We’ve all gotten the question before: You have a finite amount of cash to blow on one — or maybe if you’re lucky, two or three — vehicles of your choosing.

We all have our go-to responses. Because I grew up playing Sega Rally and Need For Speed II, my answers invariably include the Lancia Delta Integrale and McLaren F1. Those are the answers I tend to give, but they’re not necessarily the answers I want to give.

Howdy, my name’s Adam. I’m a new writer here, but I’ve been lurking around these parts as a reader for a long time. It’s fair to say that my appreciation for this weird and wonderful world of cars we all enjoy was shaped significantly by this site and the storied names that have penned its many blogs. But long before that, I fell in love with cars by way of video games.

I really don’t know which passion was cemented first. My earliest childhood memories are of playing Daytona USA on my brother’s Sega Saturn, watching replays of my horrendous driving in Ridge Racer Revolution, and spinning hopelessly in the grass at Autumn Ring Mini in an Aston Martin DB7 Volante in Gran Turismo. We traded in Yoshi’s Story on the N64 to get GT — I wasn’t too happy about that at the time, but it brought me here, so I suppose everything has a way of working out.

When I consider the cars that occupy my dreams, the usual suspects appear: iconic Group B rally legends, Le Mans homologation specials, Japanese street racing heroes and whatever the hell the Aixam Mega Track is.

But there’s also a world of cars that could appear only in my dreams, like the Assoluto Bisonte from Ridge Racer Type 4, a racing game so rich with lore in its fictional car companies and teams, it’s a great travesty it was never adapted into at least a manga. Or the all-wheel-drive FTO LM Edition racecar from Gran Turismo, which should have compelled Mitsubishi to launch a ludicrously expensive global GT program in real life based on its looks alone. And who among us could forget the legendary Hornet of Daytona fame, canonically piloted by Virtua Fighter star Jacky Bryant?

That R33 GT-R LM homologation special at the top of this post may as well have been made up. There’s exactly one in the entire world, and those who watched it roll off a trailer in the intro cinematic for the original Gran Turismo 22 years ago likely weren’t even aware of that. You can imagine my shock and utter bewilderment when I found it at the 2018 New York auto show, of all places.

Somewhere in my parents’ basement, there are Sterilite drawers overflowing with sketches of racetracks that were modifications of tracks from my favorite titles, and you’ll find old thumb drives loaded with random design experiments, from game interface mockups to branding for Wipeout racing teams. And like every dude on the internet, I have a podcast, called , where a friend and I chat at length about these things.

I’ve already noticed a serious deficiency on my part though — I own but one car. This falls well short of the Jalopnik contributor quota of many cars, though I’m willing to correct that. I own an orange Fiesta ST nicknamed Tails; the red Dart and blue Focus that preceded it were named Sonic and Knuckles, respectively. I can hear your eyes rolling and I don’t blame you — this is probably going to happen often, so we best settle in and get used to it now.

Seriously though, I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of the best dang community of car nerds on this web, and I hope to make things y’all enjoy. And if I’ve inspired you to consider the fonts in your ride’s instrument cluster or dig up a copy of a forgettable racing game you haven’t played in 15 years, I’ve done my job.