"Tuner" scene Ranting

[verothacamaro]

I also want to point out that as someone in eCommerce (since 2006), American culture as a whole has shifted from patience to a must-have-now attitude, bolstered primarily by services like Amazon Prime that have the infrastructure to meet these demands.

That is a serious problem that smaller brands and merchants will have to overcome because the expectation doesn't shift from store to store like it once did. The expectation is ingrained as a part of our culture.

[toycar]

its a two way street. people overcharge for shotty work feeding the problem just the same.

niche clientele getting taken for a ride long enough to learn to do it themselves.

thats been the scene for decades.

old saying, dsms making car lovers into mechanics for years.

why?

costs too much to pay someone else to do it for you.

[deevergote]

If there's any indication as to how much the car scene has changed, the Civic Type-R has definitely opened that can of worms wide open.

I've never seen so much displeasure and hatred spewed about a brand and a car (think Apple vs. Android).

I was blown away by the fact that people couldn't even appreciate the car from a purely performance standpoint and simply judged it by the fact that it was a Honda (as if that's a bad thing).

I'll never understand brand bashing, but I also consider myself a true enthusiast and very open minded to new ideas.

I was worried that car scene would all but disappear after the Great Recession, but it was morphed into a narcissistic feeding frenzy where having the latest and greatest is respected far beyond the classic ground up build. Hell - people are buying cars simply because they're different, not knowing what the they just bought!

I will treasure the close friends I made back in the day when people appreciated your taste and didn't judge you based on the value of your ride.

Perhaps that is the lasting appeal of this forum and its members...

The car scene got extremely superficial. Things like Instagram fed that trend so that it grew into a monster. Years ago, there were cars that were built solely to get the attention of magazine editors. They were impressive, but the purpose was to be in pretty pictures. Kids drooled over those pictures, as they should... but most realized that it's highly impractical to have a car that is regularly driven that looks like those magazine builds. Those that take the time to get to know the owners of the magazine cars realize that there are plenty of flaws in those builds that don't show up in pictures. When stickydiljoe's car graced the cover of Honda Tuning so many years ago, it was still a pretty good way from being a complete build. It was worthy of the cover, and it looked amazing... but he did much more since that feature before he sold it!

Anyway, these days, kids get "fame" from Instagram, Facebook, and whatever else is popular at the moment. Instant attention for grainy sideways cell phone photos masked with some sort of filter. The cars don't have to be high quality. They just need one or two good pictures that hide a crappy build, and they need to incessantly show it to the right audience. Once they get "Instagram famous", the entitled attitude emerges.

The hatred of the Honda brand among enthusiasts has gotten out of hand. I bet a lot of the Honda haters started with Hondas, blew them up because they were too stupid to learn how to do things the right way, and now think they're garbage. Granted, the stereotypical Honda enthusiast doesn't do much to help things. When I see enthusiasts on here, I see genuine, passionate, intelligent people. But I've had plenty of interactions outside of this community that have reminded me that the average Honda enthusiast, the young ones at least, are almost exactly what "Honda haters" imagine. Though that blight has spread to plenty of different brands as well. Subaru owners are practically universally hated now as well!
The CTR is indeed a can of worms. Honda purists hate the fact that it's turbo, and that it looks like a 17 year old kid designed it. Honda haters hate it because it's a 305hp FWD turbo car... which just reinforces their belief that Honda can only make FWD cars, which are utterly pointless from a performance perspective (they're wrong on many levels... but that's what I've generally been seeing!) Then you have the folks that would be interested in spending mid-$30k on a performance subcompact... but they have plenty of other options, such as the Focus ST and RS, WRX and STi, and Golf R (which would probably be my choice... odd, since I generally hate VW! )

I also want to point out that as someone in eCommerce (since 2006), American culture as a whole has shifted from patience to a must-have-now attitude, bolstered primarily by services like Amazon Prime that have the infrastructure to meet these demands.

