I'd like to introduce our December 2006 ROTM winner, 1967Cutlass, Mike. Mike your escort is so nice. Makes me, and I'm sure others, want to go out and buy a GT just to copy yours. It has come a ways, and still has room to grow in your hands.
CONGRATULATIONS!!
Modifications
Engine modifications
About the winner:
I am a 21 year old full time student. I am attending Washington State University and I'm majoring in History and minoring in Asian studies. My history with cars goes back farther than I can remember, but I've been told stories of when I tried to take the wheels off of my grandpa's car with a screwdriver, and things like that. I grew up with my dad being a true car guy. He likes his Oldmobile's and he's had more 442's and cutlass's than I can remember, and apparently he and his room mate even rebuilt a v8 inside his apartment at college. I grew up with that kind of person as my role model, and I suppose it explains my grassroots philosophy when it comes to cars. When I was 15 years old, I was left a small inheritance from my grandfather, as well as worked at a drag strip for extra cash. My dad found a 1967 cutlass supreme convertible in the papers for $1,500, which was interesting to me since he has a 1967 442 convertible, nearly the same car, and it was exactly what I wanted. We went there and I bought it, sans top and paint, full of rust and spare parts. But it ran well, and I've been restoring it to this day. Now you're probably wondering when I'm going to talk about BG's. Well my interest in BG's came about by accident and necessity. My cutlass was NOT a bad weather car, and I couldn't afford the gas to daily drive it anyway. After having a few beaters which need not be mentioned, in my Senior year in high school, it was time for me to find another cheap car to get me around. My exchange student friend and I found a very, very old man selling a 1990 protege SE for 900$. There wasn't anything else that seemed decent in the paper, so I called him to go look at it. When I went to see it I thought, wow, this car is small. I didn't know what exactly a protege was and I expected something like a 626. Anyhow, I test drove the car and to my great surprise, it was actually fun to drive, and had a great amount of poise and heart for such a small and cheap car. After some negotiation, I took the car home for $500. That car lasted me for quite a while. I drag raced it, drove it off-road, in the snow, delivered pizza in it, and it always ran without a hitch (Well not including the ground-wire problem that confounded me for a few days).
About my car.
Always seeking information, I joined Club Protege in 2003 to find out more about my car. Turns out I had the crappiest one, the automatic SE (or DX, same thing). It didn't really matter all that much, because the car worked well and did its job. I did, however, learn about the other BG's. During my freshman year at college, I made a lot of friends. One of them was a girl that happened to have an escort GT. She loved it, but didn't take care of it at all, and it would always start with massive clouds of blue smoke. The front end was pretty dinged up but there was something about her car that I really liked. Through a series of events, she ended up having to stay with me over the summer. She had since bought a civic and one day when we were hanging out, I asked what she did with her escort. She told me it was sitting at her dad's house, and asked if I wanted to buy it. Sure, I said, knowing it would likely be a difficult project. $450 later, we were at her dad's place airing the tires up, and I wasn't really sure what to expect. We started the car... Smoke... lots of smoke. It also had a miss. It ran on 3 cylinders. Despite the obvious internal issues with the motor, it was in pretty good shape and I could tell then that it was a completely different beast than the SE was. I really enjoyed the several hour trip home, despite the motor not being in the best of shape, and even took it up to 110mph. To make a longer story shorter, I found a low miles BP for it in the winter of 2005, and I've since modified the car a lot, and have driven it for around 14,000 miles. The escort is more than I could ask for as a daily driver. I truly enjoy driving the car, as well as working on it and even helping other people work on their BG's.
Future plans
Eventually, I'd like to rebuild the entire suspension, paint everything under the car with POR-15, and maybe, just maybe turbocharge it.
CONGRATULATIONS!!
Modifications
Engine modifications
- 1995 low miles 1.8 BP
- 18 degree timing advance
- Cone filter
- Rx7 VAF
- 4-2-1 pacesetter header
- Header back 2.25" exhaust, no cat or muffler, two resonators.
