Yes, Hamlet, the play written by William Shakespeare. Good stuff in there for us Mustang enthusiasts. Well, maybe not the whole play but the famous line, “To thine own self be true.”

Who would have thought that Billy Shake would have had words to the wise for us Mustang guys, but there they are.

I guess the first thing we need to do is to translate those words into something that we can all understand. What Billy was telling us was to stop bullshitting ourselves. Pretty simple advice really, too bad few of us follow it.

For instance, here at Accufab we sell throttle bodies, headers and other stuff. We always want our customers to get the products that they want, and also the correct products for what they need to accomplish. These are not always the same things however, and because we make different sizes of these products, we spend some time with each customer discussing the options.

When a customer calls up on the phone to order a set of headers, as an example, we always ask a few simple questions regarding his combination. One of the standard questions is, “How do you use your car? Is it a race car or a street car?”

Here is a typical response. “My car is a “street-strip car”.

Oh really?

Further clarifying questions addressed to the customer might go like this. “OK, on your street- strip car, how many miles do you drive on the street, on an average, each year?” Response, “Oh, about 10,000 to 12,000 miles.”. “OK, how many times do you visit the drag strip every year?” Response, “Oh, about 3 times a year.” OK, on an average, how many passes do you make at the track when you go to the drag strip?” Response, “Oh, about 4 quarter mile passes.”

Now, let’s break this scenario down a little, shall we? This “street-strip car” runs 12,000 miles a year on the road and 6 miles a year at the drag strip. Does this sound like a street-strip car to you? Or is this a STREET car that occasionally goes to the drag races?

Is the owner of this car BS’ing himself about it being a “street-strip car”? Absolutely. If more than 99.99% of your driving is going to be on the street (as it is in this example), the performance equipment should be 99.99% compatible with performing great while driving on the street. Meaning, the car should be set up for pump gas, have a reasonably low compression ratio, a reasonably configured hydraulic camshaft, a reasonably sized carb or throttle body, reasonably sized injectors, and does NOT need a 2 1/8” primary header with a 4” exhaust system or 4.56:1 gears in the rear end.

I am all for having a super performing street machine, one that can put the fear of God into the passengers and also take care of itself against the neighborhood Corvette’s and Camaro’s. However, this is not a race car and in fact, setting it up as a race car may actually take away from its street performance.

If your decision on purchasing performance equipment is going to be coming only from the “experts” on the internet message boards, you will probably be buying into the “bigger is better” philosophy. In my opinion, this is not a good philosophy when it comes to building a good all-around high performance street machine. You have to get the components that fit correctly with what you are trying to do. Nobody goes into Sears and buys pants that are 3 sizes too big because someone said that “bigger is better” because if you do, they know that they won’t fit. The same holds true for hopping up your street machine. Don’t BS yourself pretending that it is some kind of race car. If the vast percentage of your driving is going to be on the street, build a great street machine.

Listen to old Billy Shake, he knew what he was talking about.