This weekend I was watching Donnie Brasco and the Cadillac vs Lincoln debate combined with the sheer number of Caddys used in the movie set today’s Theme Tuesday in motion.
No real year, or model sub theme just a small collection of low cars adorned with the Cadillac emblem.
For whatever reason I’ve always found cars not available here in Canada intriguing regardless of what their actual build quality or reputation is. One such example of this are Opels, this isn’t the first time I’ve posted an Opel of this vintage, and probably won’t be the last.
Somewhat bland at stock height Commodores start to look a whole lot better lower to the ground and fitted with a tasteful set of wheels.
I particularly like the fact that the red pinstripe was retained on this example and how the orange manta 400 wheels somehow manage to work with the plush looking red (velour?) interior.
The door lock pull is pretty rad also.
Spotted here on motorfacts.de via Suck Squeeze Bang Blow.
One of the things I like most about hot rodding is that (unless you are building a traditional) there are no rules. Motor, chassis, wheels whatever, all up to the owner.
This Caterpillar hot rod is a perfect example. No one says you should build a Hot Rod like this but at the same time no one is going to say you shouldn’t.
Started in 2010 and completed in 2012 this plus sized hot rod was built in a two car garage by the resourceful owner.
The motor comes from a Caterpillar C-12 and is backed by a 10(!) speed Eaton transmission followed up by a 293 end gear.
The frame is comprised of frame rails harvested from big rigs as are the suspension and braking systems. The body is reportedly a from a thirties or so Studabaker.
The grill, nose, headlights, and paint come for a Cat and I have no clue where the giant hitch ball originated from.
The C-12 motor doesn’t pump out an obscene amount of horsepower (about 450ish) but given that it’s now in a vehicle much lighter than where it started it’s got more than enough power to lay some rubber on the road:
No build thread but there is a video with lots of progress shots:
Thanks to Just A Car Guy for peaking my interest on this build.
Still working away at getting the car ready for spring and starting to line up a few features for this season as well.
Is anyone out there selling a set of faded Work lug nuts? I’ve got something I want to try but I need a set.
This truck reminded me of a few things from the untraditional low Theme Tuesday.
One of the goals I’ve set for 2013 is to develop more partnerships with local, like minded, businesses and enthusiasts.
So far this year I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Air Lift Performance and today I’m happy to announce a partnership with Meguiar’s Canada and their Car Crazy Canada’s Best Contest.
The contest –which is in it’s third year running– is part of a global Meguiar’s International Car Crazy Showcase competition that gives a builder/owner from each region (in this case Canada) the ‘ultimate car guy package’ consisting of a trip to Vegas with their winning vehicle for SEMA 2013.
The format is fairly simple; event organizers choose ten cars from each event (World Of Wheels Calgary, Megaspeed Custom Car & Truck show, World of Wheels Winnipeg, and the Salon Autosport Quebec) to be quarter finalists and people like yourselves pick the final winner by voting on canadasbest.ca starting  May 3rd.
Along the way special promotions between media partners (such as Stance Is Everything) and Meguiar’s will be announced so stay tuned.
In the mean time here are the finalists from Megaspeed and Calgary.
As someone who likes to take photos it’s only natural that I like to look at photos and today’s Theme Tuesday is a partial list of photographers who inspire me in some way or form.
This isn’t a ranking of the best of the best –and I know a lot of you take photos– so by all means feel free to drop some names and galleries in the comments I may have missed.
I’m always up for more inspiration.
If you read the site even somewhat regularly you are probably already familiar with Mike’s work because I post it as often as I can.
I’ve been watching Mike progress as a photographer since we first got in touch and he’s consistently improved at his craft. He’s also got an awesome attitude about basically everything which makes working with him an absolute breeze.
View more of Mike’s work on mdmvisuals.ca or his flickr.
Charles, like many on this list, is local and every time we shoot the same event I am completely flabbergasted at how his photos differ from everyone else shooting the same event (see RX-7 photo below taken in the middle of the day).
While many photographers congregate around the same corner Charles can often be found practically bushwhacking in an effort to get the creative shots the rest of us can only hope for.
View more of Charles’ work here on his facebook.
Chris is the only photographer on this list who doesn’t watermark his photos in anyway shape or form. I once asked him about it and he explained that he feels watermarks take value away from the final product.
Sound reasoning and there’s no doubt his work  looks exceptional free of any sort of manipulation.
He’s  also really good at shooting at night.
View more of Chris’ work on his Flickr.
I met Steve in the hop pit and Scrape By The Lake in 2010 and between the calamity of bumpers hitting the ground we said our hellos and have been friends ever since.
He’s quite the perfectionist and I practically had to twist his arm until it broke to get him to release the now famous photos of Rob’s International because he didn’t think they were good enough.
