Have Rice Boys and Girls Been Abandoned By The Car Maker?

In the riceboy renaissance days in the nineties, rice boys and gurls used to rule! The weapons of choice were the much revered EK9 and DC2 type-Rs, Evos, STIs and the sick-ass R34 GT-Rs. The legendary B16A/B16B engines with close to 160 stampeding horses and the torque of 2 fit turtles were the toast of most ricers. Legends and myths abounded, on how a Civic SiR with a B16 thrashed a 5 litre Camaro with 3 flat tires or a Teg-R pwning an M3 as it's owner went to get her dentures fixed. These cars were decked out in more stickers than Phileas Fogg's suitcase, body kits that probably cost 2 seconds in the 0-100 dash because of weight and drag and exhausts that could only be described as fart cannons that would easily make it into any Eddie Murphy Film. The Turbo'ed cars had hundreds of dials and meters from boost pressure, battery voltage to room temperature and relative humidity. These cars were personal expressions -most often in quite bad taste. There was a thriving after market industry around these cars with cone filters, BOVs, dish antennas you stick on the back of cars as spoilers and useless pieces of fibre you could stick to the body of your vehicle to increase your 120 bhp handicap. It was so crazy in fact, the aftermarket included try-hard products such as BOV like sound producing devices that gave the impression you have a turbo, fake inter-coolers and of course fake dohc-vtec stickers.