Stance Is Everything…. It's all about how it sits

Derek Kreindler is well educated, well spoken, Toronto based car nut who is not scared to voice his opinions. He recently wrote a article titled Hella Suck for his personal blog Rich Corinthian Leather. Hella Suck touched on his feelings towards what is now known as the stance movement and was published on Speed: Sport Life where Motor Mavens found it and all hell broke loose.

If you have yet to read Hella Suck I suggest that you do, however might I also suggest that you take a deep breath before responding to it.

After reading Hella Suck it would be to say ‘you mad’ to Derek or call him a hater, and plenty have, but if you take a second to look past the harsh words he might have for your particular vehicle or styling prefrence you might just notice that he does raise some valid points.

One of his main points in regards to practicality is fairly valid:

Maybe it will fly in California, but in Toronto, with roads like the surface of the Moon and 6 months of snow, this style is impractical if not unfeasible.

While myself, and a fair number of others in Toronto, drive their lowered  car year round I would be lying if I said it was practical. I’ve pushed snow and scraped speed bumps from Toronto Ontario to London Ontario, and even as far as State College Pennsylvania.

The fact is Toronto’s best stanced vehicles are rarely seen in both the summer and the winter months. This is because while six months of the year we have to compete with snow, the other six we have to worry about police officers pulling our rides off the road for being ‘too low‘ a practical mind field of newly formed potholes.

So Derek is right this look doesn’t really ‘fly’ in the GTA, it sort of glides with occasional touches on the ground or entangles in the power lines. Those of us who love it, do it, and those that don’t ride their cars a little higher.

The second point of Derek’s really got me thinking:

Setting up a car for drifting is usually ass-backwards to what actually makes a car handle. Still, it has managed to permeate the collective consciousness of young car enthusiasts, who are unaware that buying coil overs with absurdly stiff springs doesn’t actually make a car handle well, but rather masks the deficiencies of a poorly designed car.

I’m not going to pretend that I know the ins and outs about drift setup (or grip setup for that matter) but I know a little bit about both and I have seen a few people set their cars up for killer stance and try and also claim that they have improved their handling at the same time.

I think we all know that lowering a car has a breaking point and once you get past a certain height (which is different for all vehicles based on their initial suspension geometry) handling performance begins to lose ground to aesthetic.

Which is fine!

If the owner of the car, is willing to sacrifice performance for a look that is pleasing their eye than I think they deserve the freedom to do so. This freedom should also be granted to those who choose not to slam their cars as well.

Every aspect of the automotive hobby centers around personal choice and I think it would be beneficial for all of us if we all remembered this rather than trying to force our opinions on one another.

Moving on:

Most of the “cool mods” you can do to a given car makes it ineligible for most timed amateur competitions.

This point is one that really rang true to me and I think that a lot of people missed it because  it was closely followed the “Where else could anyone consider a Corolla as “dope” while keeping a straight face” comment.

While the modifications I made to my vehicle have not made me ineligible for timed competitions (that I am aware of) they have placed me in an autocross class that is not representative of my driving skill or experience which is, and I am not too proud to admit, a rookie.

When I do finally pop my autocross cherry there is a good chance I will be racing against drivers who have done the same modifications I have done not for looks but because they exceeded the limits of the factory components rather than just got sick of how they made the car look.

While I made sure the parts I fitted to my car were from quality manufacturers and took care to install them properly their is no telling how they will have positively or negatively affected my cars track performance and this is because I didn’t build my car with a track focus if I had I surely would have consulted the rule books of whatever classes I chose to participate in.

I think that while all of us become more and more wrapped up in our own preferred tuning scene it’s becoming to easy to forget that people outside of that scene do have valid opinions.

Instead of trying to shove the stance movement, or functional movement, down each others throats lets learn to respect aspects of each others point of view in discussion and go home to build our cars to our tastes.

We don’t have to agree but that doesn’t mean we can’t be civil because at the day we are all car enthusiasts that share a love for our cars that goes far beyond the transportation tool it really is.

