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Non LBC but saw my first Civic Type R Yesterday

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Jim_Gruber

Jim_Gruber

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Interesting stop at local Honda Sealer to pick up a part for my Accord. Brand new Bright R Type R Civic in the showroom with a big Sold Sticker - Do Not Touch on the car. Definitely a head turner, Bright Red, curves and angles everywhere. Sticker @ $35k but does not include the additional $10,000 Dealer Markup.Well if you need to be the first one in your neighborhood...
 
the precise moment you realize you are getting old is when you look at a car and understand that it wasn't designed to appeal to you.
 
I'm with you,JP, they haven't built a car that looks like a car for some time now. And forcing everyone to buy a 4 door???!! 2 doors were for people that only occasionally carried a back seat passenger. Like most of us! If you lost control and went in the ditch with a CAR it usually stayed upright. Now SUV's roll like a ball!

I may be old but I am right and don't tell me otherwise!!:smile-new:

Kurt.
 
JPSmit said:
the precise moment you realize you are getting old is when you look at a car and understand that it wasn't designed to appeal to you.
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I couldn't agree more. It makes me wonder about the marketing of this model. To me it will attract a younger, maybe first time car buyer. I question the demographics of the younger buyer being able to pay (afford?) $35 - $50 thousand dollars.
 
Gliderman8 said:
I couldn't agree more. It makes me wonder about the marketing of this model. To me it will attract a younger, maybe first time car buyer. I question the demographics of the younger buyer being able to pay (afford?) $35 - $50 thousand dollars.
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everything costs sadly. Mind you there is a lot of money in that age group too - just not evenly distributed. Slightly off topic but, apparently MTV kept Beavis & Butthead on for years after the ratings plummeted - just to keep parents from watching in order to preserve their demographic.
 
There are industrious hard working twenty somethings that are not slackers. They actually paid attention in school, studied their parents work ethic, are smart and understand the way the world works. Two distinct groups the Go Getters, professionals making good money and succeeding in life and the Stoners and Slackers. Unfortunately there seems to be too many of the later. It all depends on the role model you saw growing up. Nephew, engineer for GE, just purchased the Ford Equivalent Hot Hatch and loves it. Single and he can afford it. My brother can't understand it, but I also recall my brother with a new TransAm in his late 20's.
 
OK so what is wrong with a 4 door super compact?? The New Focus RS with 350 HP is also 4 door.
My 2003 Focus SVT which was the hottest thing for its day is a 4 door. It is a bit rare though, not a lot of 4 doors SVTs made
That being said, the car will not be any slower or handle any worse with an extra pair of doors.
 
Joe Schlosser said:
OK so what is wrong with a 4 door super compact?? The New Focus RS with 350 HP is also 4 door.
My 2003 Focus SVT which was the hottest thing for its day is a 4 door. It is a bit rare though, not a lot of 4 doors SVTs made
That being said, the car will not be any slower or handle any worse with an extra pair of doors.
Click to expand...

I really enjoyed going to an autocross held by the Jaguar Assoc. of New England a few weeks ago. In addition to some old time LBC cars, there were new Vettes, Vipers, F-Type Jags and some younger guys with GTIs, Abarths and one with a new Focus RS. What a car the Focus is and it was lots of fun talking with the younger generation of enthusiasts. In many ways, this is one of the golden generations of automobiles, just a bit different when we were young.
 
Jim_Gruber said:
Two distinct groups the Go Getters, professionals making good money and succeeding in life and the Stoners and Slackers.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure those were always the two categories - certainly was in my day.

"The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for
authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place
of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their
households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They
contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties
at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. (Says Socrates - apparently)

I think there are at least two givens in life. 1. It was always better/ easier/ simpler more respectful before and looking ahead
2. They are always more disrespectful/ difficult/ lazy etc....

a little bit of truth to both.

ask Pogo. :smile:

pogo.jpg
 
JPSmit said:
the precise moment you realize you are getting old is when you look at a car and understand that it wasn't designed to appeal to you.
Click to expand...
When I was a teenager I was able to say that about almost every car on the road.

(luckily, there were occasionally LBC's and such to give me hope.)
 
Joe, when i was growing up we considered anything with four doors as unsporting so I suppose that is some of my bias. Beyond that, four doors are necessarily heavier and tend to make the ingress and egress for the people that are in the front harder. Once again I think the big insurance company's are behind this. A post for the four door car makes the car stronger in a roll over than a two door hard top.

Kurt.
 
Joe Schlosser said:
OK so what is wrong with a 4 door super compact?? ...
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It has two too many doors?


Joe Schlosser said:
... the car will not be any slower or handle any worse with an extra pair of doors.
Click to expand...
Maybe not substantially. Perhaps not not even noticeably.

