Originally Posted by TheDonEffect,Mar 17 2010, 07:16 AM

Yeah it is sad, the days of budget racing are slowly coming to an end as the focus becomes more on how much can you spend vs. how much do you know.
I was talking to some oldtimer muscle car guys and they remember being able to build somewhat complete street cars with 1 month's pay check when they were growing up, now you're taking out a second mortgage to get anything competitive. Yeah yeah they can't handle blah blah point is they were able to have fun for minimal cash.
These days, even if you do everything yourself you're spending decent coin. 40 bucks for a radiator cap? 250 bucks of an intake? JDM yo.
And these modern cars, even if you can afford to buy one, you'll still spend alot keeping them up, 18"+ tires aren't cheap, the maitenance and repairs on euro cars makes me wanna cry, lol, etc etc.
What happened to those days where you could buy a DSM for 20K, drop another 2 K and have a monster.
I mean yeah, the STI and EVO folks are making great power and have plenty fast cars, but I seriously question the long term reliability on those cars.
/rant.