Have Riceboys and Ricegirls Been Abandoned By the New Generation Rockets?

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.

But now times have changed, with new incarnations of the legendary machines out there. You now have the EVO 10 with the shark snout, the STI which is now a hatch and the Nissan GT-R which has dropped the 'skyline' moniker. What about Honda? Well they put out the trashy FD2 type-R and now the super highly strung FN2- type-R.

Only time will if these machines will curry the favour of die-hard riceboys and be decked out once again in glorious stickers. While the EVO 10 and the STI 10 stand a good chance at this, the GT-R has gone backwards. It's uber expensive and will be nothing more than some rich ass-hole's play toy. At least the big Z (350Z) is kicking some ass in riceboy land!

And Honda? Honda has bitten the hand that fed it rice. Once the altar of riceboydom, where every rice boy, gurl and thing aspired to own a B-series motor, Honda has truly abandoned us ricers. Then there is the FN2- type-R which is so highly strung that to make any small modification will end up with the pistons flying through the bonnet like sky rockets and the tires going AWOL in all the four directions. Honda these days has gone for drive-ability, more torque, lower red lines and yada yada. Gone are the free revving 100+ bhp per litre lawn mower engines. Gone are the days when you could buy an SiR and modify the heck out of it and still lose to a scooter, but never lose your RESPECT!. Very soon the day will arrive where we will sit across the campfire and regale each other with tall tales of engines hitting 8500 rpm and exhausts so noisy that they'd send war veterans hobbling for cover.

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