Honda

A few months ago in the dead of winter I got to participate in a Sweetie Girl Racing Advance Driver Training event at Toronto Motorsports Park - Cayuga. The event gave me the opportunity to knock driving on a road course off my bucket list. In addition to popping my track virginity the course also served as a way for me to learn a few valuable tips for daily driving as its main focus is to make everyone involved a better overall driver, and not turn everyone into race car drivers.

This past Sunday I got to do two things I have never done before. Check out local custom car shop Droptec, and cover/attend a car show while it was snowing. While I don't really want to cover show another again while it's snowing I wouldn't mind attending another Droptec shindig. The vibe at the event was incredibly positive (even with the -3 weather) and you could really tell the entire operation is a family, and close friend operated affair.

My mindset is still somewhat performance driving oriented this morning after spending the day out on the track yesterday for the first time (more on that later this week) so I figured I would roll with it and post some photos from March 6th - 1st Solo Championship in El Paso Texas submitted by reader Aaron R. Jackson. What he sent through is just a small sampling of the cars that came out but nonetheless it shows that the auto cross community in Texas is not only thriving but also encompasses a variety of different cars.

A few weeks ago, before Japan was devastated by intense tsunami's and earthquakes, my friend Aidan put forth the suggestion that I do a post on vintage JDM rides and even sent in a few pics to get me started. Japan's had a lot of influence the way we tune our cars here in North America and are thus held in pretty high regard. What's happened there currently is terrible but I have no doubt in my mind that years down the road, once it's all cleaned up Japan will emerge stronger than ever.

I had every intention of finishing off the rest of the Performance World coverage today and then work just kicked the living crap out of me and is continuing to do so. Good thing I had this gem tucked away. I first saw this eg on eyegasmic cars and immediately popped the watermark into google to find more photos. After a bit of clicking I found the source (flickr.com/oncam) and more photos of the car.

After reading other sites with weather envy all winter it felt pretty good to head out to a local event and get some photos this weekend. A lot of people have said that PW wasn't as good this year in regards to turn out but I think for a show at the end of winter the turnout was pretty good. It takes a lot of dedication to get your car all cleaned up for three days and then drive it back out in the muck right after. This year I've decided to switch things up a bit by posting the more modern Imports, Euros, and American cars first leaving the rat rods, traditional rods, and muscle cars to later.

Putting together Theme Tuesday posts is a guaranteed way to assassinate any other plans I have in an evening. I had every intention last night to finish of this Accord post and get to playing PS3 quickly until I ended up learning you can lower K cars with stock first gen Neon parts, and that MKII big bumpers fit on Dodge Ominis. How did that all happen? I dunno, the internet is a time monster. Anyway here is the Accord post I was working on before I got sidetracked.

Went relic hunting again on my hard drive and pulled out this Civic deep from the archives. I'm fairly sure i pulled it from a Honda-Tech thread one of the seven or so times I've actually browsed the site. Nothing on this car is particularly in your face but it's clean, simple, and low and comes together quite nicely which makes for a nice easy quick post after a busy weekend. 🙂

Last night I had envisioned doing a 'Favorites of Wekfest 2011' Theme Tuesday (since I was not there) but when I started looking for photos I was having a hell of a time finding ones that were not full of hoards of people. I noticed a few better photos popped up this morning but I generally don't like posting Theme Tuesdays after work so here are some more awesome automotive photos I felt needed to be shared.

Since it's Valentines Day (and because I have this song stuck in my head) I figured it would be appropriate to post these photos of a local female who rolled damn hard in 2010. I've seen this car in person a few times, once at a CSCS event, and then a couple weeks later at a BBQ in Markham, but prior to seeing these shots on JDM Rides I didn't know of any photos that really captured just how nice this car really is.

My friend Josh speaks Japanese and I don't, which means on twitter (@shiftmo) he follows a number of people that I wouldn't be able to understand. Amidst what is gibberish to me Josh found this Honda Odyssey. Any one who has even a partial eye on the Honda Odyssey scene will tell you that here in North America we generally ignore these vans while the Japanese do them up pretty serious. This particular one, called 'Blenda' by it's owner is so nice that it inspired me to put up a rare Sunday post.

Stumbled upon this Honda Accord wagon a few days ago and while the ride height is quite low its the wheels that made me 'right click save as'. They are most certainly not the type of rims you would expect see on an import but they actually don't look too out of place on this wagon. A little different but not bad at all in my opinion. I wish I knew the specs, but I am going to say fairly tall 18s or higher judging by the amount of camber needed to get them to fit.