That is a serious problem that smaller brands and merchants will have to overcome because the expectation doesn't shift from store to store like it once did. The expectation is ingrained as a part of our culture.

I've noticed that as well. I remember people freaking out about the wait times for custom-fabricated stuff from ESP and Bisimoto. There's a reasonable amount of time someone should expect to wait for some parts... but people just want their stuff NOW! Why spend $200 on a chassis brace and wait 3 weeks for it to be made and shipped when I can just Amazon Prime a $50 Chinese-made version and have it tomorrow?

its a two way street. people overcharge for shotty work feeding the problem just the same.

niche clientele getting taken for a ride long enough to learn to do it themselves.

thats been the scene for decades.

old saying, dsms making car lovers into mechanics for years.

why?

costs too much to pay someone else to do it for you.

That's another big issue. The companies that charge top dollar for parts that don't warrant the price, simply because they're capitalizing on a name or reputation... those companies do more to hurt "the scene" than anyone else. Often, even worse than the knockoff/copycat companies. They cause people to lose faith in boutique parts and custom craftsmanship. Once you receive an expensive part that cracks, leaks, or doesn't perform as expected, you're going to be hesitant to fork out the cash for another high-end part in the future. Either you'll figure out how to do it yourself, or just settle for a lesser part.
I mean, you could spend $1000 on a header that gives 15whp, or $200 on one that gives 10whp. If the $1000 header isn't an absolute work of art that will bolt right up and outlast the car... who needs it?

[CyborgGT]

New SH article on an in-progress build touches on the subject:

http://www.speedhunters.com/2017/06/...type-screamer/

But there’s one definite downside to the fall of the online forum, and that’s build threads. I don’t know about you, but for me there was something massively satisfying about seeing someone’s initial ‘may as well start one of these’ posts with lofty ambitions of what they wanted their car to become, and then seeing their plans come into fruition months or years down the line. It felt like you’d been on that journey with them, and maybe even influenced the direction that their car has taken.

Now instead, we see carefully curated and filtered snippets of builds, if we’re lucky, and follow the right people. It’s much less community-based and more everyone scrabbling for their own slice of the limelight. The right cars of course get featured on fine automotive portals such as this, but even in bringing you the finished article in as much detail as we possibly can, I feel that we miss a trick in showing you some of the processes that went into making the one person or company’s vision a reality.

[deevergote]

That really does put it into perspective.
I came into the tuner world with the rise of forums. I got my start on forums, and I learned much of what I know from forums (and Mike Kojima's Honda/Acura Engine Performance book). To me, forums provided a comprehensive resource for sharing builds, asking questions, and giving detailed instructions. You can get into some VERY detailed discussions on a forum, and as long as the right person/people are involved, you can learn a hell of a lot. Forums are very self-correcting as well. Bad information usually doesn't last long before someone that knows better steps in (toycar's correction of the popular "14b is too small for the F22A" belief... something I myself perpetuated.)
The best people have come from forums, largely because forums are what I know best. Perhaps the Instagram kiddies have their own unique perspectives, and derive value from the way they communicate. That doesn't seem to be very self-correcting, though. Bad information flows freely because @slammedhondaboi69 posted some pretty pictures, and therefore he is a celebrity to be emulated.

[Corweena]

^ nailed it Deev.




I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been able to experience forums while they were still in their prime. I got my Accord in '08 my senior year of high school, and joined a few random forums not long after. I finally settled in at HondaSociety (since I have a 5th Gen, that was the place to be). I honestly don't know where I would be without forums. The rise of forums in the internet age was a game changer for the car scene....not only for finding parts and what not, but it blew the doors wide open on exchanging ideas and seeing other peoples cars that you would have never know about if they were not "magazine quality". Plus, forums are the best and most efficient databases for anything you may want to know about a certain car. To this day if I need assistance, I first will check a few forums.....99.9% of the time I can find an answer within a few minutes.

