Articles

Over the winter Rob from Performance Improvments asked if I would be interested in doing some writing for their bi monthly Performance In Motion magazine. The idea of having a few pages in a printed publication to do whatever I want with was very appealing and opportunity to reach a new audience was something I couldn't turn down, so I said yes.

October 17th 2011 I hit a piece of sectioned out road that caused just shy of $600 worth of damage to my car. Despite several people telling me that trying to get the city to pay for it would be a wasted effort I went through with it and on April 9th 2012, I was compensated in full for the damages.

Most of the coverage I have seen from those who visit California (San Francisco and LA area) seems to be centralized around a visit to the Fatlace store in SF, a Hella Flush event, a stop at Rotiform, and sometimes time/weather permitting a stop at one other event. Though it isn't all that far from the strip, and an awesome place to visit as a gear head, very few ever talk about let alone cover the Peteresn Automotive Museum, at least on the sites I frequent.

A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to meet up with two skyline owners for a photo shoot, nothing serious or anything like that but another good chance for me to play around with my new camera. By the time we all hooked up and the cars were cleaned it was getting dark which killed a lot of the photos but I was able to save a few.

At Performance World 2010 I saw my first Taylor'd Customs build (their unique weather worn bagged Impala) a year later at the same show I saw another one of their builds (the Canadian Hot Rod Featured Montbomb) sitting in the main hall behind a wall of well deserved onlookers who simply couldn't get enough of car. Now just over two years later I've had the pleasure of both featuring their 57 Chevy and checking out the shop where all the magic happens.

On a typical workday, the alarm on my phone tortures me to wake up at 7:30am, 8:00am, 8:15am, 8:30am, 8:45am, and 9:00am. That's right. I'm so terrible at waking up I need six separate alarms. Then, one day last week I woke up naturally before my alarms. Barely awake, and struggling to see anything, I roll over to check the time on my phone and notice I have e-mail from Hoda, our favourite reader from Japan.

I've been trying to avoid posting about the topic of wheel fitment as strictly a numbers game for some time now as it is a discussion that may touch on a few nerves and one that could leave be sounding a tad hypocritical. However it is an issue I feel needs addressing now more than ever before things degrade into a pissing contest of epic proportions.

Today I'll continue running down the list of events I attended in 2011. Hopefully you enjoyed the look back at the first twelve, there will be thirteen more today to cover all 25 from 2011. I enjoyed all of the events I attended this year but I am always up to check out new ones so if there is a local event that you think I should attend feel free to let me know via the comments or an email.

What a year 2011 was event wise in Ontario. It seemed like there was something going on at least every other weekend, if not every weekend, often with two events occurring at the same time. While I did my best to make it to most of the major local events (as well as some of the underexposed ones) it was pretty much impossible for me to attend them all, luckily a few people helped me out with great Guest Coverage again this year. This post will be a chronological run through of the first twelve events I attended in 2011.

Last Monday Chris Pereira (of the Canadian Sport Compact Series) invited me to locally renowned Subaru tuning shop Can Jam Motorsports to meet 2011 Rally of The Tall Pines winner “Crazy” Leo Urlichich. After a quick stop off at home for a bite to eat and my camera gear I headed back out to Richmond Hill to meet up with Chris who introduced me to Leo. Following a handshake and brief small talk Leo decided I had hung around long enough to meet Beast.

Back in February I stumbled across a Japan-born video on YouTube that features four impressive, VIP-styled JDM Honda Odysseys. Craving more, I did a bit of digging, and soon found myself flipping through a photo gallery belonging to Hoda — the owner of the red Odyssey in the video. Along with Hoda's photo gallery there is one more thing I found: His Twitter account. I followed him. We started talking. And when I made plans to visit Japan to see family, I wasted no time asking Hoda if he was interested to meet in person, he nearly instantly responded "yes".

While I've always done basic exterior lighting modifications to all of the vehicles I've owned I had previously never upgraded to exterior LEDS or addressed my interior lighting. With my 3 I chose to upgrade all of my interior bulbs and some of my exterior bulbs to SK Performance LED units. After the upgrade I now realize how inadequate (and yellow) the factory lighting Mazda shipped the car with actually is.