If you are interested in reading more responses to Derek’s original article check out “Guys, I think we should let Rudolf play some of our reindeer games before he goes postal.” and “Drift Stylings debate: To Slam or not to Slam“

This has actually been on the about page for awhile but I figured that I should make an ‘official’ announcement since as of yesterday he is now an official student of photography. I ‘d like to welcome My friend Keven aka K.Sold aboard as a contributing photographer to Stance Is Everything.

Keven, like my girlfriend, is not new to the site at all. He has been contributing photos and Theme Tuesday ideas for awhile now, and comments quite a bit.

He was actually the photographer behind the feature on Dales 62 Impala and he was a driver/shooter for the rolling experiment shoot.

Aside from his work behind the lens he has been a big part in my continuing motivation to keep this little project going as we talk about cars basically non stop and while his current car is at stock height he has big plans for it. His old e36 high sided on a speed bump once so I know he has it in him to create another head turner.

Look for more photos with the K.Sold watermark to appear here on Stance Is Everything and enjoy some of the work he has already sent in.

Pretty soon I am going to have to learn how to work my Rebel XT a bit better…

In case your hangover didn’t remind you it’s New Years 2010 today and 2009 will always be a memorable year for myself and Stance Is Everything since it’s the year it started. When I first wrote  this post on June 14th I wasn’t quite sure what I was starting but with the site is on the verge of cracking 75,000 page views I think I’ve started something some what significant. With that number in mind and the Barret Jackson Auction playing all day on my TV I figure that there is no better time than now to take a look at the most popular content of 2009.

Top Winter Wednesday of 2009

Winter Wednesdays are a relatively new thing here at S.I.E. since winter (thankfully) took it’s time to get started. At only three posts deep I didn’t expect this category to pull out crazy numbers but it seems to be doing fairly well despite it’s infancy. The most popular Winter Wednesday post so far has been the Winter Stretch: Union Style post, it seems that quite a few people had thought of stretching winter tires before and now that Union has done it I foresee more people following.

Top Theme Tuesday post of 2009

I have a lot of fun doing the Theme Tuesday posts and since Tuesdays are typically my highest trafficked day of the week don’t expect this category to die out any time in the near future. Really it’s no surprise that the Girls With Hot Rides post is not only the most viewed Theme Tuesday post but also the most commented post of the year. Guys like cars, and guys like girls, that’s no surprise, what made this post different was that it was focused on the cars the girls drove and not so much the girls themselves.

Top WTF Friday post of 2009

WTF Friday’s are another one of my favorite posts to do since  the internet provides no shortage of automotive tomfoolery or off the wall odd ball automobiles worth sharing. Sometimes I have a hard time deciding on exactly what to run and what is too ‘run of the mill’ for a WTF Friday post. Of all the the WTF Fridays I did this year I was a little surprised to see that the WTF Friday featuring street legal bumper cars was the most popular. This post brought in posts from all over the internet including quite a few guitar forums, odd.

Top Article of 2009

I’ve really only written a few things that I would consider ‘articles‘ in this first year so I didn’t expect the numbers for this category to be too high but thanks to some Twitter love from Speed Hunters I’m glad to see that this article on Function Vs Form shot to the top of the most visited article list.

Top Event Coverage post of 2009

Going out and covering events was a great way to spend a lot of this summer, even more so the free events when I was unemployed, the GTA has a lot of high caliber cars of all sorts so being able to document these and pull inspiration from them is a great thing. Importfest was one of the last shows I covered in 2009 and the car that made the Importfest coverage the most popular of all of the events I covered I almost didn’t take a picture of. Thankfully I did and now the ‘Tekken Car‘ is internet famous because of pictures I took. Shouts to kotaku for running this car on their home page.

Top Readers Ride post of 2009

The Readers Rides category is still fairly new with under 10 posts but Adrian and Will promoted their Readers Ride post hard and shot to the top of the list with the most traffic. These guys are always up to something and I can’t wait to see what these guys are up to next.

Top Featured Photographer post of 2009

I’ve only been able to line up a few Featured Photographers this year, but I am hoping to line up quite a few more for 2010. The most viewed photography was the work of my friend and early S.I.E. supporter Jon O. Jon was down to help out from the word go and is working on getting some larger Stance Is Everything stickers done for me as well so I am glad to see that my blog is helping his work get more exposure.