The best part about forums though, is the people. All of the people I've been able to meet over the years through forums is crazy. And a good amount of them have become very close friends. As we've gotten older, we talk less and less about our Accords, and more about life and other things. The love of a certain car brought us together, but its so much more than that now. Even now, if a non-local forum member is coming to SoCal, or vise versa, we'll always try and meet up, hang out, show them around. Its like you're friends before you even meet them in person. And the best part is trying to explain to family/friends that you're meeting a complete stranger you know from the internet


Seeing the scene transfer from the Forum Age to the Social Media app age honestly is a bit saddening. And while social media does have its advantages (simplicity, easy use, worldwide use), it will never be able have the same technical value and information storage as a forum. No archived posts to pull up 10 years later when you're stumped on an issue. While I don't think forums will completely die in the future, they will be ghosts of what they used to be. I always try my best to steer people to forums, because if they knew the amount of info that is held on them, they'd drop FB or IG and register to a few forums. And, for the kids just getting into the scene now, FB and IG are all they know. They are too young now to know of NWP, Super Honda, etc....

I remember when I first joined, I would stay up until 3am just browsing forums, going through 100pg build threads, etc. I spent hundreds of hours just soaking up information.....and luckily with some guidance from a few senior members I didn't make many stupid ricer mistakes, and learned the "do it once, do it right" mentality pretty early. Looking back, its pretty crazy see how your goals/mindset for change. Went from wanting to stance the car (although by today's standards, its not even aggressive), to wanting a stripped and gutted racecar, to now just wanting something fun, reliable, and built on quality parts. For me a lot of period correct parts are what I desire now. Lips, grills, exhausts, wheels, accessories from the 90s just catch my eye so much more than the trends of today. And I think that is because of what I used to see in car magazines growing up, and from the classic ads I used to see featuring Accords.

For the most parts, I've stepped away from the "scene". I almost never hit up the "meets" anymore (because, who really wants to see a bunch of slammed straight piped Civics and Subaru's anymore? ) I only have a few events I attend any more.....Cali Accord Meet being one, along with the Japanese Classic Car show (80s and older), and Neo Classics (90s) meets, both of which bring together a great mix of well put together cars without a lot of the "scene" cars. Even the Eibach Honda meet, this year was the first year I went since 2011, and only because it was only a 20min drive away now. And even then, I stayed for an hour, kicked it with a few friends, then we all went and chilled after. I'm more than content to slowly build my car how I want, and kick with with my Accord buddies a few times a month.


Oh, and to rant a bit: the Instant gratification mentality is complete shit. I've lost track of how many times I've been called a "hater", or some other colorful name by a vape sucking, snapback wearing, snot nosed, entitle brat who didn't like what I said about his $500 ebay speical "build". Constructive criticism is lost on much of the car scene these days, and so many of the younger crowd think us "older" guys are just a bunch of condescending assholes. Its just that some of the good intention gets lost in translation nowadays....forums were ruthless back in the day....if you posted something wrong, you got straight ROASTED. Honda Society had a nickname of the "Thunderdome" back in the day, if you posted something stupid, you'd get reamed. It was brutal, and hilarious at the same time. Once you got roasted, you learned your lesson and wouldn't repeat it. Nowadays, everyone has paper thin skin and will cry "hater" at the first person that disagrees with them. "Respect all builds" is the new thing, and its trash. I respect the time, effort, and hard work you put into building your car....not the $500 you spent on eBay for an exhaust, wheels, coilover sleeves, and quick release steering wheel so you can be "unique". Which is why even if I don't care for a certain style of the car, I will respect the work put into it. for example, there are still a small group of people that do the F&F crazy body kit cars. And while that trend has sailed, those guys put a huge amount of custom work into the body, interior, and other aspects of the car. They know what quality is, and will pay for it. And for that, they have my respect. But kids these days want the same respect what their cars look like every 3rd cookie cutter car at a local meet, and their parts can be sourced with a few clicks on eBay.