View more of Steve’s work at Equals:22 on facebook
I’ve been following Matt’s progression as a photographer since I featured his work in 2010. Between then and now he’s kept himself busy shooting for the Scraped Crusaders and a various European auto magazines.
Recently he got a job at Pfaff Tuning which has given him an incredible selection of cars to shoot and he seems to  be producing work faster than ever.
Another previously featured photographer who can basically shoot anything he wants is my old riding friend Nick Busato. Up until recently I thought he did most of his work track-side but he seems to be doing a few Auto-shows as well.
In either environment his work is great, but he’s always hard an enviable work ethic and drive to succeed.
View more of Nick’s work on his Flickr.
The first non Canadian resident on this list, Larry shoots predominantly for a little (sarcasm) site called Speed Hunters and when I met him at SEMA I mumbled over myself explaining to him how much of an influence the site and his photography has on Stance Is Everything.
Seemingly able to shoot anything, and living the dream, getting anywhere near where Larry’s level of talent would be awesome.
View more of Larry’s work on SpeedHunters.com
As one half of a lot of the photo-graphical content coming from the S|W camp Mike seems to excel at outdoor shots with a bit of a vintage vibe to them.
Of course a stark white studio also doesn’t phase him either.
View more of Mike’s work on Flickr or Stance|Works
Dylan is perhaps best known for his expert light painting technique and odd Flickr handle (mojocoggo) but he’s also got a great eye for angles, composition, subjects, and locations.
I also love his work with vintage Japanese tin.
View more of Dylan’s work on his flickr or his new site originalplate.com.
I can’t remember how I stumbled on Brett’s tumblr originally but it’s the only one that’s made me consider signing up just so that I could leave a non anonymous comment explaining how much I like his photos.
Not only do I want to shoot like Brett, I want to attend the events he does, always such variety.
View more of Brett’s work here at brettcreates.tumblr.com
Back when the site was in its infancy one of the first people outside of Canada to submit photos was Julian. Known online as Sleepy Wagon Julian owned an immaculate low, flush, Impreza wagon that always sat perfect no matter what wheels were under it.
Currently Julian whips an Lexus LS400 and in his signature fashion it’s not only low and fitted, it’s exceptionally clean.
Julian’s previous wagon:
His LS400 looking classy in champagne and low as hell on prototype Function & Form Coils.
It’s nice to see that throughout the years Julian has not lost his taste for low, stock bodied, cars on well picked sets of wheels.
More photos of his car can be found on his flickr account and his built is right here on wrong fitment crew.
It’s been awhile (a long while actually) since there’s been a WTF Friday ‘name that car’ challenge so when I recently stumbled upon these gems I knew the time was right.
The first person to correctly identify all of these artistic interpretations of standard auto mobiles will win a prize pack of items from The Stance Is Everything Store.
Best of luck, and remember you’ve got to be able to prove it!
Please note if you don’t see your comment right away don’t panic!
It’s probably held up in moderation, they are all time stamped so the first person will win.
More car updates than anything else this week. My Dominant Engineering toe links arrived on Monday which will help me prolong the life of my yet to be purchased new tires, and I sent my Work Equip bolts to Stripping Technologies for ceramic clear coating this week.
They had a nasty habit of rusting in heavy rain and I’m not looking to deal with that again for another season.
Stretch & Poke! just announced the venue for their first meet of 2013. After three years they are moving on from the Downsview Park Venue.
I thought it would be cool to take it back to before the meet was even at Downsview.
Event Coverage: Stretch & Poke 2010 Part 1
Event Coverage Stretch & Poke 2010 Part 2
Things have come a long way!
Mike McConnell is a bit of a travelling man and his latest voyage took him to the City of Sin for the second round of the 2013 Vegas Drift Series. Vegas Drift is a yearly grass roots Pro Am series that draws drifters from all around who are looking for some tire shredding fun.
The second round of the 2013 series took place over Easter weekend and it looks like conditions couldn’t have been better.
Mike took a cruise around the paddock area while people were getting ready to get a closer look at the some of the competition field and a few of the spectators vehicles.
Obviously cars sitting still at a drift event are not the main focus and Mike took a number of great shots of drivers out on track getting loose.
Be sure to check out Mike’s full set of Vegas Drift photos here on his flickr account.
Thanks as always Mike!
About three quarters of the way through writing last weeks Theme Tuesday I realized that there was no way to fit all of the companies I wanted into a post of reasonable length so I decided to cut it into two parts.
What I didn’t know was how many of you would be into that post. I may have to do future instalments of this series further down the road.
Here a few more new(er) wheel companies worth keeping an eye on.
Like Rotiform and M Technia Spinfab Design has a lot of experience in wheel refinishing, rebuilding, and customization.
Using what they have learned from creating wheels people want from existing (and custom) components Spin Fab has decided to venture into the custom wheel field.
