- If I have to go into a forum,
or Facebook page, or TikTok sound,
and watch people debate what makes a car enthusiast,
a car enthusiast, okay,
when most people are on their first car
that happens to be a daily driver
given to them by their parents, all right,
I might just start crying.
Maybe I'm getting old.
There's a chance that
that might actually be happening,
contrary to popular belief.
But maybe it's Maybelline.
Either way, it's a talking point
that never seems to be going away.
So what does it mean?
What do the numbers mean, Mason?
All right?
I'm Alex, Alex.FI in the socials,
and today, we're gonna be talking about
what chalky milk clarity of what it means, okay?
What the terminology,
and what the accusations are actually about, okay?
Not just the occasional fellow,
or fellow that enjoys riding along in a fast car,
but someone that wants
to absolutely make their weekends miserable
with breaking them.
They're fine pieces of machinery,
and we just enjoy making them absolutely useless,
because why the (beep) not, all right?
Talking about something that was perfectly normal,
and by all intents and purposes,
either making it a 100,000% more bad-ass,
or just the most unreliable hunk of metal
you've ever laid your eyes on.
Ladies and gentlemen, today,
we're gonna be talking about you wanting to be,
and grow into being a car enthusiast.
(mellow hip-hop music) (engines screaming)
And welcome to Fitment Industries.
Be sure to check out our massive-ass gallery.
We have aftermarket cars on wheels, tires,
or suspension, that you can see what fits,
and pick it up if you like it.
That's pretty much how
we like started doing this entire thing,
was we just wanted to make a cool gallery,
so it was easy to figure out what fits your car,
taking the guessing out of it a little bit,
because guessing is not fun
when you're trying to make like a $1,200 purchase.
Also, also, if you do have a cool car,
add it to the gallery.
We need more.
It's like the "Star Wars" meme.
(dramatic music) - More!
- We need that, all right?
And if you're trying to finish your build
before the season starts,
we do have 0% financing available,
so you can pay it off later with your tax return.
Either way, let's get into some sauce
about talking about what it means to be a car enthusiast,
so these conversations
on TikTok and YouTube can be put to rest, okay?
Being a car enthusiast has been a thing
for quite literally since the dawn of time.
Ever since you could actually have a car,
people have been modifying them
to some sort of degree of some kind.
I'm pretty sure when they had horses,
they were modifying horses at that time, too, okay?
I'm pretty sure you could get horseshoes,
and fancy little dance-y things if you wanted 'em to.
But whether you're talking about
the beginning of the automotive culture with carriages,
and people actually woodworking 1-of-1 cabins
so they could have something unique
on the gravel roads of Boston,
or you're talkin' all the way up to
the '50s explosion of money, and the American dream,
which was because of World War II,
which conveniently included a vehicle for every family,
because they kinda slid that in there,
that, you know, you want a house,
you want two cars, you want family,
blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.
There you go. American dream.
Capitalism. Buy up.
People wanna be just different enough to be unique,
but not so much to the point that they are deemed weird.
Crazy how the world works like that.
The garage junkies of the United States
turned their last name into brands
they would all begin to know and love,
that people and us now know and love,
like Weiand, Holley, Edelbrock, and more.
These were the names that, from the '50s, and '40s,
and even into the '60s,
these names really started to capture the hearts and minds
of people that were enthusiasts
about building things in their garage.
And it kind of just went toe-to-toe
with the American dream.
Then big names like American Racing were founded,
and across the seas, names like Enkei, Weds,
Volk, and Work began making a name for themselves
until the '70s, allowing people to modify their wheels
just as much as their motor.
And in the '70s, you also had the expansion and explosion
of the international market of car manufacturing in Japan.
Over time, this extended even further
with brands like SEIBON, HKS, AWE,
COBB, Liberty Walk, RWB, and more,
to show you that you can just modify
just about everything that comes on the car,
plus a few things that you didn't know
you could actually modify on the car,
like they just added canards, because well,
it seems like an exciting thing to do.
