Yeah Racing Alloy

When my uncle was in high school, he and his buddies were into souping up cars in a big way. Mustangs, Camaros, Trans Ams, Firebirds, GTOs and Thunderbirds were the most popular ones, although my uncle had a Barracuda and one of his best friends had a Corvette. They called them hot-rodders back then and things were a little easier than they are now.

For one thing, cars were cheap. You could pick up a three or four year old Camaro for fifteen hundred dollars and my math teacher says that works out to maybe eight grand today. For a muscle car complete with a three hundred horsepower engine, decent brakes and mag wheels. With the stock capability of those pony cars, guys mostly spent money on dressing them up. Candy apple paint jobs, sun roofs, maybe some shinier wheels and stickier tires. Gas was cheap, they had cheap car insurance and there was much less traffic on the roads. When I hear them talking about the good old days, it really does seem as though it was glory days for hot rodders.

Fast forward to 2009. My friends and I sink every cent we make from our part time jobs into our wheels. We aren’t hot rodders -that’s so 1970s- we’re gear heads. I can certainly pick up a decent used Civic for under ten grand, but that gets me a well-made and very pedestrian ride. Three hundred horsepower? Yeah, right, more like one hundred. My friends and I all have Civics. There’s a lot a gear head can do to bring a Civic up to speed. Drop a new engine in or bolt a turbocharger onto the existing one. Beefier exhaust and race-tuned suspension. The tranny can be upgraded and everyone replaces the brakes with big, ceramic discs. I saved up for a year for a set of chrome alloy wheels, then another six months for the low profile, high speed rated tires. I don’t have to worry about snow tires because I winter store the car. But the operating costs are something awful and when I list out the expenses to my uncle, he can’t believe it. I only use premium gas, so that’s at least fifty bucks a week. Synthetic oil, of course. The worst is car insurance. At first I had a hard time even finding a company that would insure me; the one my parents had used for years arbitrarily cancelled my policy when they found out I had made engine modifications. Luckily I found a company online that would insure me, but it sure isn’t anything like the old days.

About the Author:

Mike Kelly writes for car enthusiast magazines and cheap auto insurance is close to his heart. Kelly notes that anyone who modifies their car to increase its engine output runs the risk of losing their coverage, making cheap car insurance through traditional brokers even more difficult to find for gear heads like him.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – Gear Heads Find Cheap Car Insurance Online