want to go faster than 12 seconds without emptying your wallet, I feel a big RWD V-8 is the only way to go.
PLEASE notice, I'm bringing up reliability LAST, because if you have a modified car, Reliability becomes a wild card in all honesty, no matter what you drive, import or domestic.
THE ONLY 'reliability' thing I favor in my car right now, is that I have a factory stock motor that puts out twice what my old motor did, and it required no fabrication work for the swap, it was literally 'plug and play' and moves out quite nicely.
I really LOVE the big RWD cars with gobs of torque in the low RPM's, but one thing I've noticed between those cars, and my car, is the 'feel'
I drove a 06 manual mustang GT recently, and yes, it felt powerful, had a great sound, but honestly, My swapped civic hatchback FEELS faster, even though I'm like 99% sure it is not. Small cars with swaps, or boost with a 'decent' amount of power, give the illusion of speed MUCH more so than big RWD V-8s in my opinion. I would rather drive my civic over the mustang I test drove for a number of reasons,
Gas mileage: even with the swap, my car still gets 30mpg no matter how I drive it. I know alot of the GTP's and Maro's still get 30's, but in the city you'd be hard pressed to get better than 15-16mpg.
Downtime: I can replace my entire motor and trans in less than 2 hours with the right tools, while many RWD V-8's have their motor kinda 'shoe-horned' into them
Easy Maintance:I can change my sparkplugs in 10 seconds, and they cost me less than a buck, i know many cars are this way, but I can't think of a single 4 cyl powered honda where spark plugs are more than a 30 second job.
Mod Cost: My swap was less than a grand, and I have half my turbo setup ready, so my final cost for a Turboed B18 Civic hatch will be about $1500 not including the cost of the car, and it should hopefully crack into the low 13's, maybe even high 12's if the car gods smile on it.
Initial cost: A perfectly good running and driving civic can be bought for less than a grand, while for example, a 1990's fox body mustang thats not leaking every fluid in it typically sells for 3 grand or more.
Potential: This is where I feel Imports hit a BIG wall, Sure, you can make a swapped civic break into the 12's without spending an insane amount of money, but 11's, 10's, etc, just become CRAZY money, Thousands of dollars just for suspension components to help hold the front tires down, and you need BIG power even despite the weight to help over come being FWD which costs BIG money, so if you want to go faster than 12 seconds without emptying your wallet, I feel a big RWD V-8 is the only way to go.
PLEASE notice, I'm bringing up reliability LAST, because if you have a modified car, Reliability becomes a wild card in all honesty, no matter what you drive, import or domestic.
THE ONLY 'reliability' thing I favor in my car right now, is that I have a factory stock motor that puts out twice what my old motor did, and it required no fabrication work for the swap, it was literally 'plug and play' and moves out quite nicely.
Its a blast having something 'competitive' and be powered with such small displacement, but it is VERY over hyped... I know I would never be able to take ANYTHING RWD V-8 made in the past decade off the line, and hence I think thats where the origins of 'the ricer flyby' come from. and Alwaysvtec, CALL me you bum.
What really truly qualifies a car as a 'muscle' car anyways? I think that definition has become kinda 'open' now a days.
i am a muscle car guy at heart but as Dasfinc said, the feel of a small import is just different (in a good way)
my buick sounded awesome, had neck snapping torque(480ft-lbs) at like 2500rpms and was a beast to drive in a straight line. make a turn and it was less than fun, scary at times.
my crx is a blast to drive. its super super slow under 3000rpms but after it climbs past that the revs skyrocket and it feels very peppy (not fast by any means). i have a smile on my face everytime i drive it. later on down the road i may do a B-series swap and possibly a turbo because it can only make me smile more. did i mention even with stock suspension it handles 10 times better then any other car i've owned??
(shut your mouth alwaysvtec, i know what your going to say!
)
my buick sounded awesome, had neck snapping torque(480ft-lbs) at like 2500rpms and was a beast to drive in a straight line. make a turn and it was less than fun, scary at times.
my crx is a blast to drive. its super super slow under 3000rpms but after it climbs past that the revs skyrocket and it feels very peppy (not fast by any means). i have a smile on my face everytime i drive it. later on down the road i may do a B-series swap and possibly a turbo because it can only make me smile more. did i mention even with stock suspension it handles 10 times better then any other car i've owned??
(shut your mouth alwaysvtec, i know what your going to say!
)
my definition would be something that takes muscle to drive. you try turning and stopping a 4000lb car with no power steering or power brakes!
(shut your mouth alwaysvtec, i know what your going to say!)
you finally understand
its a sickness really. i could be driving a geo metro and i would have thoughts of turbo's....
i can lie to myself about just leaving the car alone (i have for a few weeks now) but it will happen. when? who knows; but it will.
my guess is after i sell my GTP!
Smokinhot
3-man rules!!!!
Thats a better statement I don't mind either, even though I've never owned an import yet 
but there are nice imports out there. What make "THE CAR" rice is the driver. I drove my bro-in-laws new SI and it wasn't to bad but doesn't have the pep on the go I likeThread Info
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