[Corweena]

Oh, and a footnote. I'm a manager at a coffee/boba shop, of which the owner is a big car guy, particularly the AE86 Corolla, hence they shop's name Cafe 86. In working there, and talking to a lot of the AE86 guys that roll through, I have found I have a lot more in common with them in building mentality, than most Honda guys nowadays

[deevergote]

The AE86 is one of those cars you own ONLY if you're a serious enthusiast. They're hard to find in good condition, and when you do find one, they're EXPENSIVE. Ratty ones sell for $8,000-$10,000! They've priced themselves out of the poser market. Not to mention the fact that kids today probably don't know what Initial D is (and face it, that's where most new AE86 enthusiasts in the last 20 years learned about the car!) Not to mention the fact that it would take nearly as much as the car's purchase price to make it anything resembling "fast" by today's standards.

I remember my first question on a forum... it was on HondaHookUp.com. I asked "can you turn a turbo off?" and I definitely felt the burn! I did a little research, learned a decent amount of info, and figured out that knowledge + effort = respect. I've also made some friends among the people that have been harshest to me over the years. I respect harsh criticism, as long as it's constructive... because it means someone actually cares enough to teach me.

With kids today, I've tried to politely educate them. I tried HARD not to bruise their widdle feewings. I still got called a hater, and a dozen other snap-backs jumped on me, giving the original target of my knowledge the bad advice that he really wanted to hear.


Also, I wish I hadn't broken CD5tuner for so long. THAT would have been the place to be, and CD5tuner was never a harsh place. I honestly never had to do anything there. The admin and mods on there rarely had to put out any fires. Granted, it was a small community... but it was a good one. I still own the domain name (though I don't run the Facebook group... when Anthony created it without asking me initially, I decided not to get pissed... and he's done a good job with it.) I'm still thinking about re-activating the CD5tuner sub-section of this site, and redirecting the domain name to a main page that gives a CD5tuner-only menu.

[toycar]

The AE86 is one of those cars you own ONLY if you're a serious enthusiast. They're hard to find in good condition, and when you do find one, they're EXPENSIVE. Ratty ones sell for $8,000-$10,000! They've priced themselves out of the poser market. Not to mention the fact that kids today probably don't know what Initial D is (and face it, that's where most new AE86 enthusiasts in the last 20 years learned about the car!) Not to mention the fact that it would take nearly as much as the car's purchase price to make it anything resembling "fast" by today's standards.

I remember my first question on a forum... it was on HondaHookUp.com. I asked "can you turn a turbo off?" and I definitely felt the burn! I did a little research, learned a decent amount of info, and figured out that knowledge + effort = respect. I've also made some friends among the people that have been harshest to me over the years. I respect harsh criticism, as long as it's constructive... because it means someone actually cares enough to teach me.

With kids today, I've tried to politely educate them. I tried HARD not to bruise their widdle feewings. I still got called a hater, and a dozen other snap-backs jumped on me, giving the original target of my knowledge the bad advice that he really wanted to hear.


Also, I wish I hadn't broken CD5tuner for so long. THAT would have been the place to be, and CD5tuner was never a harsh place. I honestly never had to do anything there. The admin and mods on there rarely had to put out any fires. Granted, it was a small community... but it was a good one. I still own the domain name (though I don't run the Facebook group... when Anthony created it without asking me initially, I decided not to get pissed... and he's done a good job with it.) I'm still thinking about re-activating the CD5tuner sub-section of this site, and redirecting the domain name to a main page that gives a CD5tuner-only menu.

id donate to help make cd5tuner.com a reality again. even contribute a build thread for some activity.

*Honest*


its alive now.

[CyborgGT]

I love checking out modified 5th-gens, but oddly only went into that forum once or twice. 'It's a separate site, I'm too lazy...' haha.

[steelbluesleepR]

I just finished up work on a TV show for Velocity called Speed is the New Black, following a local hot rod shop. From working on that show, i've come to realize that the only people worth opening up a shop for are the ones that don't care what they spend. Almost no build on that show was less than $150-200k and the customers couldn't be happier. I saw a pair of custom stainless headers get built that would cost more than I have in my entire car if you paid full shop rate for them. The truck in the season finale got quite literally a full year of bodywork to make it show worthy.