Top Featured Ride of 2009

I would like to thank everyone who gave me the opportunity to feature their car on the site regardless of how many people viewed or commented on your ride I appreciate it more than words can describe. I have been lucky enough to feature a diverse collection of amazing cars this year and it looks like 2010 is going to be more of the same. Stepahines 335i held down the top spot for just narrowly getting beat out by Chris Savard’s featured Lighting which took top honors with a very popular month of December. I’m pretty sure that the Infamous Project is just starting up now as well.

Thanks for hanging on throughout 2009 and hope to have all of you back for the ride in 2010!

Being the holidays I’ve been at my moms place the past few days and therefore away from Stance H.Q. I didn’t have much time to be bouncing from forum to forum and blog to blog looking for new content nor did I feel like cluttering up her computer with photos of cars she won’t appreciate. So I made due with what I had (my iphone and creativity) and figured that perhaps some of you might be interested in my latest model car project that’s been hiding in the depths of my moms basement waiting for me to finish. Hopefully this will be the year I actually finish…

My dad got me into building model cars fairly young since he realized it was a great cheap way to keep me out of his hair for hours at a time. As I got more hobbies and my 1:1 cars started to consume my time I started building less and less and slower and slower. Regardless of how much time I might have I still buy kits that catch my eye and store them away for when little bits of time make themselves available.

This 1955 Chevy Nomad is one of those kits. I chose the Nomad because I’ve never built a wagon before and I liked the fact that this one came with nice (but somewhat over scale) wheels and a nice stance. I figured it would be something I could build fairly easily and ad some custom touches along the way, if I recall it was under 10 bucks too so the price was right.

The very first thing I did to the model once I got it out of the box was chop the top, I decided the stock roof-line was a little to mundane for the wheels and ride height of the car and that a slightly lower top would help it all flow better. This is my first chop top so it’s a cool challenge, I eliminated some pillars and scratch built some others, while I was working on the body I decided to get rid of the door handles and emblems as well.

The interior and chassis are getting normal treatment, with nothing over the top just adding detail where I can and how I can. The brake setup was done with red calipers while the rotors got some detailing so the look cross drilled and slotted. The interior is going to be tan with silver accents once complete, and I am also looking into building, or finding a tank and some hose to simulate an air ride set up but we will see if that actually happens.

Once the Nomad is done and the s-10 and 32 Ford are fixed back up I plan to get my Bryce Casselman on and shoot some creative shots of all of my slammed models. I’m back at home now so you can expect more 1:1 scale content tomorrow.

Or should I say Happy Holidays? I’ve never been too polictally correct, but I am going to assume that none of my readers are too uptight about which vernacular I use . Today’s a day to be spent with family and friends enjoying the spirit of the season so I hope everyone is doing just that. To those of you who have found the time to stop by here today leave a comment and I will send you a free set of S.I.E. url stickers of your choosing. Happy Holidays!

I’ve been meaning to compile a list of some of my favorite automotive blogs for awhile now and sadly this idea for the ‘12 Auto Blogs of Christmas’ hit me after I could have done it for the twelve days leading up to Christmas. But I decided to not let a little thing like time stop me and went ahead and compiled a list of the 12 auto blogs I visit regularly in no particular order.

EK Hatch’s Blog

I’m not really sure how I originally came across Noah’s blog but chances are pretty good that it was via the blog roll of one of the the other eleven blogs posted today. Noah has a diverse hatch fetish that causes him to post cars that I have heard of or seen before in addition to cars I thought no one else liked.

Noah is also a really down to earth person with a big heart who is using his blog as a way to raise money for someone in neeed. Check out the  Melissa Project and lend a hand if you can it’s a great cause.

Noteworthy posts:
Got You Some Book Learnin’
Split Personality : Scirocco
There’s Honda Clean

Full-Lock

It’s always cool when worlds collide (unless your last name is Costanza) and that’s what happened when I found Full-Lock. Logan and I both ride BMX and love cars, the difference is that unlike me Logan is just as crazy behind the wheel of his car as he is on his bike.

When he’s not sliding his car or blasting airs on his bike you can find Logan writing about awesome cars of all sorts on: Full-Lock.