- Cut intake manifold
- A/C removal
- Short shifter
- Energy suspension swaybar endlinks
- KYB/sprint strut/spring combo
- Front strut tower bar
- Stock (for now...)
- mx3 recaro style seats
- Canadian manual seatbelts
- Random grant steering wheel
- Protege center console w/cupholders
- Red gauge needles
- Alpine 9831, Random 6x9 and 5.25 speakers
- Paint (Honda championship white)
- JDM/CADM "DOHC 16 VALVE" fender emblems
- 205/50/15 falken rt-615
About the winner:
I am a 21 year old full time student. I am attending Washington State University and I'm majoring in History and minoring in Asian studies. My history with cars goes back farther than I can remember, but I've been told stories of when I tried to take the wheels off of my grandpa's car with a screwdriver, and things like that. I grew up with my dad being a true car guy. He likes his Oldmobile's and he's had more 442's and cutlass's than I can remember, and apparently he and his room mate even rebuilt a v8 inside his apartment at college. I grew up with that kind of person as my role model, and I suppose it explains my grassroots philosophy when it comes to cars. When I was 15 years old, I was left a small inheritance from my grandfather, as well as worked at a drag strip for extra cash. My dad found a 1967 cutlass supreme convertible in the papers for $1,500, which was interesting to me since he has a 1967 442 convertible, nearly the same car, and it was exactly what I wanted. We went there and I bought it, sans top and paint, full of rust and spare parts. But it ran well, and I've been restoring it to this day. Now you're probably wondering when I'm going to talk about BG's. Well my interest in BG's came about by accident and necessity. My cutlass was NOT a bad weather car, and I couldn't afford the gas to daily drive it anyway. After having a few beaters which need not be mentioned, in my Senior year in high school, it was time for me to find another cheap car to get me around. My exchange student friend and I found a very, very old man selling a 1990 protege SE for 900$. There wasn't anything else that seemed decent in the paper, so I called him to go look at it. When I went to see it I thought, wow, this car is small. I didn't know what exactly a protege was and I expected something like a 626. Anyhow, I test drove the car and to my great surprise, it was actually fun to drive, and had a great amount of poise and heart for such a small and cheap car. After some negotiation, I took the car home for $500. That car lasted me for quite a while. I drag raced it, drove it off-road, in the snow, delivered pizza in it, and it always ran without a hitch (Well not including the ground-wire problem that confounded me for a few days).
About my car.
Always seeking information, I joined Club Protege in 2003 to find out more about my car. Turns out I had the crappiest one, the automatic SE (or DX, same thing). It didn't really matter all that much, because the car worked well and did its job. I did, however, learn about the other BG's. During my freshman year at college, I made a lot of friends. One of them was a girl that happened to have an escort GT. She loved it, but didn't take care of it at all, and it would always start with massive clouds of blue smoke. The front end was pretty dinged up but there was something about her car that I really liked. Through a series of events, she ended up having to stay with me over the summer. She had since bought a civic and one day when we were hanging out, I asked what she did with her escort. She told me it was sitting at her dad's house, and asked if I wanted to buy it. Sure, I said, knowing it would likely be a difficult project. $450 later, we were at her dad's place airing the tires up, and I wasn't really sure what to expect. We started the car... Smoke... lots of smoke. It also had a miss. It ran on 3 cylinders. Despite the obvious internal issues with the motor, it was in pretty good shape and I could tell then that it was a completely different beast than the SE was. I really enjoyed the several hour trip home, despite the motor not being in the best of shape, and even took it up to 110mph. To make a longer story shorter, I found a low miles BP for it in the winter of 2005, and I've since modified the car a lot, and have driven it for around 14,000 miles. The escort is more than I could ask for as a daily driver. I truly enjoy driving the car, as well as working on it and even helping other people work on their BG's.
Future plans
Eventually, I'd like to rebuild the entire suspension, paint everything under the car with POR-15, and maybe, just maybe turbocharge it.
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