Tag: cars

Knowledge is horsepower

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Conversely, that means a lack of knowledge means your car might be slower than it should be.

Long gone are the days when I used to relish in the occasional red light skirmish; trying to get to point B from the green light faster than a car in an adjacent lane.  But nowadays I’m older, I just don’t really care about it anymore, and frankly the cost of fuel is more than justifiable enough to not hit 6,000 rpm in first gear and second gear, just to prove that my car is faster than another.

But when a 3rd generation Mitsubishi Eclipse deliberately pulls up next to me with the intent of attempting to pass me on an upcoming merge point, so that they don’t have to wait behind the three cars behind me, I decided that could turn the clock back a little bit.

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We’re number two!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Atlanta drivers are the second-least courteous drivers in the United States. Such assessment based on a survey claiming statistics of “road rage” characteristics.

Although I don’t refute that Atlanta is a city that most certainly fits the bill of being full of discourteous drivers, and its share of bad and/or idiot drivers, I don’t necessarily agree with AutoVantage’s criteria of what is considered road rage. When I hear the term “road rage,” I’m picturing people demonstrating acts of retaliation when they’re cut off, or people getting so angry with one another that they mutually seem to agree to pull off to the side of the road, and get into an actual physical altercation. Some of the things that AutoVantage surveyed people on, well, aggravating or foolish as they may be, not all of them I’d agree are necessarily acts of road rage. Rage-inducing, sure, to some capacity, but definitely not contextually correct.

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I enjoy reading about car restorations

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, when I was way into Initial D and import cars in general, I often dreamed about getting a Nissan 240SX, and doing everything necessary to it to essentially turn it into a Nissan Sil-Eighty, a Frankenstein of a drift car that merged the front end of a Nissan Silvia with the body of a Nissan 180SX.

I thought, and still kind of do think, that it’s an awesome car, and that it would be real peachy if I could ever get my hands on one at any point in my lifetime.

Long gone are those boyhood racer dreams for the most part, although I wouldn’t not entertain the idea of still getting an old Nissan 240SX and restoring it to some degree of hotness, but perhaps without the need for an SR20 turbo engine, or any major super-expensive part that needed to be imported internationally.  Regardless, it’s safe to assume that those dreams of becoming a legendary drifter are long in the past.

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Doesn’t calling him a vigilante admit he’s upholding the law?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

vig·i·lan·te, n.

  1. any person who takes the law into his or her own hands, as by avenging a crime.

So, some guy in Florida (of course) was busted by the FCC, for having a signal jammer in his car, that effectively made it impossible for surrounding motorists to use their cell phones while in the moving range of his signal jammer.  He was fined $48,000 for interfering with wireless communications

Translation: some guy, tired of people ignoring the oft-unenforced cell phone use while driving, took the law into his own hands, and used a signal jammer to make it impossible for motorists within his vicinity to fuck around on the cell phones while driving, thus making them safer, less-distracted motorists.  He was fined a large sum of money for doing what the law wouldn’t do: something about it.

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Proximity lols

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: Porsche is preparing to open their new North American headquarters in Atlanta.

However, it’s actually in Hapeville, a sub-city known for high crime and with the reputation of being somewhat “urban,” which is the politically correct code word for “it’s a ghetto.”

I get why they say it’s in Atlanta, and in all fairness, Hapeville falls into that umbrella that would be “Metro Atlanta.”  Technically, I don’t live within Atlanta proper, and my home mailing address does not say Atlanta, but I’m also still a part of the Metro Atlanta region.  After all, whenever I get jury duty every three fucking months, I have to report into the city of Atlanta.  This is obviously a common practice, because Atlanta is a fairly well known city, and for the sake of simplicity, people and businesses slap that nametag association because it’s just easier, than having to explain where places like Chamblee, Forest Park, Union City and Doraville are.

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The extinction of Evolution

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: Mitsubishi is killing off the Lancer Evolution this year.

Knee-jerk reaction: Nooooooo QQ

Ultimately, this has absolutely zero impact on my life, but it’s simply one of those situations where it’s change, and there is a facet of my personality that tends to become sentimental about inconsequential things and always second guess the concept of change.

For what it’s worth, there was a pretty notable period of my life where I was gung-ho about import cars, and among them was the fanaticism over the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution line of cars. All-wheel drive, turbo-charged, and at the time, completely unavailable in North America, it was one of those fantasy vehicles that we here in America could only dream about ever getting to drive. It was a monster of a performance vehicle that was both sickeningly fast as well as nimbly agile, and in the days before YouTube, there were numerous video clips from other countries where Evos would obliterate all sorts of notable sports cars on both the strip and the track. And then Evos begun showing up in Eastern media, like movies like Jackie Chan’s Thunderbolt, Ekin Cheng’s Legend of Speed, as well as the second season of one of my favorite animes, Initial D.

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Well I’ll be damned

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Long story short: House Bill 459 passes, declaring that it is now a misdemeanor to be puttering down in the left lane on a divided highway.

In other words, it is now a ticketable offense in the state of Georgia to be cruising in the left lane when there are faster cars that would like to pass.  When this bill was initially proposed, I didn’t think it really had any chance to actually pass, as there was too much gray area, too much subjectivity, and too much room for error for it to be a viable law.  It took pretty much an entire calendar year, but not only did it pass, it passed with a landslide margin of 162-9.  Apparently, a lot of legislative talking heads are really passionate about the ability to drive without Driving Miss Daisy clogging up the left lanes.

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