Shall we begin!
On my 16th B-day I already was a severe addict for the automotive world, more specifically having the “mod flu” that could not be healed unless I bought a cold air intake for anything and everything. I even considered putting an after market exhaust on my lawn mower just for the hell of it to gain /001 hp and potentially cut 10 more strains of grass per revolution. Yes it truly is an illness but let’s share our stories of our cars we had owned and loved and what we remember most of them…..all of mine will be about mods of course haha!!
I was 16 yrs old, and 8 months (quickest route to get license in Canada) and I had my sights set on one car for a very long time, the mazda MX-6. The year was 2002, and my local dealership had two on the lot, a 1994 v6 mystere 5-speed, and a 1997 mystere v6 4-speed auto. Since I was a coward I decided to take the easy way out and purchase the more expensive auto v-6 for 9500$. I remember the day I picked it up like it was yesterday, god I was so excited. Finally I could begin fighting the mod flu…..little did I know it’s chronic and untreatable at the time.
I gotta say the most surprising part of that car was the sound of the motor, it actually had a great tone to it. Once I installed my K&N cone filter charger, Borla catback exhaust, hotshot headers and MSD ignition and coils, I truly believed my car was pushing close to or above 200hp from it’s base of 164 out of that sweet 2.5L V-6 (shared with the ford probe of the past). Let’s just say the borla and the MX-6 were a match made in heaven. At the time I was working only part time for my father, not making much money at all, yet somehow I managed to spend 3500$ on these mods. I feel like crying as I write this and come to the realization of how stupid that was. (Which doesn’t include the 1500$ I spend on the clarion pop-out LCD screen/deck, wow I was an idiot…..a passionate idiot at least)
Here is the honest truth of the past. I used to do brake stand 0-60 tests almost every night on my desolate street home, only me and the road ahead of me, stop watch in right hand, heart rate 150BPM, and hormones raging. The day that the stop watch clocked 6.9 seconds to 60 I was the happiest person on earth knowing that my 4-speed automatic, heavily upgraded MX-6 was faster than ever! Although this is where the good story turns south.
My friend and I were going for a cruise one night and my other buddy had pulled up beside me in his soccer mom’s honda odyssey, brand new v-6 passenger loving beauty of a van. We decided to race…..10 seconds later I realized I should have bought the 5-speed manual.
The moral of the story is yes you can mod your car, yes it’s fun, but for the love of God make sure you have the right basic tools for the job. The old school automatics were obsolete to manuals in the past, unlike today were SMG, PDK, DSG, etc etc make the manuals slow and redundant. My 4 speed auto could never extract the power out of the mods I did, I truly believe to this day I was pushing 180-190 hp, could have probably pulled low 6 second 0-60 times, but it was impossible with what I was working with.
Oh the good old days 🙂 You guys have no idea how bad I want to buy an MX-6 and put the J-Spec KLZE motor in it. Probably the best 5000$ buy today haha!
Live to drive!
Please share your stories!!! I want to hear all of them!! Plus I have way more car stories to share with you guys of my personal cars and also way more suggestions of what are great buys today based on any dollar value. Let’s talk about our first cars people!!!
