Tell us about your username

My family is from Istanbul, Turkey. A buddy of mine back home was a factory driver for FIAT-Abarth and, later, Ford of Turkey. In the summer of 2000, he let me drive his factory Ferrari F355 Challenge car and his Lancer Evo VI RS Tommi Mäkinen Edition back-to-back. Guess which one made the bigger impression on me?

As soon as I got back to the USA, I went straight to the Mitsubishi dealership in Maywood NJ ... and they had never heard of the Lancer Evo VI. Had no idea WTF I was talking about. It was a another 3-4 years before the (watered down) Evo VIII hit our shores. I bought one pretty much the day they hit the showroom.

I must have been raving about Evos to my BMW Club friends. Around that time some of the guys were obsessed with the Initial D anime. They started calling me "LanEvo" in an annoying fake-Japanese accent after Team Emperors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BalTEZHv8Y

My name is Tom and I've owned and raced a Datsun 1200 for 36 years.

On the Datsun 1200 forum my handle is Rallytwit, that came from a SCCA meeting when someone asked what kind of twit would go rallying and I answered a Rallytwit. I didn't want to be know as a twit everywhere so I went with Tom1200.

My Avatar is the 1200 at Spring Mtn Motorsports.

I'm a terrible, terrible procrastinator. Needing a name for some since-forgotten forum, I dropped "procrastinate" into an anagram generator and set it to list pairs of words; one result was "procaine start." Procaine, I learned, is actually a ubiquitous anesthetic: novocaine. Getting started is hard, and there I was procrastinating by looking at the Internet. It seemed fitting. (My name is Hans.)

I've owned the '89 Saab 900 Turbo in my avatar since '98; I also own a rare but not valuable '86 900 2-door "notchback," and an '04 9-5 wagon (an appliance we call the Silver Toaster). I should have a Saab-related username, as it's the only brand I've owned, except for a short stint with a Volvo.

Stealthtercel because (1) I owned a Tercel at the time (RIP; mucho rust); (2) if it had received the new paint I was thinking about, a leading contender would have been GM Stealth Grey; (3) as even players like MalibuGuy would agree, a Tercel would be stealthy on the street even if it had an 8-71 blower sticking out of the hood. 

I have lived in six states. My username represents four of them. I added the last letter because it made a word (and because it seemed to flow better than adding CT and GA). 

Avatar is an image I found on Reddit, of Gareth Bale in happier times... Because I'm a soccer nut. 

aka Scott

Mine is super basic. My first car (not a truck) was a 1995 Firebird V6 with an auto! Bought it for $1500 in 2000 with a blown head gasket. Swapped it out with a new 3.8 from the refeshed 98+ F-bodies and was on my way. 

I also threw a nice Trans Am bumper on it and some SLP twisties. Being the early 2000s the term "dirty" in the South was used with slight variances in meaning. A friend of mine said "dayumm that's one dirtybird" meaning he thought it was "fresh as f**k" or really clean looking. The nickname stuck throughout highschool even after learning that in England it holds an entirely different meaning. The 222 part comes from 2 being my number in football and 22 in baseball. 

My first/last initials and wife's middle/last initials together.

The avatar is the drivers front corner of my Delta 88 indy pace car that I've had for 17 years.

AAZCD is part of a randomly generated password that I had 20 years ago in the Army. Somehow it was easy for me to remember and when I started up on YouTube (early 2000s) I chose it for a user name. For a long time I had been using 78F350 on forums, but when I joined GRM that truck had been sold for a couple years. I came here at first to post the build thread for my flood car and since I was using lots of video from my YouTube, I decided to use that name.

In reply to Wxdude10 - Mike :

In TV (and I suspect, in radio..even though my radio job was 40yrs ago) we still call weather stuff "WX".

Last car I bought new was a '92 VW GTI with the 8v (Puebla was trying to clear out all the leftover Mk.2 stuff - Big Bumper bodywork with drums on the back and the 'uprated' 8v from the Cabrios). My daughter was a year old, and the BMW 2002 I was trying to restore dropped a valve seat on my way there one day. I was still married to her mom then, and the woman went into full E36 M3-storm mode when I'd found a nice low-mile E28 to replace it. "You have to buy a *NEW* car!!" So I bought the Mk.2.

But in the showroom..a VR6 Corrado. They wouldn't let me drive one, but they let me sit in it. Read good things about them in the magazines. Kinda really wanted one, but knew it would never be a new one.

Fast forward to about 'the year two thousand', and I'm finally recovering from the divorce & child support . Found a Corrado in FL, and did my first fly & drive. Mechanically sound, but the clearcoat was a mess. Turns out even after the cars were still so young, they had so many little problems with all the crap VW did trying to move "upmarket".

I'm Pan-Southern, and know that fried green tomatoes ain't just a movie. I joined vwvortex right after I bought the car, because I already knew I'd need some advice about keeping one healthy. Just threw it up as a nym over there as a laugh. The car was green, and the paint was fried by that Florida sun. 

Yeah, got pretty tired of Vortex pretty quick. Saw a copy of GRM on a newsstand (in the local Kroger, believe it or not), and remembered them from when I used to race.

"Hmm. I wonder if they have an internet BB now."

