As much as I love slammed Miatas today’s collection of Mazda roadsters caught my eye because judging by the way these cars are set up it’s safe to assume that they do a lot more than hard parking and actually take these cars out to the track.
If your building a car to tear up your local track and the ride height you need for that leaves you with some fender gap that’s alright by me.
Just go fast to make up for it, real fast.
Growing up one common rule among children is that they all have at least one toy car, next time you’re around kids take a look around and you’ll see at least one happy youngster taking their favorite toy car through its paces in their own little imaginary track.
Those of us who grow to become car enthusiasts trade in our toy cars for one we can drive and our imaginary track becomes real world terrain.
Sam, the owner of today’s featured ride, is an enthusiast who is no longer doing laps in his mind, these days Sam cruises the streets in his low, flush, 350z fittingly plated ‘JDM Toy’.
Sam’s toy story started with his previous car; an immaculate 1995 all wheel drive Eagle Talon TSI, which by the time he was done with it was a 400 hp, ‘99 Eclipse bodied beast sitting dropped on Eagle Alloys.
However shortly after completing his Eclipse Sam realized that it was no longer what he was looking for in terms of performance and styling.
Sam decided to take his next car in an entirely different direction.
The direction he had in mind was low and flush, and to meet these requirements he chose the Nissan 350z/Fairlady platform.
A strong believer that stance and offset are everything Sam’s new 350z was quickly dropped over 19 x 9.5”/10.5” Varrstoen TE37 replicas with 225/245 tires via, the more popular by the minute, BC racing coil-overs.
Sam then pushed his wheels closer to the fenders with 20mm Ichiba spacers in the front and 25mm H&R spacers in the rear before adding SPC rear adjustable control arms and a JIC Magic CF strut brace.
To further highlight the new stance a Suzuka Urethane front lip spoiler was added to the bumper and a rear deck spoiler to the boot.
The factory 350z exhaust note is a glorious, but Sam wanted a little bit more, so removed the factory setup in favor of a Greddy SP2 unit, with Stillen ceramic coated headers, Berk high flow cats, and a Megan racing Y pipe.
Under the hood Sam addressed the Z’s performance with a Takeda short ram intake, skunk2 Plenum spacer, and an OBX pulley set. To keep everything looking tidy under the hood a carbon fiber engine cover.
The future for Sam’s Z has even more horses ready to join the stable as he plans to add an aggressive cam setup and possible ECU reflash or ETC.
Sam, along with his group of fellow car enthusiasts, known collectively as ‘Division R Performance‘, have attended a number of shows (Sight & Sound, Drop Tec OPC to name a few) already this year in the GTA and Sam’s Z has fittingly brought home number of trophies.
Notable ones include 1st place Nissan/Infinity, Lowest ride height, and best Negative camber (twice).
Sam and Division R Performance are also the driving force key behind the upcoming Voice Coil Meltdown show at Selective Sound and are looking forward to showing everyone why they are one of the most dedicated show teams with some of the cleanest cars in the GTA at that event.
Thanks go out to Sam for giving me the opportunity to feature his ride and I can’t wait to see where it goes next.
*All photos copyright original photographers – thanks for the shots
Last time I did a ‘classy model‘ Theme Tuesday it went over a lot better than I thought it would. Really I shouldn’t have been surprised. Guys like cars, and guys like girls it’s natural.
But girls also like cars, but they often do not like car show models. What girls do like (generally and in addition to cars) are clothes and style, thus classy car models give the female readers something to enjoy as well.
This way everyone wins! Except me, the screening process for this is hell on my eyes 😛
The drift/track/fun season is well underway here in the Toronto area, so it only makes sense that both of the local heart transplant builds that I, and you by association, have been following are complete and running around burning up tires.
Big props to Drift Posse/Cyrious Productions/Cyrious fab and Union Auto Club for seeing these builds through to the end and getting them running for this season.
BMW purists be damned, Ryan Lewis finished his e30 his way and the complete car is now cruising the Hamilton region.
Ryan put up with a lot of opposition on maxbimmer during this build but soldiered on anyway and the results speak for themselves.
Those of you who follow the Canadian drift scene (DMCC specifically) probably already know that this car is up and running since Pat’s been out competing already.
For the out of towners here is some proof that not only does Pat know how to build cars, he knows how to drive the snot out of them as well.
Here is a video from DMCC round 1
For thos ewaiting for updates on Aidan’s IS300, Geb’s, e30, rebirth, and the widebody 2002 don’t worry I am going to check up on those builds soon. Ant’s got you covered on builds till then.
I’m sure we have all seen something like this before, someone takes a car with rear end damage and instead of getting it repaired traditionally (or just scraping the thing) the make some sort of El Camino bastard child.
