Mike, I always enjoy reading your posts. I wonder why you're not a writer for some Mustang magazine you clearly have some skills.
Anyway. I agree and wanted to share my disgraces as well.
When I was 16, my parents gave me a rotted out POS Cougar with a 3.8 (slow as shyte) V6. This was back when the Fox 5.0 was king of the street, I dreamed of owning a 302 ford but couldn't. So I bought some chrome tailpipes, installed on on the driver side. And didn't have the money to even make a dual exhaust possible. I just hung the chrome pipe on the other side, it did NOTHING. Just bolted to the bumper haha.
Talk about rice, good thing that term didn't exist back then. We used the term "Canadian Tire Build" (Canadian Tire is like a pep-boys type store I guess).
Other ricer stupid (and dangerous) modifications included the flex-lite fan I installed. Of course the engine rotation wasn't right so, I bent the fan blades the other way and installed it hahaha!
Wanted lettered tires, couldn't afford that so I had the tires rotated (whitewalls on the inside) and bought some white paint and painted in the letters "TigerPaw" hahaha!
Then I had a glimpse of intelligence, removed the fake tailpipe, bought new black tires, worked like hell at fixing the body, painted the car at a friend's bodyshop and it went from some douchbag pre-rice era ricer to a clean 84 Cougar. Still slow as balls but at least the V8 guys didn't point and laugh anymore.