Hej Koskinen poiki!

Yeah they're all right, you don't want to build a car, it is too hard,
nobody has ever built a car before and besides you won't be in the woods
next week and that is the most important thing isn't it?

After all the sooner you buy somebody else's cast off project, the sooner
you can pay a big ebntry fee and find out that :

a) the suspenders are bent in 3 out of 4 corners
b) the wiring loom is a rats nest
c) the fuel system is full of rust
d) the "rally suspension" is street shocks
e) you have to buy a trannie cause the weasel swapped out the one in the
   car after you test drove it when you were arranging payment and
   transport.
f) the cage is so stupidly overbuilt that you have to saw out approx
   100lbs of junk which was doing nothing for saftey or strength.
g) the cage isn't legal and needs serious reworking to be legal
h) the car is a dismal slow pig and you had more fun beating your
   Maz-dog/Fraud Ex-squirt on the roads to Valhalla shouting "voy voto!"
   when you slid around in it.

No one of the big differences between the US rally scene and the scene in
"gammla Finland" (OK ok det är fel språk men du fattar nog, va?) and in
"grannlandet Sverige" is this push to buy a so called prepared car,
somehow there all sorts of people i know seeem to not blink an eye about
deciding to go out to the barn and build a car, since I guess they
understand that they working with their own hands is OK, and that that
'sweat equity' is a pretty good value, and that you maintain control on
the quality of the components in the car.

(If you skimped on the CV joints for example, you maybe get a spare in
the service vehicle, or if you didn't strengthen the hell out of the
shell, you use your noodle and don't smash into things like there's no
tomorrow...)

See, at least you KNOW what's up with the car.

But I'm an old Rhino-saur, what the puck do I know, and that list of
things above was just from the last 5-6 cars that folks I know who bought
"prepared cars", and probably not representative.

And satisfying your need to go into the wood NEXT WEEK is what has made
this country great!!! 

Yep good ol' Instant Gratification, that's what it's all about.

So Koskinen, if I were you I wouldn't search the archives here for any of
the discussion on GroupF or rallying in Finland or look at the Group 222
forum, or look at the CCCP forum.

(Men, hoppas du ser ironi när du stirrar på det!  Hej!)
PS Koskinen, you don't really expect me to know Finnish, too do you!!!
Satans perkele!! Swedish is an 'oafish-al' language too!
Whaddya you think Gronholm speaks?

John Vanlandingham
Seattle, WA. 98168