And now, as we look into 2021,
you can turn your head into just about anything.
Like, you can modify anything.
And there is everything.
Max has a Toyota Matrix, and you build it, do a rally build.
How 'bout a Yaris? Wait, that's what Max has.
Go steal all the parts from a GR,
and make the Focus ST owners cry.
You own a C8 Corvette?
You can go set a world record, all right?
Congratulations, all right?
There's so many things you can do now
to literally dominate every facet
of YouTube, Twitter, DriveTribe, TikTok,
and then all of those other social media streams.
There's probably another one,
between us makin' this video, and talkin' about it.
And now, more-adays,
there's not a lot of subculture of a car modification
that hasn't been touched by someone,
and now, when you look at being a car enthusiast,
between different subcultures,
elbows are starting to get a little bumped.
And you know what?
Not everyone likes
their elbows getting touched, right, Max?
So when the RWB guy bumps into the purists,
the snide remarks begin, all right?
Evo function guys ain't about useless show cars,
and Miata people now cringe at Miatas
that have run amuck
with more plastic parts on it than metal.
And G owners, like the G35 and G37,
are still getting (beep) on for their exhaust.
We'll get through it, together.
It's not fair, all right?
It's a good platform.
So that's why we're done talking about the history
of being car enthusiasts, because you wanna know what?
There's like a good couple, two, three paragraphs on it
if you wanted to learn about the '40s, '50s, and '60s,
and how that established the foundational necessities
of being a car enthusiast in the 21st century,
but we're not gonna talk about that.
You want some of that?
Got like 9,000 videos back there that you can talk about,
and there's one right here, too.
We did one.
We did one about domestic wheels.
That was pretty neat, so thanks, mom, for watching it.
No, we're here to talk about
you wanting to be a car enthusiast.
What's it actually mean to have that,
and why are so many people up in arms
about determining what is, and what isn't,
and who is, and who isn't part of this secretive club, okay?
So what's the gate-keeping, and why does it matter?
All right, so you wanna be a car enthusiast.
Well, lemme tell you what you're really going to need
before you even jump into owning an actual car.
You're gonna wanna take yourself to Advanced Auto,
maybe O'Reilly's, maybe anywhere in between,
we're not sponsored by anyone,
but they pretty much all got the same stuff.
Brake cleaner, okay?
More microfibers than you're comfortable with,
zip ties, double-sided tape, 3M.
Don't get the trash version.
Trash version doesn't work.
Self tappers, you're gonna need 'em.
Window cleaner, the one that actually
is not meant for automotive, that's the one you want.
Comes in a white bottle.
Flatheads, three 10-millimeters,
because you're gonna lose two.
You're gonna wanna get at least one dugga-dugga machine,
a lo-pro jack, non-Harbor Freight jack stands,
and coffee, beer, or soda pop,
depending on where you're from.
Once you get all that stuff together,
you're really, really starting to get into what it means
to actually jump into being a car enthusiast,
even if you don't really have a car yet.
But once you have all of that, let's jump into it.
Being a car enthusiast, for some reason,
everyone wants to be labeled with, as,
or they wanna fight against being called it.
You'll see some people fighting about,
"Well, you're not a car enthusiast because of X reason."
And you just wanna reach through the monitor,
and you just wanna ask, "Why, why?
Why are we focused on that?"
Why is that the thing that we need to talk about right now?
What makes that conversation
just so passionate for people?
All right, so having a passion to modify cars
is enough of a passion for us,
because, quite honestly,
everybody's trying to shut down the car modification world.
The EPA is constantly trying to do it.
If you haven't seen, SEMA put out a big thing
trying to get people to sign a legislation
so that we can keep modifying our cars.
It's still a common thing,
so the more people we can get, the better.
The community, the culture,
and the market depends on people like you,
and people like me, to either take their cars,
and do some weird (beep) to them,
or we're kinda, sorta (beep).
