I must say first, that for being "fumed", you wrote that out pretty well.
However, I don't know about the points you're trying to make. The subject line says "Why is everyone trying to make the Tour a ricer?" I saw nothing in your rant that backed this statement up. In actuality, I expected to see pictures. If that was the case, I'd be disappointed, because I'm frankly tired of seeing all the "Look at this Tour! *puke*" threads. The recent one in the pictures forum with a wing and headlight covers comes to mind. The car was fine. Either way, it's a theory that everyone will bend to suit their own personal taste, and there's no escaping it. You can't control what other people want to do to their cars. Believe me, I've already tried.
I'm just going to agree with everyone on the whole "car lowering" thing. It poses many advantages to stock ride heights, and indeed, it looks better to the majority. That's all I really have to say about that.
I'm 17 years old, and I like my system blaring. As the famous quote goes, "If it's too loud, you're too old." and I believe that to a good extent. Though there are times where headaches, time of day, etc factor in, I almost always have headphones on my ears or the CD player going in the car. The louder and clearer the system is, the better.
As for mufflers, everyone has their opinions and telling the nay-sayers to get over it just doesn't work. I personally have no problem with "ricer" mufflers. I think they look cool. Pienstar's car has some of the baddest mufflers I've ever seen. (mad props dude!) Again, that's their personal preference and if they want to "sound" fast, let them. It would be a lot easier to buy earplugs for yourself than to face them in court after you were caught trying to remove their mufflers with firecrackers and a sledgehammer.
All in all, I don't feel that I "wasted" 20 minutes reading everything, because a lot of people like yourself had some decent points, and I also understand the need to "vent". You had a good idea going in your mind, I just think you could've better planned how to get the point across.
P.S. I've yet to see a fully riced Contour. Hell, I barely see anything above a GL and if I get passed by an SVT, the sun shines just a little bit brighter and the grass is just a little bit greener.
