All personal preference, of course, but..
Baytona USA, I can NOT STAND that effin' attract sound.music/noise. Arg. (Used to have two of those in one of my arcades.. hearing that "Day-Ton-A!" got really old, really, really quickly.

Outrun is fun, I could enjoy that.

Crusiin' <fill in the blank> is not bad, but car handling sucks, and there's a very annoying bug in some of them that causes you to hit an 'invisible' car. Argh.

IMHO, Rush is the best line of racing games - to me, the car handling is best, and the course 'shortcuts' are fun as hell. Yes, I have two of these (Alcatraz versions), linked and soon to be online to race against others.

Some of them (Rush, at least?) you can interconnect over the internet and race against people states away (assuming you can get a VPN set up fro Rush, not sure about the others..)

We need to race!

For one of the earleir driving games, I love Hard Drivin' JUST for the instant reply of crashing.

True. The original Rush: Extreme Racing (first in the series) was one solid cabinet. Rush the Rock (Rush: Extreme Racing Alcatraz Edition), the second, did have a two-part cabinet.
However, all Rush's could be upgraded to Rush the Rock, so you will find a lot of RtR's in non-seperatable cabinets. (One of mine is in an original cabinet, the other is splittable.)

Jeez, I thought you had linked me to the Attract Mode sounds.

Sorry guys, I know Daytona's popular, but hearing that call out, every 30 seconds for hours at a time (literally..)... it got old, really quickly.

At least with pins, they only make an attract mode jingle.sound once every fifteen minutes or some such.

I'll reiterate that the fun thing about playing Rush alone is searching for and finding the shortcuts. There's a hell of one in one of RtR's courses that takes you *over* a nudity bar and Atari's offices. (Though you will never see them going the 'regular' way around the shortcut.) Plus, some short-cuts are actually longer-cuts, but fun as heck to just mess around.

Completely non-scientifically, I went through the posts and added up points. (First mention gets two points, second gets a point, and i combined versions - all Rush's together, all Cruisin's together, all Drivin's together, etc..) And this is the 'score' -
Daytona USA - 7
Crusi'n - 7
Rush - 14
Hard Drivin' - 6
Super GT - 2
Rally - 2
Initial D3 - 3
Tokyo Drift - 6
Off Road - 2

I'm surprised Tokyo Drft got that many mentions. May have to look it up.

I've heard good things about Crazy Taxi. I've never gotten to play it yet, though.

(And I dunno about the other racers, but you CAN go backwards through Rush tracks. You don't get bonus time, but you do get to see some neat easter eggs.)

Don't know for 2049s; for comparison, a single RtR can go for around $300.

Yah, IMHO by far. I (personally) wouldn't go higher than $800 for the pair..

Wow. Prices must be higher away from the coast, yeah. (Maybe availablility?) Over here, there's at least two for sale at any one time within 100 miles of DC, NY or Boston.

Part of the reason they're so cheap is because they ARE large, and hell to move. Someone just offered me before Xmas one working 2049 for $200 - I didn't take it because my other games are RtR's, and a single 2049 wouldn't do anything for me. Don't get me wrong, I like the game! Just having one, and trying to move it myself.. Not worth my time. Now maybe sometime in the future, I'll look around for two, and have two RtR's and two 2049's, but.. hey.

Case in point..

I played my game tonight, and found TWO new (to me) previously unknown shortcuts. One takes me across a whole bunch of buildings, and you FLY..

I believe that you can link up to 8. if not 8, then 4.

Stand up or sit down?
Either way, take the monitor out to lighten it up. For sit-down, the cabinet splits in two, to make it easier.

No. You would have to go wide-screen, and make a new monitor bezel to fit the display.
Main reason I haven't changed over any of my games yet..

Nah. use an OSSC. You'd need to get a converter anyways. Spend the extra, and use one of these, so that scanlines and pixels look original.
Granted, I'd stick with tubes as long as you can - but if you have to convert because you cannot find a tube to use, and there's no market where you are, then.. it's possible, and preferable to parting a game out.