Never did own a muscle car, but I'm a manual transmission zealot if that counts for any cred on this thread. I was taught to drive on a stick at 16 and, my right hand to doG, I've never owned anything but manuals ever since. Sure, I may've briefly driven automatics that belonged to friends while doing a favor, or been stuck with one of those 4 speed slushboxes when I needed a rental out of state and such. But I have never put my name to a title on anything that didn't have a clutch on the floor and a double H pattern waiting at my right hand. Unless you count the bikes, since they're sequential shift down at the foot. Motorcycles are the other passion. I put 42k miles on a little 500cc cruiser, which is considerable when you consider most guys only do somewhere between 2-6k before they sell a bike. Ditto I spend a lot of time turning wrenches. Kinda comes with the territory when you own land out in the country and old trucks -- everything's prone to breaking down. Got a two cylinder diesel tractor that never lets me turn her key without turning a wrench first too, something's always broken. Little two stroke tools like string trimmers, chainsaws, you name it. Get sidetracked out here fixing these machines before I can get back to actually doing the work I intended to use them for in the first place.
Hell, last year I wrecked my little jap econobox and quit my job for 4 months just so I could do a special project: my first front end rebuild. Spent my days joyously scouring junkyards with a spring in my step, on the hunt for everything from subframes, lower control arms, to steering racks & gearboxes, mounts, ECUs, brake & clutch masters, etc. Not to mention all the unibody frame panels. I sat out there in the field with nothing but a cordless drill and a pile of Harbor Freight spot weld cutters, doggedly drilling (lol pun) 172 spot welds to take the entire driver's side chunk of unibody off a donor that hadn't been wrecked in the front. Then came back home with it and "grafted" (MIG welded) it onto mine. Wheel well, strut tower, transmission cantilevered U socket thing off the passenger cabin, all of it. Never bothered with the exterior body panels so she still looks like hell, but damn it, I put her back on the road again. I've had her over 100 and she wobbles a little but everything does what it needs to.
Anyway, Cyon, nope you're not alone. There are fellow gearheads to be found here. What really blew me away was Mr. Regular of the RCR youtube channel being an avid furry. At least purportedly anyways; I wouldn't want to go spreading untrue rumors, but all the proof's already out there so I guess he knows that people know. He's a fellow literary type too, and I'm betting him and I have read a lot of the same classics. I always swell with pride for some reason when I think of him being one of ours, even if a distant cousin of the anthro world.
