Man oh man. An 8 page long thread filled with a some ranting, a little raving, and the occasional insult too. Oh, and some pics of a pretty heavily modded Eclipse too with an awful lot of time, money and energy invested into it.

Now I've gotta come right out and say this up front before I ramble on - for me personally, body mods, wings, flashy paint, kits, and other stuff like that has no place on my car. Hell, I'm still on stock 14" steel rims if that tells you how much I give a damn about looks. For me, I'm more interested in speed and performance, so my money goes to that area first and then I'll worry about the looks later.

I don't really like trucks and SUVs all that much either, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate a nice pickup or sport-ute every now and then, custom or not. Being a car enthusiast is like being an art lover, a music lover, a wine lover, or anything else I think. If you truly love the hobby, you can almost always find something great about whatever it is someone's done - sometimes you just have to open your eyes a bit and look beyond what you saw the first time around; look a bit deeper if you will.

RAIZIN said - "and do a lot of the work myself."

In my opinion, those eight words there carry an extra amount of weight, expecially in this world of kids with mommy and daddy's money, OMG2FAST2FURIOUS wannabe's, and Autozone Type-R sticker pack ricers. When's the last time any of you guys did any custom body work? It's NOT easy, I can promise you that, and it's not any easier to custom integrate stuff like tail lights and mold in body panels. On top of all this, he's got the underhood mods to back it up, (If I've read this trainwreck of a thread correctly!?) and people here still give this man a hard time. I'm not so sure I get it.

Raizin - keep doing what you're doin, man, and don't let anyone get you down (not that I think they will). It's not something I would do to my car, but I'd roll with you in it and I've got a lot of respect for the work you've put into it - and that's no bullshit.