A dangerous hobby...

Bilal Hussein gazed lovingly at his 1991 Mustang GT convertible. Sure, it already has a skull in a jester's hat stenciled on the hood, but if the sky were the limit, he would add monster tires, a new stereo "and a set of mufflers that shoot out flames."

And his automotive holy grail? Hydraulics to make his car bounce like the ones he sees on TV.

"If only we had the materials here," said Hussein, a 26-year-old ambulance driver.

Seif Eddin Abdel Nasser, 22, has more modest dreams for his 1993 red Ford Probe with yellow racing stripes and "Fright Night" stenciled on the rear window.

"I just want to be able to drive it all over Baghdad," he said.

Abdel Nasser, who works as a security guard for the Baghdad bureau of a Western television news station, feels safe driving only in the fairly quiet, upscale districts of Karada and Jadriya.

"I never go near Palestine Street, Yarmouk, Beirut Square" or other dodgy districts, he said.

These are conflicted times for Baghdad's tightknit community of car-heads.

The fall of Saddam Hussein has enabled them to create their dream rides like never before. Saddam's notorious son Uday and his cronies controlled all car imports into Iraq. Uday was also a car freak known for on-the-spot confiscations of any vehicle that caught his fancy.

The end of the Saddam era opened Iraq's borders to an unrestrained flow of new and used cars, along with exotic parts and Western car magazines. The MTV show Pimp My Ride is now a popular feature on Arabic satellite television; Bilal Hussein, the Mustang driver who dreams of flaming mufflers, is a big fan.

But the dictator's ouster also unleashed an era of Baghdad lawlessness that makes owning a head-turning ride a dangerous hobby. In addition to the threat from roving gangs of opportunistic carjackers, there are armed fundamentalists, both Sunni and Shiite, who might view an overly showy car as sinfully extravagant.

"We have the Mahdi Army on one side, al-Qaida on the other side, thieves everywhere, and we're caught in the middle," said Hussein, who also sticks to safer streets.

The dangers of the Baghdad streets don't seem to discourage Adnan Ghulan, 27, who, along with his 28-year-old brother, Hisham, runs an auto repair shop that's one of the anchors of the city's car culture.

Hussein and Abdel Nasser are regular visitors. Abdel Nasser often brings in pages from one of his favorite car magazines with suggested designs or modifications for his Probe.

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