What We Say | What We
Mean |
"Love the car, man! You should put on side pipes, a cage, some slicks, a big blower,
maybe some stripes. That'd be hot!" | I love your car and am fantasizing about what
I'd do with it if I could ever find a way to buy it from you. |
"That's certainly an interesting car." | What a waste of
money. |
"Nice Charger! You should paint it orange and put a big 01 on the door." | I
spend too much time watching television shows ABOUT cars instead of walking outside and
enjoying life WITH cars. |
"It runs 10s." | ...in the eighth-mile. |
"It runs 11s." | I ran my car's stats through a timeslip calculator,
"accidentally" using flywheel horsepower instead of rear-wheel horsepower, assuming optimal
track conditions, inserting the gears I plan to have someday, and dropping the car's weight by the
500 pounds of stuff I could remove if I were motivated enough... it still came up with 12.1, but in
real life I'd find that last tenth by tweaking the engine at the track. |
"It runs 12s." | So far my best actual timeslip is 13.57 but I'm sure if I were
racing at a stickier track on a cooler day with less humidity and lower elevation and the car had
slicks and I could get up the nerve to powershift and I took the spare out then maybe, just maybe,
I'd barely squeak out a 12.99. |
"Nitrous is cheating." | I have no faith in my own mechanical abilities so
I'm afraid if I mess with nitrous, I'll screw up and blow up the engine. |
"Oh, I'm going to leave this one stock." | I've owned my car for less than a
week. |
"I don't mess with those. They're too complicated and too expensive to work on. I can
make more power with the older stuff. Those things are going to be the death of hot
rodding." | 1948: I'm scared of overhead-valve engines. 1958: I'm scared of
multi-carb engines. 1968: I'm scared of emissions-controlled engines. 1978: I'm scared
of fuel injected engines. 1988: I'm scared of computer-controlled engines. 1998: I'm
scared of OBD2 engines. |
"That car would be great with a smallblock Chevy in it." | I prefer to not
learn anything new in my life. Just keeping track of the different variations of smallblock Chevy
is quite enough for me, thank you. |
"It makes about 300 hp." | I have a 1986 Camaro Berlinetta. I couldn't find
a horsepower rating for it, so I took the rating from a 1989 L98 IROC -- same engine family after
all -- and added the maximum advertised horsepower from the basic bolt-on mods that I've done.
I haven't been to a dyno because I hear they're not accurate. |
"My G-Tech says..." | ...that I'd rather spend $140 on a toy that tells me
what I want to hear rather than spend $20 at the dragstrip where I'll find out how slow my sled
really is. |
"I did all the work myself." | I did all the work except machining, paint, and
interior. |
"For Sale" | I know I spent way too much on this car, which is why I'm
trying to sell it. But I don't really WANT to, which is why the asking price is double the car's
actual value. Please don't tell my wife, okay? |
"Today's cars all look the same." | Unlike the 1950s, when all cars had fins
and chrome. |
"I'd take my car racing, but I'm afraid of hurting it." | I only use my 300
horsepower doing safe things like passing on the right or seeing how fast I can go on the merge
ramp. |
"I only buy Marque X. They're the best." | I desperately need to belong to
something and the type of car I drive is all I've got. |
"Horsepower per liter? Who cares about that?" | I like to use my V8 to beat
on six- and four-cylinder cars. |
"It's not fair to compare my car to one with such a bigger engine." | I hate it
when Vipers decide to beat on me. |
"GM owns 'em now, so they're okay." | I spend far more time analyzing
which corporation owns what marque than I do analyzing why I should even care where a car is
built. Even so, don't expect me to extend my acceptance of Saab or Holden to, say,
Isuzu. |
"Automatics are so much better than manuals." | I don't know how to drive
a manual. |
"Oh, I beat that car before." | He had me by five lengths, but when he got
bored he turned off at the 7-Eleven and I kept going straight. |
"Oh, I beat that car off the line before." | We were both at a stoplight and he
couldn't hear me gunning my engine over the din of his supercharged solid lifter big block, so I
took off across the intersection like a bat out of hell and he never even noticed me. |
"You really have to admire the engineering of these little engines." | My
insurance company told me that if I tried to buy another car with a V8, they'd send some guy to
smash my kneecaps in. So I'm hoping this little can has enough spirit to keep me from going
insane until my points clear. |
"Hemis were overrated -- I could take one." | I'm so far down the food chain
that no Hemi has bothered to stomp all over me just yet. |
"I need a lift." | I ran my mouth to the point where someone with a Hemi
GTX offered to race for pink slips. |