We are truly in a golden age of cars right now. The HP/$ ratio is crazy. I remember in the late 80's early 90's, the fact the the Lotus Esprit turbo SE had 200hp, out of a 2.0 engine, was a major benchmark, 100 HP/litre. Now showroom naturally aspirated cars are achieving that ratio.
What a lot of young guys are missing out on, is the cobbled together pieces of crap we got to drive. When a socket/wrench set was pretty much all you needed to do your own general repairs. I miss rebuilding carburetors. I miss changing my muffler in the Canadian Tire parking lot with muffler tape, and bailing wire...lol. It was fun, but you can't get away with that garbage now. I will never forget the doorbell button ignition I installed on my 82 Mustang when the factory tumbler just fell out.
The biggest achievement in my auto repair career, was completely rebuilding a Mazda 12A rotary on my 82 RX-7, with nothing more than a Chiltons manual, and 600 bucks worth of parts from the Mazda dealer when I was 17. A guy down the street bought that car from me, and it ran for 11 years on that rebuild. I always wondered why the Wankel engine never caught on. It made so much more sense than piston engines, and if the same amount of time an research went into it, it would have been amazing what could have been achieved with the rotary concept.
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