New Models and Many Rants

At this point, I've uploaded the notes of my old model cars. Now that I have cleansed my mental palette, I can now put up new designs and upgrades.

The resources I am using for this endeavor are my old books:
1. Car Wars Pocket Box (1983 Edition)
2. Truck Stop Pocket Box
3. Uncle Al 2035
4. ADQ 3/1, 3/3
4. Notes from my friends books (I had little disposable income as a teenager, cry me a river)

And the recent resources:
1. Car Wars Compendium vol. 2 (1990, ISBN 1556341458) - the only core rulebook still available (see below)
2. GURPS Autoduel America (1997, ISBN 1556342403) - just to get into the RPG mood
3. The MADHAT excel car designer
4. A lot of great online stuff (which I've tried to put in my link-list)

The problem is that I do not own the most up-to-date rulebooks:
1. The Car Wars Compendium, vol. 2, 5th Edition. (1996, ISBN 1556343167)
2. Uncle Albert's Catalog from Hell (ISBN 1556342209)

The CWC2.5 - as it's known - costs $100-300. UACFH has been seen in the mid-$30 range. After a few months of trying to buy both, I succumbed and purchased CWC2 for $6.99. $300 vs. 7? You do the math.

I felt the purchase was justified because - as far as I could glean online - there doesn't seem to be major differences. Note, for the life of me, while I can find some errata for the 1990 book (here), it's not on the official page and I don't see a list of changes from 2.0 to 2.5.

Core Rulebook Rant

Why are the CORE RULEBOOKS not being printed by Steve Jackson games? Or even being offered as PDF files on their website? Possible answers:

1. SJGames has introduced an updated "5th Edition" version of the game - which is not well liked, as far as I can tell - and SJ doesn't want to promulgate any books from it's old regime.

2. and/or SJGames can claim they *do* sell the old books... by providing a page of stores around the world that sell old games. And considering SJGames created "Illuminati" they may also be anonymously selling their stockpile of old rulebooks to make the 500% markup on the cover-price.

Considering how easy and cheap it would be to make a PDF copy of these books, the fact that SJGames doesn't is infuriating.

As it is, there are a few new weapons and rules that I don't have in my rulebooks - or have found online. I've spent some time reverse engineering the MADHAT information, but that only goes so far.

As such, the new designs and rules-rants I will soon post are hampered by my rulebook ignorance. Apologies ahead of time.