Bryan's Rice-Boy Hall of Shame Vol. 8

It's been a few months since the last hall of shame, and I must admit, I didn't have a whole lot of material. It's getting harder and harder to find cars out there that are original enough to get put here. All the rice-rockets look the same these days and very few people are doing anything original. That makes you wonder about those people who say they do what they do to their cars to be "original"...

I wonder why this guy get's no lovin'.

Well besides the fact that this is a slow, older Accord (but with faded paint and only the stock number of lights, unlike the one on the Classic Hall of Shame), it's got these big ugly banners on it.

By the way, the blue one on the hood says "HONDA THE IMPACT OF POWER". Honda is known for making some great engines with incredible horsepower per liter ratings... but "impact" of power!?!?!?

With their most powerful production engine, the 3.2 liter engine of the NSX barely putting out 300 horsepower (hey, that's impressive hp/liter, but not impressive horsepower, what with the Camaro Z28 coming with that power, stock), I don't really think anyone is buying Honda products because of their "impact of power".

Man, if this guy thinks his Accord has some "impact" I wonder what he would think if he got ahold of something with more than 2 liters of displacement!

Lowering your car can improve its appearance. It can give your car a more aggressive looking stance, and fill up ugly wheel gap. But how low is too low? At what point does your car cease to look better? Well, this guy sure found out... he probably doesn't impress too many chicks with his "style"!

I've featured many "Identity Crisis" cars on this website before, but this one just takes the cake! Just in case you were too blind to notice, the owner of this Eclipse really wanted you to make sure that this car is a converitble. I mean, just look at the great lengths he went to put that gigantic "Spyder" logo on the side of his car!! Maybe he is so unsure of his identity that he has to remind himself what kind of car he has.

But wait, what is that between the tail lights? Eclipse Type-JX!? WTF is that?

This car is a Mitsubishi Sebring Eclipse Type JX. Let's see, we got the Mitsubishi. We got the Chrysler (Sebring JX), and we even got a little bit of the Honda (the "Type" designation. OK, so other manufacturers use this too, but only Honda does this in the U.S.). Man is this guy confused or what? On top of that we got the Chinese characters, which say something to the effect of "three stars" or "three points" which I guess refers to the Mitsubishi logo.

What puzzles me a bit is the fact that on the Chrysler Sebring convertible, the JX-i is the highest model, but this guy chose to stick with the JX. I wonder why that is?

And that Sebring logo! It's not from a Sebring exhaust system, it's lifted straight off off the Chrysler Sebring Converitble!

If you look at the first picture of this car, you will also notice a "Powered by Mitsubishi". I guess this guy needs it, because you might be confused by now about what kind of car this is, what with all the different badging and stuff.

Man, if you think you have some tough competition at your local autocross event, check out what we have to run against in San Diego!

So you may be wondering why I have a Lamborghini Diablo SV in the Rice-Boy Page Hall of Shame. Well... just because you have a fast car doesn't mean you're not a rice-boy. It just means you have a fast car.

That's not a quarter mile trap speed folks, that was this guy's lap time. Now, comparing autocross run times doesn't really work, since every autocross venue is a different size, and even in the same venue, the course is different every time. But to give you an idea of how slow this time is... most of the guys with stock class Miata's were running in the 95 to 110 second range, on this approximately 1 mile long course. Even the guy driving a stock Geo Metro managed to squeak by with a time of around 125 seconds.

This Diablo got a 134.081, and I believe he hit 1 cone in the process as well. When this guy lined up to start his first run, everyone busted out their cameras. But by the time he crossed the line with this time... not a single person had any respect for him. He came here expecting everyone to be impressed with himself and his car. Instead, he made a big fool of himself. Although his car has plenty of go, it was obvious that this guy was all show!

If you have any doubts about my reasoning in putting up a Diablo in the hall of shame, perhaps you should read the response I received from the owner of this car himself, which appeared in the July 29, 1999 edition of the Responses of the Week.

Last Modified 1/14/99.

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