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[Taxvictim]

In 1999 I bought a '96 I-30t, black ext./black leather, 5 speed, and loved it. Very roomy, very elegant, fun to drive. It was totally stock, and had 45k miles on it when I got it. I learned how to do a lot of the maintenance on it myself, including changing the transmission fluid to Redline, replacing the stock airbox with a JWT pop charger plus a Frankencar midpipe. Two years ago, at 135k miles, a woman turned in front of me and the car was totalled. Her insurance company only wanted to give me $5,000 for it, but I demonstrated to them how there were no black/black five speeds for sale anywhere, plus I drafted a lawsuit against the woman and faxed it to the insurance company to prove I was serious. They paid me $7,000 for the car, which was still less than it was worth to me.

First I bought a friend's Saab, but missed my I-30t so much that I located a black 5-speed in Kentucky, flew there to buy it for $5,500, and drove it home. (Had to then sell the Saab, of course.) My new '96 I-30t is black/beige (really miss the black leather interior), and the previous owner had dropped the car 1 1/2 inches with Eibach springs and Kone shocks.

The handling was great, but the ride was so rough and the engine noise was very loud with the Greddy cat-back exhaust and K&N filter. So, I put the stock airbox back in, put a stock muffler on it, and set the Kone shocks to maximum cush. (Re-setting the back shocks required a trip to a mechanic.)

The car was smoother, but still loud, so I got Brown Bread, which is a sound dampener. It's basically tar paper with a foil lining on one side, like the expensive DynaMat they sell at Circuit City. You stick it directly to metal and it dampens the metal's ability to transmit sound. I put the Brown Bread inside all of the doors, the trunk, and under the carpet in the passenger compartment. I also bought two pieces of lead-lined foam to put under the carpet in the front seats, up the firewall, to help keep engine noise out of the passenger compartment. I also bought a hood-liner to keep engine noise from coming up through the hood and through the windscreen into the passenger compartment. It was a fun project, and I dropped the road noise at 55 mph by three decibels, while still keeping the car's great handling characteristics. The car now has 175k miles on it.

All totalled, I've spent 135,000 miles of my life behind the wheel of an Infiniti. I've had two Infiniti's because I admire the engineering, comfort, and reliability so much.

Nissan's engineering impressed me so much. that I bought a new Maxima last year. I passed on the G35 because it's smaller than the Max. The Max has a 6 speed "close ratio" manual transmission. It's not as much fun to drive as the Infiniti's five speed. Why put closer gears on a car with a more powerful engine? Still, I like the Max, but I drive my '96 I-30t about twenty percent of the time. I'm saving it for my daughter, who turns 16 next year.