I was introduced to AWD when I bought a new black 1990 Eagle Talon TSi AWD back in the summer of '90. From then on, I was hooked on AWD. I stumbled onto a newsletter club for DSM's. DSM stands for Diamond Star Motors - the joint venture between Chrysler & Mitsubishi. DSM produced the Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, and Plymouth Laser, all out of Normal Illinois. When I discovered this newsletter club, the mods began. I bought another new AWD Talon in 1993, this time a white one. By then, the DSM "cult" was growing quickly. Club DSM was formed, then Club DSM Canada. Think twice before you click on these links, because once you join, there is no looking back, and you can kiss whatever savings you have locked up in your piggy bank goodbye!

Click here for a list of my mods.

When Robbie came along, we needed a sedan. Hmmm, AWD...sedan...Subaru? nope. Volvo? Well, they only had an AWD wagon at the time, so, nope. Audi? Now you're talkin'. I'd love an S4, but they weren't out yet. So A4 it was. The next question was 2.8L V6 or 1.8L turbo with plans to modify it later on. After seeing what a money pit the Talons were, I decided to go for the V6 with no plans for any mods.

After the A4, I had some unknown itch to buy another Audi. This time I wanted to get an S4, but I wanted to trade the Talon in for this (momentary insanity). I had the S4 ordered, but about a month before delivery, I backed out.

Since the Corvette ZR-1 came out, I thought to myself that I'd one day own a Corvette, even if it wasn't AWD. Well, the ZR-1 may be the "King of the Hill", but the C5 is the best Vette yet. Hmmm, cancel the S4, get a C5...perfect! The model year 2000 was the first for the colour Millennium Yellow and these were very hard to get. It's also one of two colours that are cost options. For the C5, the manual transmission is a cost option as well and the automatic is standard equipment...ass backwards if you ask me. The six speed is over a grand!! It's something I had to have though. I ordered the car in Oct.99 and was lucky that my dealer was quickly able to get an allocation for a yellow one. The car arrived just after Christmas. We had very little snow up to that point and I thought I'd be able to drive it but as luck would have it, we got dumped on the day my car was delivered! Fortunately, it was flatbedded right to my door. I can't seem to get rid of the "modifying bug" from back in my Talon days. I had already bought some mods even before the car was delivered. You can never have enough power. I added this in my quest for more. I did some appearance mods as well.

I recently got the C5 onto the dyno. See and read about it here. You can read about my boneheaded move too!

I've lowered the car to get rid of that awful "4x4" look and replaced the stock wheels with some OEM high polished wheels. See The car and The wheels.

More pics of Robbie up

My day in Shannonville in a Formula 3000