So whether that's a show build, or function,
just doing that sort of stuff
is good enough to warrant
whatever fancy title you would like.
But being a car enthusiast does take a couple,
two, three things that you may not think about
until it's already too late,
mostly because we get infatuated with the idea
of being a car enthusiast
without actually going and learning what it's like
to be a car enthusiast.
It's like really wanting to be a mechanic,
'cause you love working on cars,
and then you go to UTI, then you get your graduation degree,
then you realize that being a mechanic
actually isn't really being a car enthusiast.
It can be tough.
Because there's quite a bit of sassy attitude,
try to learn from the people that know the most.
Now, it may seem counterintuitive,
but sometimes the older folks
that have the sassy attitude on the internet
have the most knowledge,
and I know they're weird, okay?
But get through that initial stab to your pride
when they call you out on installing something wrong,
and get their help or knowledge on how to fix it.
A lot of times,
these boys and girls have been there a long while,
and they've watched the more novice audience
claim to know everything because of a YouTube video or two,
when really, sometimes you just don't know these things
until you go and break them yourself.
So a lot of times, what we'd recommend
is listening to that older audience.
And jump into the forums, and read, learn,
understand, and ask questions as much as humanly possible
before you do anything away...
Oh, wait.
Before you do anything else.
And stay away from trying to put others down
until you're at least like 70-ish or so years old,
because if you do this weird thing
where you've been in it for six months,
and you start talkin' smack to everyone else,
it's just not really fun.
Putting others down does nothing,
and understanding why people do things means everything.
Then you can decide if that thing
is something that you truly wanna do or not to your car.
Just don't be mean.
Unless you're really, really old,
in which case, it's fun to have a couple
of old, mean geezers at a slam car show.
It's just enjoyable to watch.
Another thing, you need to try everything once
before you decide to not do it forever.
Now, lemme tell ya, autocross is neat,
and I love it, all right?
But going onto a Road America for the first time
and realizing just how much fun-slash-petrifying
that truly is makes me wanna completely change
that gray hunk of metal that you've seen before
with the red intake, because it is an absolute blast
to be on that road course,
and I just wanna keep doing that.
Not a road course, it's a track course, all right?
It's an absolute blast.
Now, go do those things.
Go try new stuff.
Have fun, and at least give it a shot,
because what you think you'd want to do
and what you may end up loving are two very different things
when you jump into all the subcategories
of what it means to be an automotive enthusiast.
And there's a lot of subcategories of the passion
that could cause you to wanna jump into drag-racing,
or autocross, or things like that.
Being into cars can be something that lasts a season,
or your entire life.
But either way, the best way to enjoy it
is by enveloping yourself with whatever it is
you choose to enjoy.
Try to learn from those around you,
avoid the toxicity wherever possible,
have fun, and don't forget to trip Sean
if you see him in public.
We do this (fart) because it allows us
to escape the lame world of everyday 9-to-5s,
and that's really what it's all about.
When we lose that,
or the build becomes more about impressing others,
or chasing likes, you'll lose the passion over time.
And it happens 100% of the time.
But each types have cultures,
and have different knowledge bases,
and experience levels, and people,
and potential issues, and difficulty,
and all those sort of things,
the same way that certain games
have different sort of difficulty levels,
and they're all built a little bit differently.
Some are action, some are adventure,
and some are just "Sims."
Don't let any of those things slow you down.
Enjoy the culture, and enjoy the build.
Enjoy everything you possibly can.
Try to avoid gate-keeping,
and for the love of God, it's wheels.
But what do you think?
Let us know below, and of course,
if you're looking for aftermarket wheels, tires,
or suspension, be sure to check us out
over at fitmentindustries.com.
I'm Alex, from Fitment Industries.
I'm not spilling my coffee this time,
'cause I did that last time.
We will see you later. Peace.
(heavy hip-hop music)