There's just no money in small builds, especially in the import scene. The average car in the tuner scene starts out as a generic used car that costs at most around $9,000, and most are $800 civics and $1300 integras. The same people that buy cheap knockoff shit that could kill them (grip royal steering wheels and NRG seats, I'm looking at you) are NOT going to be the people that pay any kind of shop rate that will still turn a profit for the business.

Thats not to mention the fact that the people that are building imports aren't typically the ones that should really be throwing money around and paying shops. The guys spending a quarter of a million dollars on a build have a shitload more than that and couldn't care less aside from getting what they want. The guy building a $8k civic is going to be nickle-and-dimeing you every chance he gets because he'll only have $9k to his name.

[CyborgGT]

It's crossed my mind a few times, watching shows like Bitchin' Rides and Fast N' Loud, that I really wish us import guys had something similar. But unless classic Japanese cars completely exploded in the collector market that chases after brands like Packard and Ferrari, that's sadly never going to happen.

There's a pipe dream: start a YouTube channel that does JDM builds. The car itself might not bring a profit, but a good enough production can ensure viewership will!

[91b20ed]

I'd like to shed some light....

There were 3 main things killed my buisness.
1. My own passion. 2. The customer. 3. My fellow industry parts suppliers.

I'll elaborate a little on each.
My own passion was an issue because it made me blind to what I was getting into and unaware of what the car world was really like. It's an ugly place, a popularity contest that solely based on who you know. It became very clear to me when I started to make industry connections and my customers cars were getting published. Most of the time all it took was a phone call or a text. It's also filled with people who want nothing but to profit from it and steal the designs of others. It's terrible really.

My passion also made me blind to the terrible truth that is the profit margin. Even on the high end of the spectrum I was making minimum wage for my time.


My customers killed it in ways that were most of the time unintentional. The problem with people under 25 is they don't understand what the world was like before instant gratification. The internet. So in turn they treat every situation with a "how long is it going to take" attitude right off the bat. Also everyone wants to be the baller, everyone wants to have the nice wheels or high end paint job but almost NOBODY wants to pay for it, much less wait a reasonable amount of time for it.

They also like to change their mind mid build quite often. When this happens it ruins my flow of money. Creates more wait times on parts and or money from the customer to pay for parts. What they fail to understand is when you do this, your car gets pushed aside and something else must be put in its place to keep the buisness flowing, but over a few years time, next thing you know you got 8 unfinished cars in your shop. It becomes a nightmare very fast. Then there's the haggling of money, chasing people down for money for they owe, etc, etc. The list goes on and on.


Today's custom parts industry is a joke. The wait times are absolutely insane almost everywhere for everything if its not an off the shelf part. This created so many problems for my buisness, cars literally sitting for months waiting on parts, once again affecting the flow of money. BUT with all that being said they aren't the ones entirely at fault for that. If you go back to where I talked about instant gratification this applies to them as well.


Overall running that buisness was a learning experience for me and anyone close to me. BUT it's been a massive relief stepping back into a normal job with steady pay. The stress is almost gone now and my brain is back to mostly normal function. Lmao.


I'd also like to add that high end builds are not the answer. Those guys spend 5 to 10 years building one car and you know why it takes that long, because 4 to 8 of those years are spent dealing with wait times on all the one off custom parts that have to be made for it. Sure they make 250k but I bet they still don't make much after the 10,000 hours that were spent on it. I know a few folks in the high end game and they are just as miserable if not more miserable than I was. There's only a hand full doing well in that game. There's simply just not enough of that type of work or clientele to feed the vast amount of skilled builders that are out there.

[91b20ed]

If you guys would like to see a real build and how long it really takes, what goes into it etc, check out Project Binky on YouTube.

Also, for those of you on Instagram check out @huffytalk. It's a live enthusiast network that just started up. Some real people and real talk. Alot of industry names will be on there a couple times a week.

