When I was growing up in Australia, my dad had an XD Fairmont like the one pictured. That in turn spawned my love for boxy '80s cars, and is part of the reason why I have an '85 Ford LTD (successor to the US Fairmont) with Aussie "Super Roo" stickers on it.

On a related note, I am relatively confident that both the Aussie and American Fairmont wagons used the same rear hatch.

Nice wrap up. Spank is a mad man.

I am eagerly awaiting the result of The Homer's entry into March's Sonoma race.

Looks fast.

Hard Drivin' lived up to its name. I wonder if I could do any better as an adult?

And the LM002 could move the concrete blocks if you hit them at the right speed.

I LOVED the Street Rod games as a kid, but mainly for the buying and fixing of cars. It was actually where I first learned about advancing and retarding the ignition. But as Devin said, the actual racing was pretty bad. I could never beat the King.

I also had Stunt Driver, but I preferred Stunts more. You could build your own track and it had awesome late '80s cars like the NSX and Lancia Delta Integrale in it.

Kinda. My beloved '85 Ford LTD LX was rear ended at a traffic light several years ago. "Thankfully" it was rear ended by a rental car, and in California rental car insurance coverage is required to cover up to $5K in damage to the other vehicle. My car had about $3500 worth of damage, so this law was the only thing that kept my car from being totaled (since Blue Book value was pocket lint at the time). I've since obtained agreed value insurance.

Anyway, I was looking for a shop that would work with me to fix the damage and repaint the whole car for a decent price out of pocket. I found one that made me a fair deal for what I wanted to do, but they told me it would be a secondary job for them since fleet jobs were their bread and butter, so it'd take a while. Since it was my second car, that was fine for me considering the price I was paying.

At first the shop kept in contact with me. The right rear quarter panel was pretty munched so the shop elected to have the rear end cut off a donor car for undamaged sheet metal. First, their junkyard source cut the back off a Crown Victoria. Then a week later they cut the back off a Tempo. At that point the shop decided to actually repair the metal, and a friend of mine (who owns my previous LTD) helped source some pieces like tail lights, trunk lid, and bumper filler. Weeks turned into months, and calls about the status of the car were normally met with a response that there had been no work done because they were doing fleet work first, or no response at all. I went to the shop a few times and while I did see progress was made, the shop owner confessed to me that he was having financial problems and needed to do fleet work first.

One day during the week I decided to call and found the phone number was disconnected. I was at work at the time and decided to just leave immediately to find out what was going on. I got to the shop and found the gate closed and chained shut. The shop was closed and I was just about to go buy some bolt cutters to break my car out when I saw a woman in the back of shop. I called her over, and she turned out to be one of the techs who worked there who also happened to be a friend of one of my co-workers, so she knew about me and my car through talking to my co-worker. She told me she was only there to collect her tools because all of the employees decided to walk off the job since they hadn't been paid. She recommended I get my car out of there ASAP. She didn't have to tell me twice, and I hate to think about what I would have done if she wasn't there.

The car was basically done (all bodywork and paint had been done), but there was overspray and paint dust everywhere, lots of trim and interior pieces were missing, and the battery was dead. I got a jump start and drove out of there (leaving my other car illegally parked - I didn't care about a ticket). Thankfully all of the removed parts were in the car, but I had to do a bunch of clean up work and reassembly. I actually still owed a few hundred bucks on the job, but considering the circumstances, I considered my bill paid. Overall the work was decent and the paint has held up well, so in the end it was a net gain, but there are some things I would have wanted the shop to correct if I had the chance.

Yeah, I actually like most of the higher trim level wheels that Nissan used starting about 5 years ago.

Motorcraft FL-1A uber alles.

Yeah, but they didn't apply for the record.