Noteworthy Posts
Performance VW Mag
Aspen White
D-Day 3

Slamburglars

Slamburglars is a crazy crew out of Santa Barbara who like their cars low and live by the handbook. A few rules from the handbook should give you an idea of what these guys are about:
1. Shock travel is for bitches.
14. We like our girls how we like our cars, HAMMERED.
29. The home of bad taste and poor geometry.

While not for everyone I dig this crew and their blog.

Noteworthy Posts
Miater
Slamburglars hot girl of the day!
Preview: The Making Of Rolling Shots

Up-shift.net

Up-Shift.net is written by the working class car nut for the working class car nut. Written by a group of authors with years of industry experience Up-Shift is the place to visit for industry news, product reviews, and car recommendations.

In 2010 Up-shift is going to launch on a new platform to match their new content (which can currently be found here), personally I am looking forward to the ask an officer column, who else has that?

Noteworthy Posts
Porsche Panamera Part 1 – North American Debut in Monterey
Auto Americana – Why The American Auto Culture No Longer Inspires Buyers
Ford and Fiat – The Automotive Saviors?

Chris Hoare – Auto Exposure

Ever known a photographer who’s work you can’t seem to get away from? They are just so good that their photos are posted on every local forum you visit? That’s Chris.

Chris is an amazing GTA based automotive photographer who uses his connections in the scene to shoot a unique collection of cars and events. Being  winter here in the GTA updates have slowed a little but expect big things this spring.

Noteworthy Posts
Rally of the Tall Pines 2009
Socal Subie style crosses the 49th parallel
Forumala Drift @ Irwindale

Cars X Girl

Meg is a die hard car girl who happens to be married to a car guy, between the two of they they have three cars two of which belong to her and are big followers of the function follows form school of thought.  This doesn’t mean that their cars look bad though, it means is that the cars in their family are equal performers and lookers.

Meg is currently in the middle of a SR20DET swap in her 240 and has promised that when it’s done stance and flush is next on the agenda in the mean time she writes in depth thoughtful posts from her perspective as a female tuner.

Noteworthy Posts
Most girls just don’t get cars
Wrenches and Fashion, can they mix?
Last official autocross of the year

The Chronicles

The Chronicles is a big, big, reason why I started my blog. I was jealous of the fun it seems like Joe is having with his. Joe noticed something missing in the automotive blog sphere (a Honda/Acura focused blog) and capitalized on it and I am trying to do the same with a stance/gta based blog.

Being a freelance writer for a few Honda publications also allows Joe to do things like go to SEMA, shoot cover cars, and have a large audience diverse audience willing to listen to him talk about Saved By The bell, lucky.

Noteworthy Posts
Long Beach Represent
Do you understand the consequences of your actions
Super Autotoyz Philipenes diaster relief wash and meet

MotorMavens

MotorMavens is similar to Up-Shift in that it’s written by a collection of car mavens (connoisseurs). The MotorMavens crew sure do get around since their event coverage and featured cars are at a level that which can only I hope to one day achieve.

They also do an excellent job of combing the internet for unique rides to post in their “webmining” category while I check this blog daily I have yet to see any Canadian content, a bit of a bummer, but hey that’s where I come in.

Noteworthy Posts
Car Spotting Sick Stanced STI
Antonio + Bugatti Veyron= Ticket
COVERAGE El Mirage and Land Speed Racing

Phils Car Blog

I don’t really know much about Phil as his blog contains no about page. But from what I can tell from reading his blog and the fact that he named every car in a WTF Friday post without batting an eye is that Phil really knows his cars. His short to the point posts are always a pleasure to read.

Noteworthy Posts
R31
Satin Blue
Dirt Trackin’

Buildthreads

Before I found Buildthreads I used to spend a lot of time hopping from board to board looking for long in depth build threads wishing I had the time and money to do one myself. Now that I have found Build Threads I spend less time looking and more living vicariously through others.

I can relate to Anth in the fact that he’s a guy that just wanted to blog about something he enjoys and the fruits of his labor have paid off since he recently got featured in Performance VW , awesome.

