About 5 years ago before I joined the Air Force I lived in Chicago and there were always nice modded Hondas, VWs, and generally cars that I guess you would classify as sport compacts around town. Sure there was some "jdm yo" E36 M3 but there generally was a lot of nice, fast, tastefully modded small cars. DSMs, Neons, etc. In fact there were a lot of car shows I would go to in that area where there were lots full of them. Around this time I owned a '03 350z that I had since '05 and the Z "scene" was also great like this.
Fast foward to today. Live in Vegas now, out of the military. Seems whenever I see modded imports or cars of this type everything is ridiculous over the top cartoony. IDK how else to put it. Nobody really has any decent power mods or nice rides at all. Every Z even seems to be about "stance" and a STI is how many LCD screens you can put into the car. I have a Subaru now and before, when I first was into the car, it was about performance and a lot of autocrossers seemed to own them but now when I go to a meet it seems everyone only cars how big of a sub they can put into their car so they can test how many liters of blood come out of their ears listening to Kanye.
IDK I guess I remember in 2003 a coworker at the job I had while I was in college bought a Z28 camaro and said he was "modding" it and showed me what his "mods" were and it was just a massive sub in the back, lol. I guess that was the beginning of it all right there.
Its just kind of funny that I remember people with EG civics actually building them to be decent cards but now driving the streets of Vegas everything is hellaflush (or is it stanced now?) with strange as berkeley mods on it like out of a "Japan is weird" youtube video.
Another weird thing is that in the 90s and earlier my Dad was into VWs. MK2 GTIs in particular. I never remember VW modding and enthusiast communities being about what model air ride you need to install on the car and what strange color mesh wheels to put on it. I don't think i've seen a single MK2 GTI in recent years that didn't fit that category. In fact if you go to Vortex and look in any thread where people post their MK2-MK4 GTI (havn't look at later) its nothing but this.
I guess this is kind of a rant but I pulled into the parking lot today at work and I saw a hellaflush MR2 turbo, two hideously modded MK4 GTIs, and on the way here I saw a S2000 with the most insane camber ever conceived by man. Aside from the daily spotting of Honda Civics that look like out of the movie Loopers or some kind of Salvador Dali painting. My friends and I are enthusiasts and sometimes we drive around town just to spot insanity, this is vegas afterall, has become an easy game.
IDK, has the VW, Honda, and general import scene people lost all taste and sense or have I? I mean when I was in college and around the time I bought my 350z the most people would do as far as what I would consider tasteless was putting "altezza lights" on every car. At least though the "scene" people would make their cars handle and drive fast.
I'm starting to think though maybe this is because I moved from the Midwest to crazytown. Maybe this is just a California/Nevada west coast thing.
I'm sorry if this offends anyone. I don't come here often so I don't know peoples opinions here on these things, this is just my opinion. I mean when I start to see S2000s commonly with what looks like -10 degree camber I just feel.... disappointment.
