Audi

Before I begin part 2 of the coverage from the Canadian International Auto Show let me say I missed a few manufacturers on media day, most notably Mazda, BMW, and Scion. I only ended up with about four hours to shoot and trying to cover the show in that time while still being somewhat social proved a little more difficult than I thought.

Late in 2011 I got a fairly larger order from a Takafumi Ebata, a Stance Is Everything reader from Japan. The first time I sent out the order I misread it and as a result a few things were missing, so to make amends I resent the entire order along with some freebies from the mystery box. Fast forward a few weeks and Takafumi showed his appreciation by sending through some photos from Fitted Fes 1 which took place January 22nd in Nagashima Japan.

This will be the third time I have dedicated a post to this A3. Outside of Pedro's car (who is local) and the EuroProjektz build I don't think I have posted any other A3 quite as much. Every time I see new photos of this car I just can't seem to help myself. Obsessed? Maybe.

There is a build thread I am reading on Stance|Works (one of the better threads of late) that talks about unorthodox tanks for air ride setups. The original posters plan was to run a multiple piece rectangular tank stack and there has been a lot of helpful (key word) discussion about how he should go about doing so safely. Many mentioning the importance of pressure testing the tanks to avoid blow outs like this.

With winter just around the corner Chop Shop decided to send the 2011 season off properly with a charity BBQ (proceeds to the Canadian Cancer Society and the Food bank) called Oktoberfest. The somewhat unseasonably nice weather lead to a great turn out and because this wasn't a show the atmosphere was super laid back which made it a great way to kill a couple of hours on a fall day.

The last round of CSCS passing means that a lot of the cars in today's post will be tucked away for the winter very soon. A few might make their way to Importfest Montreal but the rest will either be converted back to winter mode, stored, or go under the knife for rebuilds. With that in mind I made sure to do a few laps of the show and shine Sunday just to make sure I got some photos of some of the more attention grabbing cars

I've been told several times that H20i is an event I need to attend at least once. This year Mike and Jay from Stance Factory offered me a spot where they were staying for weekend and had it not been for some good friends of mine getting married I would have been there enjoying the festivities. However friends/family > cars so like Wekfest and Waterfest I've pulled together some photos that stood out to me in the hour or so I spent last night looking through coverage on various forums.

Summer sure flew by pretty damn fast, the first Stretch and Poke meet of the year doesn't even seem like it was all that long ago and now the last one for this season has come and gone. Though I was only at this season-ender event briefly I was there long enough to see that the community is appreciative of all of Dave's efforts and showed that by the great turn out.

Here's the second part of the 2011 Importfest coverage (well third if you include the women). Compared to last year the first thing I noticed when I showed up at Importfest this year was how incredibly busy it was. While this is obviously awesome it made getting clear photos a little harder than usual, but with some patience I was able to put in work. I tried my best not to re shoot too many of the same cars from the previous coverage so that those who didn't make the show could get an idea of the variety of cars IF brings out.

Is there such thing as a car show hangover? If so that is what I have after this years Importfest Toronto. This has always been a show that people look forward too but I felt as though this year people were anticipating it even more than usual. I think the increased amount of anticipation was due to the hard work the Ifest team put in beforehand promoting the show online and at events, as well as the announcement of several 'feature' cars coming to the show from both within the GTA area and abroad.

Vagkraft was actually the first event I went to on Sunday and I had intentions of getting this second half of coverage up and out the door last night so I could get to editing and posting the photos from the second event. However I ended up getting sidetracked editing photos for the next featured ride and before I knew it the entire evening had evaporated.

It's been two years since the last time I attended Vagkraft and even though it poured during last years event I still kind of regret not going, so when the forecast for this year looked similar I decided to head out anyway. Thankfully the collective will of hundreds of car enthusiasts kept mother nature from acting a fool and it was dry the entire time I was there. The local VAG community goes pretty hard so if you like European cars and have not attended one of these events you are missing out.