I can’t really imagine how you go about getting these things insured since they would probably crumple like a ball of paper in an accident, and I doubt 2 of the 3 posted today go down the street straight, but hey its DIY?
Growing up my friends dad had one of these, I always though they looked like a giant ass cheese wedge rolling down the street.
This bed still doesn’t really help that.
North American Ford Escorts have always been throw away cars, so why this owner didn’t just throw this one away is beyond me.
This is a real damn shame. I would much rather have seen the motor from this Vette end up in something cool instead of becoming this.. thing.
Not too much as far as the site goes, I have to head over to my moms place tonight so I will see if the new stickers have arrived.
I’m also selling my old spring/shock setup tonight as well as taking some coil over measurements so that I can get some custom shorter springs from BC to get the stance I want.
Once everything is how I want it I will snap some new pics, but for now my ride height is exactly the same as before, but the handling is 1000x better.
Fingers crossed I get the height I want and the handling I want soon.
Next Mod‘s 1 year anniversary is coming up, and in celebration of their upcoming celebration here are some pictures from last years Grand opening event.
Now to work for the weekend…
I saw this beast of an M3 on bikeguide.org first and it really took me by surprise since normally I don’t really feel much either way about this model m3.
I was only further impressed by this car when I found the build on build-threads.com. Any company looking to do a big budget build should take inspiration from IND because this is how it’s done right.
None of that gaudy over the top chock full of decal nonsense, keep it clean.
Attention to detail and flawless execution are what make this car a real beauty.
With such an exquisite exterior IND could have chose to leave the interior of this car fairly stock but instead they decided to go all out with it and create an interior that is equally remarkable.
IND also made sure this car put down some power to back up it’s looks, the blue m3 puts down 522hp at just 6.5PSI thanks to a ESS super charger kit. Which means this car will have no problems pushing you back into those lovely seats.
Overall this car blows me away in a way few other cars have.
Check out the build here, and a page with more awesome photos here.
I am a bad friend, I’ve been meaning to post contributing photographer, aspiring comedian, and good friend Keven Soldo’s car for sale for awhile now and kept forgetting.
He is selling his clean imported Saab 9-2x and if you don’t know what this car is, it’s basically a Subaru in Saab skin. Check the bottom of this post to see what it could look like with a drop and some wheels.
I’ve been in this car several times and I can vouch for how clean it is, if you are looking for a new car consider this.
This is a hard to find 2005 Saab 9-2x Aero 227hp 2.0L 4cyl boxer turbo with 5spd. manual transmission. I purchased this car from the original owner from Florida and imported it myself because they were hard to find locally. It has all the basic features like PW, PL, PM, PS. It also has the winter package which includes heated seats, mirrors, and windshield. This car has zero rust, and was rust proofed before being driven in the winter, and is mechanically solid. The rad cracked on me back at the end of August and I replaced/upgraded it with a Mishimoto aluminum Car has just over 99,000km on it.
Asking $13,800 obo
More info
Contributing photographer/e30 addict, Sam H made it out to another Maxbimmer e30 meet last Saturday after attending a BMW-Trillium auto cross. As always his coverage is great and his rolling shots are off the hook.
While not everyone had their e30s out at this meet (they take a little longer to get out of hibernation than newer cars) there was still a great bunch of cars out.
I hope to make it to the fall meet and hang out with some of the familiar e30/bmw fam.
Another thing I have been meaning to get out to is a Trillium Autocross event, one day…
The cars of the hour
Few of the non e30 owners, past e30 owners, and fans
Sam is really good at taking rolling shots. He also seems to have a fetish for red e30s (no surprise) and Rudy’s e30, I am not complaining
Looks like Mr Burroughs isn’t the only Mike who’s swapping s52 (or s54 in this case) motors into the e36 chassis.
A local GTA BMW tech, and friend of mine, recently got his up and running and we are already in talks of doing a feature once he has the rest of the car dialed in. Can’t wait.
Photo Credits: Sam H – big thanks for sending your pictures through!
Another follow up to the ‘Pictures with attitude‘ Theme Tuesday series, these sometimes take a little longer than other themes to come together but they always go over quite well.
I’m also about half way through another Classy car model Theme Tuesday as well so fingers crossed I can have that for you guys next week.
The local JDMrides crowd is no doubt well aware of the type of cars Worked 905 produces, and the amazing pictures that Kevin Saunders shoots, but for those of you from out of town you are in for a treat.
Today’s combination of amazing cars & photography is simply stunning. All of these pictures were taken walking distance from my house and I have seen all of these cars out and about in my local hood as well.
While I have yet to meet the owners I hope to take care of that soon and be able to tell them personally how awesome I think there cars are.
Big shout outs to Worked 905 for always coming out with immaculate looking cars and Kevin Saunders for posting these photos on jdmrides where we could all enjoy them.
Make sure to check out his flickr for more awesome shots and high res versions of these.
