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When I first got into cars, before I could actually drive, I remember I liked the look of wide tires on all four corners of a lowered muscle car and despised the "big-n-littles" look. Then, at 17 or18, after I started racing at the local track and watching Mike Morgan's Nova run low sixes in the 8th on Volkswagon fronts and whatnot, skinnies grew on me and pretty much all my hot rods since have had either Moroso DS-2s or 205 metric radials in the front and at least a 275 in the rear. Then my opinion of tires on muscle cars changed again when I started watching a heads-up drag racing class called Outlaw 8.5 where these maniacs race on itty bitty 26 x 8.5 slicks, running somewhere in the low five second range in the 8th mile (8-second quarter-mile), race for little money and a ton of drag strip glory. Rear tires that small look goofy at first, but when you see how low the cars sit with them and how fast they are, the look of the O8.5 cars is actually pretty cool.
Wheel & tire choice and your car's stance are the two major things that separate a cool car from a lame one. In my opinion, you could have a total jalopy-of-a-Nova or something, but if it has the right ride height and wheels on it, it will get my seal of approval (which, oddly enough is an impression of a skull with bat wings behind it and a snake coming out of it's mouth). So just how some people say life is a series of reoccurring patterns, now I've started to really like the big wheel, low profile tire look like I did thirteen years ago.
I have been immersed in drag racing for so long, I'm excited to get into another aspect of this hobby/lifestyle, which features not only brutal straight line accelerators, but also swift corner-carving flyers. So in other words, I'm starting to change my opinion of "G-machines," turn goers, brake pad abusers, and really, just streetable cruisers. It's the functionality of a well-built street machine that I miss, I had a 9-second street car (basically a street legal race car), but I couldn't leave well enough alone and now it seems like it will be eons from being completed. So I'm thinking my next project will have to be a car I can drive anywhere, race, and show off and you know what, it will probably have some wide wheels, nice brakes and oh my God, even possibly a stereo.
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