MY CURRENT CAR
This is probably what bothers me the most on a daily basis. My first car, a black 2004 Honda Accord Coupe EX, is still the car I drive to this day. I am almost 22-years old and I have had this vehicle since just a little after my 16th birthday. It has a slow K-Series engine coupled with an automatic gearbox. It only makes about 160bhp and it's pretty heavy for something so underpowered. It does, however, provide a comfortable ride and (if you're into this sort of thing) fairly decent gas mileage.
Here is my (badly Photoshop lowered, with shopped wheels and lip kit because I must have deleted the original photo, and it's currently dark outside so have a good laugh at this) Honda:
Back story behind this photo: I wanted to start an automotive team/page/blog/everything, called ZOMO. My friend and I took my car to the top of a parking deck in downtown Raleigh and I took some photos with a Nikon D5100 (which I sold like an idiot). I went home and, without reading any articles for tips or doing any research on similar pieces, photoshopped an HFP lip kit and Volk TE37 SL's on my car. I then attempted to lower it. This took me about two hours of randomly doing different things until it kind of worked. ZOMO has yet to become anything, but a friend and I still home to make it into something someday.
For example, (and keep an eye out for photographic evidence) behind the driver's seat, serving as an armrest/cup holder for a rear passenger, is a bit of plastic molding along the body, under the small rear window. Just before the cup holder cutout, there is now a huge crack, nearly separating the cup holder from the rest of the molding. Why? Because I, as I often did, was allowing a good friend to drive my car, me being the passenger, with another good friend in the back. The backseat passenger, as he often did to mess with us, was lounging across the backseats without a seatbelt (obviously). Well, if you've ever goofed around in a car, or had someone else do it, while not wearing a seatbelt, you know that sudden jerks in direction can send you flying around the cabin. My backseat friend decides to imitate someone in the "doggy-style" position as part of a story he was telling (who knows?), so my driving friend decides this is a perfect moment to sporadically jerk the wheel from side to side, throwing my other friend helplessly about the backseat. A huge knock and pop later, we discover this massive crack caused by my friend's head. I will never be bothered by this crack and will never attempt to repair it. It's a stupid "you had to be there" memory and it's awesome.
I hit my first, and hopefully last, deer in this car. I even hit a small tree on my driveway when I was a much younger idiot in this car. I drove through a ditch in this car, as well. Basically, I got all of my driving stupidity out of the way in this car, and that is a wonderful thing. That is why I don't regret this vehicle, but I still wish I had something more performance oriented. I am currently at a point in my life, as you are probably aware since I'm somewhat of a writer, where modifying this vehicle is too expensive and buying another vehicle is way too expensive. I have been in this rut for quite some time and am slowly working toward making my way out of it, but it seems to be taking forever. In the grand scheme of things, it isn't taking very long, but when I see kids younger than me driving E46 M3's and Evo X's, I begin to feel like I will never achieve my automotive dreams.
I do, however, have automotive-related projects in the works that I am working toward marketing into something to help me achieve my dreams. This blog is one of those projects, albeit probably the smallest and least likely to generate much assistance. But this blog is somewhere I can point to my casual writing and a place to sort of get to know me and hopefully follow my journey toward my dreams.
Until then, however, I will drive the wheels off my horrible, awesome, slow, brilliant Honda Accord.