My avator is the black one at our old autocross site at Turner Field. 

N Sperlo said:

It's uhh... It's my name.

Same. 
 

ChandlerGTi was the name for a long time but I haven't had a MKI in 5 years or so so that part got dropped. The avatar is a pic of the cooling fans on the Penske 917 wheels when it was at the Indy Museum.

Mine is the start of my last name, and the same nickname that I’ve had for at least 45 years.  Avatar is some of the wildest yard art I’ve ever seen, and a (so far failing) to get off my butt and relearn how to weld.

Loving this thread so far!

The first car forum I joined was Miata.Net.  I thought ZOOMiata was clever.   Though I still have that very same Miata, I dropped the car name some time ago.  I’m not sure why we all wanted pseudonyms back then.  On most new accounts I just use my last name and first initial. 

My current avatar is me in my old M3 just after the Bridge turn at Le Circuit Mont Tremblant.   

Username Kevlar corolla is from the AE86 hatch I built replacing the entire body with panels built with kevlar.

 I bought roll ends from a canoe builder for cheap,the rest was about a year of stinky,itchy fun.

In 2000 I bought a new sport touring motorcycle and got a vanity plate for it. IMGON  we can only have 5 characters,  it was meant to express the bike was fast and that I traveled alot on it. Ended up being my screen name/ email for almost anything I joined that didn't require my real name.

Avatar is my current RX7.

It has been fun to discover that I had some of the more cryptic names right, others I butchered horribly. Great idea and fun to get the back stories.  

Real name is Chuck

My first car was an 84 Cutlass Supreme so yeah

Many moons ago, a friend was helpimg me set up my first gaming account (can't remember what the game was) and he asked what I wanted my username to be.   I looked around the room, and there was a copy of Rallysport magazine from the UK sitting there with a mk2 Escort doing what mk2 Escorts do on the cover.  So i said, Sideways.  He tried it, but it was taken, so we changed the spelling, and 20odd years later, I've been Sidewayze ever sinse...

Well, like many others my username is two pieces.  The first is obvious, my first name, Brad.

The second comes from my days working in radio. I worked for a syndicated morning show called: Rick and Bubba. I started as an intern and in tradition of the show interns were given an on-air nickname. They typically weren't "cool", they were humorous since we were a comedy show. Because of my height, I was dubbed "Lurch". For the show that was fine, but we spent so much time at events with people that Lurch wasn't going to cut it for a 20ish guy. Something needed to be done. During the morning show, I'd usually be introduced as "long tall Lurch" so I ended up just getting that shortened to LTL (I'm in front).

Not less than a truckload. 

Mine is just my initials and it's what I use in the forums that I use, although I think I've run in to a couple that required 4 characters, minimum.  It's spelled "w-a-e" but pronounced "Bill".

I also always puzzled over Jumper. Kay.  Balls.  It makes a lot of sense now, of course, but I think I always just assumed it was some sort of skateboarding thing.  (Why skateboarding?  I don't know, it's just what my brain put together to try to make order from the chaos).

"Elevate" makes total sense for L-of-8 now that I read it.  That's one that I just assumed was some sort of math + Star Trek joke that I didn't get.  Wasn't there a 7-of-6 or something like that?  So I thought that was some sort of algebra parody that I didn't get.

I appreciate everyone explaining their usernames.  I was just starting to think that I might not be a moron, but all of these explanations have disabused me of those notions!

spitfirebill said:

My name is bill and I own a spitfire.  Two actually.  Added a TR3  couple of years ago, so maybe I should change to triumphbill.  

And the avatar is Spit #1.  

AAZCD (Forum Supporter) said:

AAZCD is part of a randomly generated password that I had 20 years ago in the Army. Somehow it was easy for me to remember and when I started up on YouTube (early 2000s) I chose it for a user name. For a long time I had been using 78F350 on forums, but when I joined GRM that truck had been sold for a couple years. I came here at first to post the build thread for my flood car and since I was using lots of video from my YouTube, I decided to use that name.

You know aaz is a vw engine code , I just assumed since you had vw's you were a recovered diesel nerd.

Mine is fairly straight forward, my first vw was a 1.6 non turbo diesel so it was very slow. In the last few years I've had some quicker Volkswagens, but I'm always slow compared to the fast guys. 

I'm a pastor who used to be an automotive engineer and has always loved cars. I also spent a lot of time on track at Texas World Speedway before it closed down (it's 2 miles from my house). Thought the double meaning of Rev would be fun in a username.  

Had an RC car that my two year old named “Peppy”. Shortly afterward I got the Z4 and the name came along with it. Alternate letters because was planning on it for license plate but $$ 

ORIF stands for Open Reduction, Internal Fixation.

I'm an orthopedic surgeon and this is how we post a fracture case on the OR schedule. "Open Reduction" means to make an incision and dissect down to the bone to align the fracture ends versus just manipulating the bones. "Internal Fixation" means that we are using an implant of some type to stabilize the fracture, like a plate or rod versus casting.

When I first moved to California, I owned an integra. This was at the very height of F&F popularity. Ironically (?) I wrecked it before it could be stolen. That was the only accident I've ever been in. For some reason people like to call me catleg, which makes me giggle.