In all honesty, I really don't want our cars to have much respect. The more you can impress through experience, the better. Besides, the moment we get "respect", that's the moment we get a wave of clowns dressing Contiques up in the cheap aesthetic crap from parts stores (windshield washer LEDs, "chrome" wiper blades, etc.). Look what happened to Honda. I don't know where their respect came from, but they've been exploited big time.
On a side note, I saw the worst example of an Uncle Ben's special the other day. It was a circa 90 Civic hatchback. It had the usual: beehive muffler, and wing. Funny thing is that on those hatchbacks you have to put the wings on the roof of the car. And it was a huge homemade wing, too. He also had a tach that took up half of his dashboard. Wish I had a digicam to snap a pic of that joker.
