Okay, I now have a raging hemorhoid and its name is the ‘Miata kit car’
Posted in Uncategorized on July 23, 2009 by fieroghiniTurn that old Beetle into a Porsche, that Fiero into a Ferarri or even a Lamborghini. Why? Because some dreams are weaved from fiberglass mesh.
Posted in Uncategorized on February 1, 2009 by fieroghiniIf even for a nanosecond, at some point, we’ve all considered doing the absurd.
This is an exploration into the absurdity that is the KIT CAR.
The ads were in the back of magazines like Road & Track or Autoweek. There it would be just inside the back cover, like crack to feeble minds with wild imaginations. If you were 8, there were ads for X-Ray specs and Sea Monkeys. If you were 15, it was Fiberfab Kit Cars.
How does this happen? Why do so many dreams end up in a shattered pile of undrivable fiberglass?
Simply this, kit cars take more time, money, ingenuity, and drive than anyone can comprehend. That is not to mention the cost of things that cannot be measured: strain on relationships with family and friends, the high cost of not developing yourself as a well rounded person, and the sad irony that the quality of life you have while working on a kit car is diametrically opposed to the very quality of life you are striving for.
So, to those of you who have successfully completed a project of this magnitude, my hat goes off to you. Enjoy that car, and never be ashamed to tell people that you built it. In fact, the following image says it better than any words I could ever conjure up…
So then, lets relish in the many pitfalls one will surely encounter when working on a kit car…
Okay, so that covers the absurd, but what about those kits that are sincere copies of the original. The ones that fool most people. Some of these ‘kitters’ go so far as to order OEM headlights, rims, etc…
Vehicles of this caliber present a new problem:
The Kit Car UNCANNY VALLEY.
Simply stated: When making a copy of something, the closer you get to making an exact copy, the more people are repulsed by it.
This scientific principal is usually applied to the appearance of androids. Now there is some line graph that I’ll insert here that illustrates this.
Maybe it shouldn’t be Michael Jackson down there in the valley. It should be a realistic android whose creator was sincerely trying to copy the original.
Applying this principal to automobile replicas we get a similar human response. Sometimes a kit car is really convincing. Sometimes you need to do a double take. But when actually walking around one, examining it from a few feet away, it may be very pleasing to the eye. but what’s that feeling in your gut? Suddenly you want to scream “FAKE! THIS THING IS A KIT CAR! I’M NOT RIDING IN THAT THING!” …And thus, you assuredly won’t be getting a ride in that thing.
But that’s okay. Because when the welds snap on that suspension at 88mph, guess who wont be getting decapitated by a sheet of fiberglass coated plywood. Yeah. Rest assured, you’ve been spared by your mammalian counterfeit-rejection reflex.