Car Throttle

There's a long precedent of rappers referencing cars in their songs.  It's part of the baller lifestyle: huge house, lots of skeezy women, and a gold-plated Range Rover with 38" gold-plated wheels.  Since rap these days is all about conspicuous consumption, it's part and parcel. But as much as we like seeing Jay-Z and Kanye cut the doors off a Maybach, weld sheet metal fenders on it, and drift it around an industrial parking lot, there's something amusing about local rappers laying down a track about... their Volvo.  Awww, hell yeah son!

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKOVF1qwPzI

The above video is by Seattle-area rapper Grynch, and I actually kinda like the song.  I mean, not just because I'm partial to ancient Volvo station wagons - it's a

If you're shopping for a car under $4000, there's one of two ways it'll go. You can either get something undesirable or boring in good condition with a lot of miles - or you can get something that was the bee's knees a few decades ago, with a few issues, for about the same price.  This was the decision a friend of mine was facing when shopping for a vehicle.  His brother was sick and tired of him borrowing his car, he had the money saved up, he just didn't know what to get.  This is where I stepped in. "James, what's the coolest thing you can get for under $4 grand?  Or preferably under three grand, leaving a little room for repairs?" I paused, looked at him.  "That's

Ahh, the 90's Civic hatchback: dime a dozen, get 'em while they're hot. I know you wanted to pick a flavor, but I hope you like vanilla, 'cause that's what you'll get.  Right?  Now, normally when you look under the hood of an EG-chassis Civic (92-95), you see one these: a D15. Boring.  On a good day, a single-cam D15 16v PGM-FI motor will make 110 or so horsepower.  Which is perfectly adequate for a 2,400lb commuter car, and it'll deliver 40+ MPG on the highway all day long.  But if you want to go fast in your Civic Hatch, you're going to need a bigger motor.  How about one that doesn't even fit under the hood? Wait, WHAT? No, this photo isn't photoshopped.  That's an

I do a lot of talking about sleepers here at CarThrottle. "The Grand National is such a sleeper."  "The Legacy 2.5GT is a sleeper."  A nitrous-injected Odyssey is a sleeper.  Basically, anything that looks slow and goes really fast is a sleeper.  But very rarely do I come across a car in the real world that makes my jaw drop from the sheer sleeper awesomeness factor.  Most of the performance cars in Raleigh are either obviously so, or obviously trying to pretend to be so.  But while walking around a local import car gathering, I came across the most wicked sleeper I've seen in a long time.  Observe: It would appear to be a 2002-2003 Nissan Sentra SE-R SpecV, with some crappy mismatched wheels, bad

Grew up playing Hot Wheels diecast toy cars? Well, Lithuanian custom body designers and car remodellers AG Excalibur must have had too many Hot Wheels related wet dreams to have come up with this incredible looking piece of work called the AG Excalibur for us to ponder over for a moment. Let’s take a look at a Hot Wheels diecast toy car like the one pictured above. A nice but somewhat slightly trashed looking Shelby Cobra Daytona due to collisions with other toy cars, walls and jumping off staircases. It looks pretty good doesn’t it? Especially with those really oversized wheels in different sizes for the front and the rear. If this were a real Shelby, those wheels would be easily 26inches up front and 30inches

And now for something COMPLETELY different... Say you're in the market for some wheels.  You've got an old Mk2 Jetta.  Normally, the default choice would be something cross-spoked with "BBS" on the center cap.  RS?  LM?  RG-R?  CH, maybe?  Boring, played out.  Everyone's got gold RS's with polished lips on their Jetta.  You want to stand out from the crowd.  You need a set of these babies. What you really need are some Ronal Teddy Bears.  I mean, it's two birds with one stone!  Do you like wheels?  Do you like Teddy Bears?  There you go. They went out of production back in 2002, and shortly thereafter Ronal stopped imported wheels to the US, so it's not exactly easy finding them, but imagine the fun you can

“Is it rocket science? Well for a newbie yes, it may seem like it. And con men will reassure you that it is and that you need to spend 8 thousand Malaysian Ringgit too.” The quote above came from my pal, Zairul Nizar, who was the owner of the fine Audi A4 1.8TFSI that I reviewed in a previous post. This was the Audi that had engine mount problems and was the Audi choked full of sensors and electronic gizmos. And this isn't the top of the line, full monty R8 or an RS4. Anyway, the local distributor decided to hand him a quote of over $800 for a pair of engine mounts. Now as the car was just out of warranty and being a sensible chap,

Now if you're looking at the picture and have started thinking that this must be an old 1980s Mitsubishi Lancer you are strongly mistaken. This car is a Proton Saga, which is based on the early 1980s Mitsubishi Lancer Fiore. The Lancer was the basis for the Saga, customized and localised, and was the first car produced in Malaysia. It had been in production since 1985 and was only recently discontinued over here in Malaysia (1985-2008 - amazing right?). It was sold in the UK until the late 1990s and is a favourite for pensioners and people who basically have no clue what driving is all about. Most young men would rather be dead than be seen in one of these, especially if they are trying

It began with a simple question from a good friend of mine, Zairul whether we would be going to Sepang to cheer on the boys from the local garage LMY Automobile & Services Sdn Bhd. Three of the LMY ‘Snails’ boys (named after the shape of a turbo unit, not the Gastropode)  had entered the time attack challenge organized by a famous Malaysian website called Zerotohundred.com together with local track day organizers HPC Motorsports. The event was called Time To Attack: Sepang coinciding with Zerotohundred’s 10th anniversary. It was held on the 9th of May, 2010 at the Sepang International F1 Circuit (SIC). I agreed mainly because there were no other activities for me to do in the day, and the boys would surely use more support

Just how far would you go to restore a car? Would you dive to the bottom of a frickin' lake and haul an old wreck of a car just to resurrect it like Lazarus? You would, or at least I would, if it was a 1925 Bugatti. And that's just what some total nut jobs, er, I mean, dedicated gearheads will be doing. When I was a little kid, my dad found a Kaiser Darrin in barn (no, literally in a barn) that was all there, but needed to be gone through and completely restored. Let me just put it this way: There was hay in the engine compartment. But by the time he got through with it (my dad, being a tool and die maker