Pontiac

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.

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.

I'll admit I have been going back and forth about whether or not I should do a post about this person/shop as when I first saw the cars produced therein I initially assumed it was just another bondo workshop. However after clicking through to the shops car domain page I was quite impressed at the work that lay underneath. While the final products are not be something I would drive I am very impressed at the workmanship behind all of these builds.

The tales from the installation bay thread on Blazin Low was one of my favorite threads in its hay day (when all the images worked). As a former technician at a sports store I remember some of the kludged together bikes people would bring in for service so I can somewhat relate to what these installers came across. The thread was also a great example of what not to do when installing the stereo into my ill fated Blazer.

2011 marked the 25th Anniversary of the Toronto Honda Indy and thanks to my friend Steve I got to check out the anniversary festivities on Saturday. This was the day before the big show but that didn't mean there wasn't a lot taking place on and off the track for us to check out. Canadian Touring Car Championship cars were all over the place, along with Ferrari Challenge cars, and Izod Indy light cars. Not to mention the booths, tents, and displays from event sponsors.

About a month and a half ago I was spending a lot of time lurking the Kit Central forums digging up a little more info on an article my auto teacher took to Carlisle for his replica Diablo build. While I was there I came across this Trans Am Italia. This kit made the Pontiac Trans Am look less like a Pontiac and more like a Testerossa. I've seen a few kits with this effect (widebody e30, Truxarossa) but never this one. It looks pretty dated now but was probably a head turner in it's day.

Finally managed to make it to the end of my photo stack from last weekends double header. Including this post I have uploaded over 100 photos in the last four days. As much as I love going to events, hanging out, and documenting sometimes it's hard to find the time to sit down and edit the photos I take. This problem becomes more apparent when it's nice outside & work is kicking my ass. However the show must go on so here are the pictures from the CSCS opener show and shine.

When I was doing a little bit of research on the Code Red Firebird I happened to stumble across videos of muscle/classic cars shredding autocross courses at both Good Guys and the Hot Rod Power Tour events, I became a fan nearly instantly. People often say that old American cars don't handle well and are meant for cruising or drag racing. While often this can be true, it seems that there are a number of American car owners who are willing to push their creations around the autocross course with reckless abandon.

The first time I posted this Firebird from my SEMA car crazy showcase coverage car I made a mistake in identifying it and called it at Camaro. In my defense I am pretty sure they called it the 'Code Red Camaro' in this article on Optima. Either way they share the same chassis so I was close..ish. Yesterday I saw more photos of the car on Go With Solo and figured what better way to make up for my previous mistakes than post some more of it.

A couple of weeks ago in a WTF Friday I mentioned that I was working on a 'Land Yacht' Theme Tuesday and that while doing so I realized my knowledge of older, larger, non muscle American metal was fairly limited. Well I've finished the Theme Tuesday, but unfortunately my knowledge of this genre of older American cars didn't really get all that much better. No big deal though as I know that these cars look good regardless of whether or not I know the names....

The last time I can remember thinking "cool" and "Bonneville" (not salt flats) in anything remotely close to the same thought was when a friends brother had one with a giant dent in the fender that he was going to fix in auto shop. I thought 'cool' because I knew years later I would be in that same class. My friends brother was lazy and never did a damn thing about that dent, but the owner of this Bonneville isn't lazy at all and has dropped this Black Onyx sedan on BBS Super RS's via custom suspension and updated the front end with BMW e39 headlights.

Here is another photo overload from SEMA 2010. For those of you who are waiting for photos of the cars that were outside of SEMA rest assured I lots of great coverage from the outside as well that will be making it's way up to the site over the next few days. In the meantime enjoy some more of what was going on inside the halls. After this set I believe I've got one hall left along with some of the adjacent hallways before taking it outside into the Vegas sun.