I know both Turbobrickers - the white 244 is an autocrossing/track-day build with rather modified suspension and a turbocharger added, while the black one was close to stock. The engine bay is plenty large for a V8, though - I've had my share of terrible, impractical daydreams.

How about an Asüna GT, though? German engineering, and there's an umlaut in its name, so it must be...



...built shoddily even by Korean standards and given Pontiac badging south of the border.

Hosers.

Sparingly and in a private residence with good company, at least for the next several months.

Or, y'know, you could've done as I did and visited Scotland right out of high school.

This is like my realisation that there are middle-school students who weren't alive when the World Trade Center towers went down.

Seriously, that... that's something.

I can't tell you how glad I am not to be the guy whose wheel adapters have to deal with differing numbers of studs.

That said, the pop-out rear side window is absolutely fantastic.

My father never made a habit of naming his vehicles, but a couple of years ago, he needed a car, and a friend with a body shop got him a fair deal on a rebuilt Civic.

The car had been sold, at one point, by Ralph Pontiac-Honda of Rochester, and still bore the dealer-applied sticker on its trunklid. A gummy-rubber keyring from the same dealership hung from the ignition key. 'RALPH' was printed on each in definitive block capitals.

'Ralph' it was.

Given that my car history encompasses four Volvos - two 244s, a 745, and an 855 - I completely respect your appreciation for, ahem, box.

As for salt, the 745 entered my life for just that reason - '90+ models were amazingly well-galvanised for their era and true to form, mine has no rot despite having been beaten senseless for twenty New England winters, while the 244's driver's side rocker panel needs a thorough grind, patch and prime before it's ready for salt. Now, Japanese offerings prior to the mid-'90s or so... well, I wouldn't drive the Arrow in the winter either.

Two of my three cars are older than you, Greg...

...but one's older than I am, too, and by a couple of years at that.

(Knowing that you share one of my earliest interests, I hope I'm not the only Hoon our age who can identify any hubcap from about '85-'00 or differentiate between a '95 and '96 Contour, despite being completely unaware of more recent year-to-year trim changes. I sometimes wonder whether I'm losing my touch, and if so, whether that's entirely a bad thing.)

For what it's worth, I appreciate your news segments - the only other car blog I read on anything approaching a regular basis is TTAC, and they certainly don't hit on everything, so it's nice to be able to fill in the gaps. I have no grounds for complaint anyway - my only contribution above the IntenseDebate line was a gratuitously graphic interpretation of a Craigslist advert, after all; I'm really here to learn a few things and offer, ahem, witty commentary in response.

I build 'em from what I have around or manage to score a good deal on, do minor hardware modifications as needed or desired (replacing undersized chipset heatsinks or seized fans, for instance), install and configure the OS as I want it, and leave 'em alone, by and large, until something goes wrong.

I'm very much a hardware guy - my soldering skills are unexceptional, but I have a knack for envisioning and solving problems in the physical realm, and a good eye and mind for troubleshooting. When it comes to software, especially on Linux machines, I'm not afraid to ask for help, and often need to. I'm willing to attempt damn near anything, as that's what being largely self-taught entails.

The power offered by Cyrix chips was always comparable to the UN's condemnation of the second Iraq War, though. If you were building two pallets of dirt-cheap word-processing machines for an office or power consumption was (for whatever reason) a main priority, there you were, but most average users would've been better off with an AMD Duron, at least.

Of course, Tanshanomi's goal was to be as obtuse as possible, and damn it, he succeeded.