But, all other things being equal, the added mass due to increased overall size/volume, extra mechanisms (hinges, latches, glass, lifts,...) and extra bracing for openings will decrease performance.

Increasing wheelbase will increase the polar moment of inertia and reduce bending stiffness. Overall stiffness, especially torsional, will be compromised by the extra door openings. Handling will be impacted adversely.
 
Interesting discussion, it is a Focus RS my nephew bought. Haven't seen it yet. This next 20 something generation there are two distinct camps, those who are entrepreneurial and understand it takes hard work to obtain what their parents were able to provide and they follow the work ethic demonstrated by their Role Models i.e. Parents. On the other hand for every single one of those kids, there are 3-5 spoiled "slackards" who don't want to leave their comfy parents nest and whose parents continue to indulge them. I've got some of both in my immediate family. The true Bell Shaped Curve. Unfortunately it feels more like a V shaped curve these days.
 
To those suggesting Honda slotted the Type R as a first car, take note that as of April it owns the lap record for front wheel drive cars at the Nurburgring (it's time was quicker than cars like the Audi R8 V10 and the Nissan GTR and the Aston Martin Vantage V8). Wonder what the insurance premium for that 20 something would be?
 
Colin Chapman who conceived Lotus cars and was most interested in racing was known to say that you could give a car more power and it would be faster in the straights or you could make it lighter and it would be faster everywhere. Lotus race results proved him right.

Just imagine what you could buy with the technology of today if you didn't have to load them up with all the safety and emissions things that weigh down today's cars.

Kurt.
 
Yes, for me it is not so much the number of doors, but the size and weight of most modern cars that turns me off, that and the looks, slab sided, with little submarine turrets to look out of.

Even the new Miata, while a relative lightweight, is slab sided, tall, and rather poorly proportioned to my eyes (I do like the first and 2nd generation cars, and the Honda S2000 has grown on me too, but they no longer make any of those).

Look at an old(!) BMW850Ci, Mitsubishi 3000GT, or Lexus SC300, (all cars from the nineties) in today's traffic. Considered rather large GTs in their day, they look low and lean compared to modern iron.

"Old man shakes his fist at clouds, yells at kids to get off his lawn, goes back inside...."
 
nomad said:
Just imagine what you could buy with the technology of today if you didn't have to load them up with all the safety and emissions things that weigh down today's cars.

Kurt.
Click to expand...

I would love it if Mazda or somebody made a simple, cheap, reliable upright rwd sedan with reasonable room for four, well under 3000 lbs. Could be based on a slightly bigger Miata or BRZ chassis for example. Something like the original BMW2002 in concept.

If you don't load them up with crap cars today can be incredibly reliable, the Miata is usually towards the top if not at the top of JD power ranking because it doesn't have all the fancy electronics and infotainment systems to go wrong.

So anyway, you get something cheap, reliable, good mpg, can haul kids or groceries or whatever, so you can justify the new car buy to the significant other, and it can still be fun to drive.

They could build such a car, but they won't, because everybody is buying 2 ton crossovers, and anything that is smaller than a new Corolla (they are pretty big these days) is considered tiny by most, plus you have the nuclear arms race going on of each generation of cars being talker so they can see over the other cars that are getting taller.

We have indeed met the enemy, and he is us!
 
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Kurt
I remember the 60s Lotus cars very well. And while I loved their look and performance they needed at least 3 hours in the shop for every hour on the road. We called them Helicopter cars.
The sainted Mr. Chapman had the right idea but he always took it to the extreme
BTW on a separate note, from the big Healey board, today is Donald Healey's birthday.

As far as emissions modern electronics seems to have taken care of that. I don't see what has been added to todays vehicles for emission control (cats don't weigh that much) to make them overly heavy.
Back when the earth was new, sitting around the lunch table in engineering school discussing whether Corvairs were better with 4 singles orone 4 barrel, an enterprising electrical engineer predicted that when they could miniaturize the computers of the 1960s he could do away with carbs.

As far as safety items on cars what do you want to remove to make the cars lighter. Crush zones, airbags, seatbelts??
 
Other than make them big I don't know what car makers have done to make them so darn heavy other than add all kinds of safety add on's. The engines aren't heavy. I wonder if people would drive differently if they knew the car wouldn't save them. Jokingly I have advocated removing all the air bags and fitting a spear to the middle of the steering wheel. I figure that would make people with some sense back off and would eliminate the idiots from the gene pool!
Fortunately we can still build up something resembling what we would like in a car but now finding an engine and transmission for a rear wheel drive car that we can swap in is getting difficult. None of these newer front drive engines swap easily.

Kurt
 
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