All down hill after GT2.

And then came the revelation of Forza.

 

Fuck yeah. Man I loved that game.

 

Several things influenced me. Sadly I didn't grow up around anyone that had or was into fast cars.

Gran Turismo - One of the first games I actually bought, I saved my lunch money and money for chores to buy it, lol. I fell in love with the Rally courses and the 22B became my favorite car. I was sick in that game with it.

HS - When I was in HS there were only a handful of modded cars. Dougy (sp) Seymor had the most modded out Accord at the time. He had nice 5 star wheels, dropped, exhaust, and some chinese letters across the fender and hood. LOL, totally rice by todays standards, but this was like 10 years ago. After seeing his car I told myself I'd eventually have a nice car.

My first few cars were:
89 Mercury Topaz
86 Honda Civic
83 Honda Accord

They all sucked, but I had a decent system in each one (picked up a system super cheap back in HS, made it better over the years).

I just couldn't afford a nicer car at the time, much less the money to mod one.

Finally a few years after HS and having gotten my shit together I finally got my first OK car... a 99 Eclipse RS, lol. I put 18s and a CAI on it within 6 months of buying it, but decided I wasn't going to go all out modding it since it wasn't really the platform I wanted to start with (I really wanted a GSX). So I kept the car and used it to build my credit.

Finally at 25 I bought my STi, which I was dying to have for a year before getting it. I told myself that I WOULD have a STi no matter what, and I'd do whatever it took to get one. I spent an entire year working my ass off and saving up money to buy it. My tranny started slipping in the Eclipse about 2 months before I was ready to buy the STi, so I ended up getting it a little earlier than I had wanted to.

Now that I have the car I want, I'll be modding this one quite a bit. I don't plan to sell the car at all, and will rebuild it when the engine goes, so there's no telling how far I'll be modding this one. Oddly I had almost forgotten my love for the 22B and Gran Turismo until after I bought my STi and started thinking about GT one day.

I will admit that F&F did motivate me to want to get into modding more. Really the only reason I waited so long was cause I was too poor to mod. If I had had the money and/or a decent car to mod I would have been modding since HS.

EDIT: The first thing that convinced me to get something fast...
My friend had a 00 Mustang (v6) and I had a 99 Eclipse RS at the time. We used to play around cause our cars were a pretty close match at the time. About a year later he got a 96 Cobra. After him giving me a 5 second head start and walking the fuck out of me like I was in reverse, I vowed to myself that I'd have something that fast one day. Sadly we're no longer friends and he has no clue I have the STi now.

 

Import Tuner. I think it was the issue with the riced out Prelude with JDM Integra front conversion. I read that thing everyday. Fast and Furous and Gran Turismo 3 did play parts that sparked my interest in cars.

 

Helping my father build hot rods since before I can remember and I'm sure 2 older brothers into lowriders and mini trucks in the 90's helped to.

 

my dad had motorcycles and nice cars back when i was little, also my uncle let me drive his honda when i was like 5 in a field and i loved it. my dad also told me stories of how he took my grandma's 57 belair and street raced and had a bug and drag raced it at the track and it did wheelies and crap.. that all got me into it, but i've always loved cars, when i was little i used to tell my parents i wanted to grow up and change oil in cars for a living lol...

 

Music. I started with a deck, subs, and an amp...then more rice stuff...then Initial D and into drifting...then into racing and bikes...now I just like clean fun cars and bikes. I don't really mod anything because it doesn't present enough value to me. I'm getting old.

 

thread moved = thread is dead.

 

I was around 13 years old when I got into modifying cars. I used to go out on the weekends with my friend's older brother who had a civic hatch. We would pile up in other people's cars and go out to the street races back when people had walkie talkies and CB radios to get away from the cops.

I started out with a 94 Ford Probe GT, and then got into Hondas. I worked at Kimnach ford when I was 17-19 and I drove my first 03-04 cobra that was modified. It scared the shit out of me, and was so powerful that I got into Domestics/RWD.

 

My dads best friend babysat me when I was a wee lad (sub 5 years old), and he used to read me out of a car book, and I knew all the parts of a motor and such by sight. He built (and still builds) drag cars, and they had a low 8 second all motor vega (i mean, in 1988, that shit was stupid fast). Anyway, that stuck me with liking muscle cars. And as I got older, I started liking all cars.