[owequitit]

It is such a complex problem that I don't even know where to begin.

1) You are dealing with cars that aren't worth anything, and people who can afford them accordingly. Somebody isn't going to spend thousands of dollars on something that they can ultimately replace for the same price. Unless they have some irrational emotional attachment, which we all do.

So while I applaud the thought of Honda tuning shops, the reality is that outside of new Hondas, which are relatively worth more, some special models (S2K, NSX, etc) there is just not enough interest in spending big bucks to modify stuff.

2) The OEMs have had a huge hand in this as well. Why spend $40K building a 400HP Honda, when you can go down to your local Ford dealer and drive a 7500RPM, RWD Ford Mustang GT off the lot with a full warranty, modern safety features and everything else you might want in a car these days? Or a Fiesta ST or Focus ST/RS or a Golf GTI/R or a BR-Z, Camaro, 370Z, etc.? The OEM's quickly recognized the amount of $$ being spent in the aftermarket on Hondas in the 90's and 00's and decided they wanted a piece of the pie. And now they can get it.

3) We are in a society of instant gratification, notoriety, and social media stardom (as you said) which makes it even worse because the main criteria transitions to a vapid "what do people think of me? Do they envy me and want to be me?" You can partly thank the image instilled by Hollywood and exploded by social media, photoshop and self enhancement.

You have entire cities of "$50K a year millionaires", where the main criteria is impressing people. We live in an apartment and I am literally surrounded by people who can barely make rent, but drive a shiny something or other.

This is supported by the magazine article regarding snippets of a build. People have no clue what is required and in a society of instant gratification, they aren't willing to learn. One of the main reasons I quit instructing was that I got tired of having to provide constant beat downs on the "right way" to do things vs the "easy way" or "instant way." I can safely say that those guys were in the minority, but man did they suck bad enough to feel like the majority.

4) I am also going to diverge from the norm by NOT blaming Millenials. First, they haven't done anything that their parents didn't condition them to expect. I knew it was going to be a shit show when they stopped holding people accountable in schools and just give everyone a big hug for not meeting expectations. Blame Dr. Spock and his bullshit. If you look at their parents, we are them. Ours were the totally self-absorbed Baby Boomers...

We have no one to blame but ourselves. But you notice we aren't doing that, while simultaneously criticizing them for not being "accountable..." That is a textbook definition of irony.

Further, I also don't blame them for seeking instant gratification because look at the environment they were raised in. For roughly 50-60 years, the boomers have done nothing but drain the pool for themselves. They don't give a shit about financial health, market longevity, posterity or building a better life for anyone other than themselves. But then they accuse millennials of being lazy and self absorbed... Most millennials live in their parents basements because they have tons of debt, and no way to pay it off with a series of minimum wage, no benefit, part time jobs. They simply have no choice. Reference the numerous studies that have been done indicating that we (and they) will be the first generations in US history that have a LOWER standard of living compared to their parents.

So basically, we have spent 50-60 years setting them up to fail, taking any future away from them, leaving them with an unsustainable amount of debt, and bending them over at any chance for short term gain... Then older generations have the balls to turn around and bitch about them being self-centered.

I have this argument with my mom all the time, who has been in management forever. She always complains that they have no work ethic and no loyalty. I have to explain to her: "Why would they? Every time they turn around, they have watched their parents lose their retirements, houses, well being and they have no future." "We have built a society where companies don't reward loyalty. Why would we expect them to be loyal employees if they make more money faster by NOT being loyal?" Give me a break... Of COURSE they don't care about anything but short term gain.

But I think the biggest reason is that Honda has long had a sour reputation in the world, which has driven real enthusiasts away. Couple that with the stuff you can buy off the shelf for not a lot more money, and the desire just goes away. Replace the community with social media, and what do you have left? A bunch of instant gratification brats that just want to impress their friends, and it is easier to do that with a Bimmer or 'Stang, than a well built Honda.