oh i've always been into em since i was like, a kid i guess.

it started as like, a "collection" of hotwheels cars, racing games on the PS2, and growing up with parents who did their own maintenance & had their own little car projects. my dad came from a background of cnc and fabrication and such, so he'd stay up late workin on stuff and i'd come watch, had a couple sandrails and dune buggies in the barn here n' there in various states of disassembled or "in-progress." suffice to say, i grew up very mechanically minded, i was taught from a very young age how to do my own oil changes

but it wasn't until i was like, maybe in high school? that i was just. lyin there. underneath my (at the time) jeep, about to do my routine oil change, that i just kinda stopped and looked at it all? and started recognizing mechanically what each part of my car does. like oh, there's the control arms, there's the tie rods, that's the shock that's the spring, oh, THAT'S how this whole geometry of this mechanism would move under load. there's my exhaust, there's my intake, that's the spark plugs, the fuel injectors the transmission the transfer case the differentials... damn this shit is easy. i should buy a project car lol

though of course, being in high school i didn't have any money, so i mostly turned to like, racing/driving games where i could play with upgrades & tuning & body customization & learn what control goes into fast driving or drifting, and absorbing car culture via youtube (think like, hoonigan and donut media before they got bought out, when they were still just guys fuckin around in their studio's parking lot). so by the time i did afford myself a "project" car, i had a wealth of knowledge of the culture of modifying cars, which is mostly what i'm in it for? and boy does that e30 look like a 20-year-old's first project. but that's maybe the thing i "like most about cars" is the culture surrounding them, the things we do to them to make ordinary cars "cool." mine personally is a lil lowered on some nice LM-style wheels, but not so slammed that it gets stuck on speedbumps. i wish i had the money to fix it up and throw some overfenders on it or somethin, maybe redo the paint... that's the fun part of it to me, is the art project that a car can turn into. i love to see the things people value in a car and how their chosen modifications reflect that and the culture they came up in.

the other favorite part of it to me is the rush & satisfaction of (virtually, videogames, simulated) perfecting that control and setting good lap times, or throwing down a really good drift line- like. this is a heavy machine you're tossing around like it's a toy made of paper, its downright unnatural the fine level of control you can get over these things, that you can just FEEL in your seat and in your hands and in your center of balance- i could get weirdly into it but we'd be here all day. there's a lot that goes into it. i hope any of this is coherent, kind of a broad question but i figured i'd chatter about it for a bit lol