Noteworthy Posts
Project 510 puts in work
Good Samaritans still exist
Slammed Mini Clubman on air

HellaFlush

Next to The Chronicles HellaFlush was probably the second biggest influence I had to create this blog, it’s just a really awesome, well designed, well done, and well run blog that posts flushed (and occasionally slammed) cars from all over the internet. Getting mentioned on this blog means a lot to me and I’m proud to say that I have not done it once but twice.

Noteworthy Posts
E30 with some dish
It’s All about making it in the GTA
A reminder

Speed Hunters

It’s been a long time since I have played any version of Need For Speed but that doesn’t stop me from liking speed hunters. Another combined effort Speed Hunters is similar to Motor Mavens in that it covers “the car culture at large” everything from Rally to Lead Sleds can be found here and if you respect and enjoy the car hobby you will easily lose hours of your day at Speed Hunters. I am hoping to one day be able to contribute to this blog somehow… fingers crossed.

Noteworthy Posts
The Sacrilegious 350z
That 240z
Slamburglars steal the sparks

Well that’s it for the 12 blogs of Christmas but that’s hardly it for my favorite Automotive Blogs, I look for new blogs almost daily since each new blog I find helps make S.I.E. better as each inspires and motivates me differently. So expect another post or two like this in the future as I find new blogs everyday.

Have a safe and happy Holidays and if you have a chance drop by tomorrow, it will be worth it

My drifter friend Pat Cyr has decided that next year is his year to go hard, all this time I thought he was going hard already so now that he says its really time to go hard I am a little worried for the competition. With his new mindset he decided that his trusty AE86 needs a full rebuild and a new heart for this season, lurking on facebook has allowed me to keep track of what he has been up to. Serious things are going down.

It’s no secret among the automotive community that AE86’s are great drift platforms and Pat just further proved this fact by putting his through its paces this year in various drift competitions. His AE most certainly took a licking and for the most part kept ticking.

As you can see the car needed a little bit of love during the off season so Pat figured why give something a little love when you can give it a lot of love instead? Since Pat already hand built this car and this sick bagged wag we know he is no stranger to fabrication and hard work.

I’ll be sure to keep you guys updated on this build as it comes a long.

Every day I like to make my rounds in the automotive blogsphere to keep a breast of what’s happening in other scenes. One of the blogs I frequent is Speedhunters. For those of you who don’t know Speedhunters is an automotive culture blog run by Electronic Arts, this blog touches on every part of the automotive hobby. Every month they do a theme, October was BMW month, and November was slammed month. Surprise, surprise, I was a big fan of slammed month. One thing I did notice via the comments though was that was that quite a few people were not fans of slammed month. It seems most of the people who were not fans based their arguments around function and those who were fans based theirs around form.

I think the age old function vs form argument is an interesting one and I look at it perhaps a little different that most. I think that regardless of what the factory’s original functional intentions were, beyond meeting the necessary requirements to move someone around, the final function of the vehicle is up to the owner.

Cars can be built a variety of ways; track rat, street machine, hard parker (show car), garage queen, dyno queen, knee jerker and so on.

This 240z that recently took the internet by storm is definitely what I would call a knee jerker.

This car was built to the owners tastes and it causes a knee jerk reaction. I am quite sure that everywhere this car goes the same few questions are asked ‘Why would he do that?’, ‘How did he drive that here’, ‘How can someone do such a thing’, ‘When is he going to paint it’ and ‘Why would someone ruin a Datsun like this?’ I know because when I saw it I asked some of those same questions.

One could say that the owner took what a great platform and totally robbed it of its handling ability by slamming it do the ground via Acura coil overs, sure, but at no point does the owner of this vehicle pretend it’s a track car. He built this car to bring a smile to his face every time he looks at it and drives it and as far as I can tell it’s working so the car is, in a way, being functional is it not? It’s new function is to bring enjoyment to the driver.

To flip the coin lets look at car that was built to put in a lot of track duty:

Similar to the aforementioned 240z this e30 was built to turn heads, however the difference is that it was meant to turn the heads of fellow competitors and people watching it slide sideways around a track rather than those who walk up and down the isle at shows. Sure the fact that it’s an e30 pick up would make it stand out at a show but little else was done to make this car flow together as one cohesive looking vehicle.

