"Brand Loyalty" and hating the others is just counter-productive....

I get so tired of seeing jacked-up Dodge Ram pickups with a sticker of "Calvin" ( of the comic strip "Calvin&Hobbes ) pissing on a Chevy Bow-Tie or Ford emblem. I'm really tired of 50 year old men acting like their 12 at car shows. "Chevys suck!" "Mopars Rule" "Fords Suck" etc, etc. Get over yourselves guys. Like it or not the Small-block Chevy is THE engine of the 20th century and is still relevant today. You can buy mega-hp crate engines for very reasonable prices. Introduced in 1955 It quickly eclipsed the flathead Ford that had ruled the 40's and 50's as "The" hot rod engine. Vic Edelbrock Sr. got started in 1938 by making hot rod parts for Flathead Fords. However, if that's all he ever did he'd have eventually went out of business and the company wouldn't be the Juggernaut it is today. Vic Sr and Vic Jr, visionaries that they were,introduced new products and changed with the times. Now 75 years later they are a power in the automotive aftermarket industry. However if when Bob Joehnk approached Vic Jr about making a high-performance manifold for the Small-block Chevy-instead of doing it and marketing it-if he had sneered "My dad built this business on Flathead Ford parts, that's our specialty." "And I hate those goddamn Chevys". His business would have went down the tubes. Get an increasing share of a shrinking market. Sure-fire way to bankruptcy. Thank god he was smarter than that. Years ago I worked in an Import Performance Specialty store. We sold high-performance parts for VW's, Porsches, MGs, Triumphs, Jaguars, and Datsuns amd Toyotas. Headers, cams, Weber Carbs, stroker kits, cylinder had we had it all. I loved the job and I enjoyed talking to our customers and helping them build their cars. I had one guy that ran a "Mini-Stock" a Toyota Corolla in dirt track races. It had a 2TC overhead cam 1600cc engine. It had a Weber carb and a header and a hot cam in it. For a little car it was really fast. And he won a lot of races with it. Another guy did road races with a Datsun 510.  Other guys hot rodded VW's-one guy had a wicked Karmann Ghia that suprprised many musclecar owners. Then there was the British enthusiasts with the Triumph Spitfires and TR6's, MGBs and Midgets. And these guys hated each other. The brits would walk barefoot over hot coals rather than drive a "rice rocket". The Japanese enthusiasts would deride the VW owners, the Porsche owners would deride them all. It was hilarious. Sometimes we'd damn near have fistfights in the lobby as these guys hurled insults at what a piece of shit the other guy's car was. In reality they were all nice cars that people had put a lot of time and money into. They should have got together and formed a big racing club and let people see who was better on the track. Instead there was the British clubs, the German clubs, the asian clubs. And they'd never co-operate, even if someone did suggest a big "Show-n-Shine" or "Track day".  Sad. However-musclecar guys act the same way. Although I've owned just about everything-I even briefly had a 302 Maverick "Grabber"-I'm a Pontiac Guy. I can't remember the number of times I've left a speed shop and been walking to my GTO or T/A or Ventura or Gran Prix, or whatever Pontiac I owned at the time and some asshole has to yell at me "Get a ( fill in the make-"Mopar, Chevy, Ford, Olds, AMC" ) . To which my response is always "Why would I want to Downgrade and drive a piece of shit like that?"  That usually shuts them right up. I must admit-that if this provokes further belligerence, I'm happy to go there too. I fought Golden Gloves in college and even turned pro for a while. Call me immature, but if some 40 year old adolescent wants his ass kicked because he said my car sucked and I said his sucked worse then I'll be happy to oblige. And that's a sad state of affairs. We all ought to appreciate a nice car regardless of make or model. So next time you see a hated Ford or Chevy or whatever that's done really nice, grit your teeth and politely say "Nice Car." If we all do that maybe the world will be a little nicer place.  Mastermind