The wheel below is their first prototype.
3SDM is the only company in this series of posts that actually sends me an email nearly every time they release a new design.
Forge Motorsports has picked up distribution in North American US distributor so I imagine they will start popping up more around these parts.
Most people know of Fifteen52 via the Tarmac wheel that Ken Block thrashes on his Ford Fiesta.
However Fifteen52 is far from a one trick pony and has an entire additional line up of great looking wheels including 3 piece Tarmacs and CCW like Formula TRs.
I’ve only seen one set of D2 Forged wheels in person but they were quite stunning. Being a luxury sport line-up they are very much out of my price (and fitment) range but a guy can dream.
Another big in luxury sport forged wheel manufacturer on the market, Nessen has made quite a name for themselves the past few years with their involvements in projects like the ones below.
Joey over at The Chronicles… has been posting about this multi piece Forged wheel company out of Japan for about a year now and personally I can’t wait to see some of there wheels in person.
Every single time I post a photo of Jake’s Genesis someone asks ‘what wheels are those?’ Well they are Blonixx Snowflake wheels made by ISS Forged.
For years air suspension has had a reputation for being a sub par alternative to coil overs when it comes to building a vehicle where form shouldn’t hamper function.
This is of course an archaic mindset because like all other suspension systems on the market today air ride has evolved immensely since it’s inception making nearly every negative “well my friend had air and…” statement a moot point.
One of the companies consistently leading the charge when it comes to air suspension systems capable of running neck and neck, or sometimes seconds quicker, than their static counterparts is Air Lift Company.
With 64 years of accumulated real world experience behind their product Air Lift components are some of the most robust, comfortable, capable, and reliable on the market.
Stance Is Everything is proud to announce a partnership with Air Lift Companies performance division (Air Lift Performance) for 2013 and recently a perk of that partnership was the opportunity to check out the Air Lift factory not once, but twice.
On my second visit to the facility in Lansing Michigan (about two hours from the Canadian border) I brought my trusty T2i while eastern regional sales manager Tom Mahar showed me around.
After peeling my eyes away from the various flavours of bagged vehicles in the parking lot I turned my attention to the Air Lift facility which was, much, much, larger than I expected.
Air Lift prides themselves on producing 80% of their suspension products in house and this level of production necessitates a large facility.
When assembly –100% of which is done on site – and shipping/receiving are factored in it’s easy to see why after just two years the 50,000 square foot facility needed a 20,000 square foot addition built onto the back of it to keep up with demands.
The sheer size of the facility wasn’t it’s only impressive attribute, it was also incredibly clean and organized.
I’ve been to (and worked in) a few factories in my day but Air Lift’s was easily the cleanest I’ve set foot in to date.
Tom explained that a growing part of the companies overall business is fleet work –that is providing compact air systems for buses, ambulances, and the like– and servicing industries such as these requires Air Lift to meet a bevy of standards other air suspension manufacturers don’t necessarily have to.
This includes stringent regulations when  it comes to facility cleanliness and safety.
Despite the very formal approach the company must take in regards to safety and organization the factory floor is far from a dull assembly line filled with blue coverall clad employees repetitively pulling levers, waiting for the air horn to free them from another work day.
The employees personalities shine through on the factory floor where they have forgone generic work station designations like “sector 7-G” in favour of more fitting ones like Hockey Town and Wolverine Country .
Throughout the factory tour we got a chance to interact with a number of employees who while incredibly focused on their job, seemed to be enjoying every minute of it.
(Of course one could argue that when your job entails making components that put vehicles of all shapes, sizes, and forms on the ground how couldn’t you like what you do?)
In addition to manufacturing and  final assembly, testing and product development is also handled at the Lansing Michigan facility.
Each and every Air Lift Product that leaves through the shipping door does so only after it has been tested on various durability rigs that simulate a minimum of 100, 000 miles.
Components are not just fair weather tested either, they are both hot and cold cycled to ensure that they will survive everything mother nature has in store for them along with a certain degree of user error.
Once bench testing is complete the performance products are then put through their paces at the Gingerman Raceway (the local race track) where they are scrutinized against the latest and greatest coil over offerings to see how they stack up and where they can be improved.
The goal of the performance division (which is made up of extremely capable and qualified suspension engineers) isn’t to just create a system that can get low and handle day to day driving.
The end game is to create an all in one system capable of clearing speed bumps one day, bending corners on the track the next, and sitting as low as possible on the show floor the day following that.
Air Lift Performance is currently on a manic schedule of producing two new kits every month, in addition to constantly improving their management systems, so don’t be surprised if a kit is released for your application in the very near future.
Getting the chance to take a walk around the factory was awesome and Stance Is Everything is really looking forward to working with Air Lift Performance for 2013.
Stay tuned for more posts about my recent switch to “the dark side” thanks to Air Lift Performance.