It’s interesting to note however that while this car now functions very well as a drift car it’s original factory function has been compromised. Non m e30s were built to carry people around in luxury, not to be track machines of any sort. BMW never intended for someone to lop off the ass end of an e30 and slide it around some pylons and corners. So if you want to look at it from that angle this e30 is now just as non functional as the 240z.

But I am not here to split hairs, we all know that cars leave the factory with a lot to be desired in both form and function.

As car enthusiasts we need to be able to embrace and appreciate at least to some degree all aspects of the hobby. I know sometimes it’s hard but stop and think for a moment that while we are argue with each other non car nuts are laughing at all of us for putting our money into depreciating assets.

Now with that my opinions on the matter sufficiently off my chest lets look at some cars that I think function and form factions alike will find appealing.

It’s Thanksgiving holiday Monday here in Canada and unlike most people I didn’t spend it relaxing in a warm house eating a Turkey dinner and watching football, instead I spent it in my garage doing a little maintenance and troubleshooting on my car. This isn’t the first holiday Monday I have spent in the garage working on my car while people drive by to go spend time with their families and it sure won’t be the last. As I was working my mind started drifting to how exactly did this happen to me?

My story starts off pretty young; like most boys I always had an interest in car that comes with birth, I also had a lot of hot wheels remote control cars, and my dad got me my first model kit at a pretty young age. This lead to me spending a lot of summer weekends watching what has now become the Power Block on Spike TV (TNN back in the day) watching Hot Rod TV, and whatever the truck show was at the time and incorporating those ideas into my models.

Once I entered high school my car obsession basically doubled. Luck for me Streetsville Secondary had one of the best equipped auto shops in the Peel Region and probably the best auto teacher. Mr Dinner, or Dinner, as we called him was basically a god send to anyone who has a slight interest in working on and building cars.

Dinner quickly figured out that the best way to keep kids interested in the Transportation Technologies course was to let them do what they want and keep the standard boring tests and lectures to a bare minimum. In no time I was quickly lowering shop cars anyway possible, cutting springs, heating springs, or just straight up removing them (most of these cars never saw the road), I also put together a few random contraptions as well.

Another thing that really helped keep Auto students (and the entire school) interested in the course was the Fiero/Countach kit car. Most kids born in the 80s male or female have had a brush with a Countach either via poster, model car, die-cast car, or barbie power wheels.

Even if you don’t like the idea behind a Fiero parading around as a Lambo unless you have personally been involved in the build of one you can’t really imagine how much work actually goes into them. It’s not quite as simple as slapping a body on the frame painting it and calling it a day, frames needs to be extended, hinges relocated/modified/ and adapted and body panels need to be worked and reworked.  It’s nothing like a model.

Having an opportunity to work on a kit at such a young age was more than enough incentive to keep me in auto shop and once I got my own car I ended up taking auto more than I actually need credits for. Instead of skipping school to go burn j’s at the local spot I would skip law to go to auto.

My high school shop experience was so good that once I had my e30 I went back to the shop a few times after I graduated to do a little more work to it. How many people return to high school after their graduating year with intentions other than to burn it down?

While my high school experience in auto shop didn’t lead me to the automotive industry it did help me become the enthusiast I am today. The same enthusiast who will never be able to drive a stock car or leave well enough alone on a Thanksgiving Monday.

Just thought I would take a second to everyone who came over from the Tekken Much post on Kotaku showcasing the ‘unique’ Ford Contour from this years Import Fest. Getting a link back from a major blog is one of the things I recently wrote down as a goal for this site and the gawker network has some of the biggest networks on the net so it was really exciting to see it happen so soon.

I appreciate everyone who took the time to click through (all 700 of you) and join me here at Stance Is Everything I hope that some of you continue to check out the site however if you are just going to read  and run I have one more interesting themed show car you should check out before you go, the 944 Batmobile.

The following is what happens when one die hard Batman fan owns a black Porsche 944 that is a little rough around the edges, while not as raw and powerful as the Tumbler, or as iconic as the TV series Batmobile, or the first movie Batmobile this one is still better than that Batman Forever monstrosity.