Makes

It's always interesting the differences in the car markets across the globe. Cars that are mundane in one area will excel in another and the Ford Contour, aka the Ford Mondeo, is a prime example of that, seeing as how it was (according to Wikipedia) Britain's third best selling new car from 96 - 98. Here in North America they are just another ho hum family hauler. I've seen a couple modified here and there (mostly SVTs) but none done with some Euro flavor, that is until this one.

On the way to Pennsylvania last week, traveling by Aztec (great road trip vehicle oddly enough), we stopped at a bunch of random places. One memorable stop was a gun store where we were informed that over 950 women in Pennsylvania have the right to carry a concealed weapon which is sort of scary. On what would have been a more standard stop for gas I noticed what appeared to be a convertible Neon in an empty lot across the road, naturally curiosity got the better of me and dodged two lane traffic to get a better look.

They say the first step in managing an addiction is admitting you have an addiction so I am going to admit this one to all of you: I'm in the early stages of what is no doubt going to become a full blown addiction to cars that are set up fat and flush. Like my addiction to the other various forms of stance this is basically out of my control so the best thing I can do at this point is give fat and flush it's own category.

I could use this title a thousand times over for cars I post here on a regular bases but I think it suits this Benzo to a tee. While I wasn't able to find the original source of these photos or a mods list with exact specs, but I don't really need either to appreciate what's been done here. This car looks absolutely fantastic.

Winter is starting to get a little tiresome. At the end of last week we were teased with fairly mild weather but at a cost because it was just incredibly windy for two days straight. Then just as a remind that spring doesn't start 'officially' until March 21st we got a decent amount of snow on Sunday night and the weather has turned back to double digits below zero. I guess looking on the bright side we all have at least 1 month left (unless you are in Performance World or sunnier climates) to get all of our ducks in a row for the 2011 season.

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.

One of the best parts about being a car enthusiasts in this internet age is that it's incredibly easy to connect with other scenes around the globe. With less than an hour and a few clicks you can see what's going on in Europe, North America, and Japan. This means that tuning styles are no longer regionally based. Andre, who is from Brazil, got hooked on clean, low, cars fast thanks to international forums like NASOIC and blogs like this one. Once the bug bit it wasn't long until Impreza was on sitting much closer to the earth.

All the Volkswagen fans, my apologies, until someone mentioned it on facebook I had not noticed it had been some time since I posted up some quality VW content. Here is what I had on hand last night and I have a whole bunch of tabs open at home to start saving more Volkswagen content for future posts. While I might not comment on everything right away I do read every comment and email that comes through 🙂

It feels a little weird posting a Winter Wednesday today as it's actually fairly mild here in the Toronto area (above zereo). I also can't remember if it snowed the last seven days but what the hell both of these IS300s are more than worth posting. I can't recall where the owner of the one on gumetal one lives but I'm told the owner of the white one lives in a part of Virginia that generally doesn't get lots of snow.

On the heels of last weeks slightly unorthodox Theme Tuesday I decided to go with something a little more standard this week. With the Evo IXs slowly starting to trickle onto Canadian streets, and the new Dodge Charger looking oddly Evo X inspired I've had these cars on the brain a little bit more than usual lately, which worked well as I had a decent number of them saved on my hard drive as well.

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.