COVERAGE> Evergreen Drift Season Opener
March 14th marked the triumphant return of some of the Northwest’s most seasoned veterans. An invite-only drift event was held last Sunday to start off the 2010 season with a bang. It was a great mix of old school friends, with up and coming drivers all the way from Canada to Oregon. The weather couldn’t have been more perfect, with a steady 70 degrees all day with almost no clouds in the sky. It was as if God himself found favor in the boys from Evergreen Drift. Read more...
POINT&SHOOT> Toyota MarkII on SSR MarkIII
[I received an email yesterday from an Australian guy named Ian Hancock. Ian is crazy about Japanese nostalgic cars, and is currently on vacation in Japan (or as he says it, he's "on holiday") to check out a bunch of his favorite cars. He sent in a photo of this MX32 Toyota MarkII (Toyota Cressida) that he carspotted in Japan, because he knew it would be just the type of thing that Motor Mavens readers are into! Well, he was absolutely right. Here's what Ian had to say about the Mark II...]
The white Cressida belongs to Naoya Yamaguchi, who owns an old school Japanese wheel shop in Moiyra called Bellezza Auto Produce, about 15km from Tsukuba Circuit. I had been at Tsukuba for the day to watch drifting (and get taken for a ride!), and was going for a walk from my hotel to find some dinner when I came across the shop! I thought I was delirious – it was just too good to be true!
When I walked into his store, he was in the corner smoking, wheelchair bound because of a motorbike accident. Naoya “didn’t want to know me” until I started saying the names of the wheels in his shop, and I showed him pictures of my KB110 Sunny from Sydney. He couldn’t believe that an Aussie 20 year old would be interested in old J-tin. He couldn’t speak any English, and I don’t speak Japanese, so we talked for an hour and a half using a translator on the computer.
The Cressida wears huge SSR 15×9Js (-37 offset) on the back and 15×8J SSR Mark IIIs up front. From what I could gather, it is fairly stock mechanically aside from a healthy lowering, carbs and exhaust. A nice little front lip spoiler and rear spoiler finish it off, and although there are some fender gap issues, it has definately been built in the shakotan style! The body is straighter than straight, and some nice fender mirrors really set it off. I’m buying a set of 7.5J SSR Starsharks from him, and he has invited to take me out in his car next time I come over!
:: Ian Hancock
CENTER STAGE> Now That’s Ameen MX83 Cressida
Since Ameen and his Cressida were busy doing another shoot on the Irwindale banking on the actual day of the Pro Am, I asked Ameen if he'd be down to meet up with me and the other members of the Motor Mavens Crew the following day. Ameen and his brother Amir graciously obliged, and decided meet up with us for a late, late breakfast at Flappy Jack's on Route 66 in Glendora CA, with a whole bunch of other trucks from Texas with drift cars in tow not too far behind.
Those of us who have been following the drifting scene pretty closely have known about Ameen and his Cressida for quite some time now. After all, it's not often you see a four door, non-240SX rise up through the ranks of grassroots drifting competition in the USA. Wait a minute... but Ameen did drive a 240SX. To clarify things, Ameen used to drive an S13, but when he first began drifting in 2001, he was doing it in a Mk3 Toyota Supra (MA70). Since he started out in a Supra, it was only natural that he would become enamored of Toyota's mighty 1JZGTE straight-six engine, which came as stock in the Japan-market JZA70 Supra Turbo. Well, that and he blew up a ton of US-market 7MGE engines when he was trying to use them for drifting. Bad idea. 7MGE engines are notorious like BIG for blowing head gaskets, overheating, and cracking the stupid OEM plastic intake piping. Just like Biggie, they're ready to die.
So if he started out with a Toyota Supra, why move to a four door family car like a Cressida one might ask..? Well, when Ameen was doing research on building his MA70 Supra, he discovered that the chassis of the MA70 Supra and MX83 Cressida were extremely similar, and many of the engine and suspension parts were the same as well. The tipping point was when Ameen saw an internet clip of D1 driver Tsuyoshi Tezuka's JZX81 Chaser. "When I saw Tezuka's 81 on the internet," Ameen explains, "that's when I knew I was gonna build up a Cressida for sure." Read more...
COVERAGE> Southeast Drift’s Land of the Great
It was a lot of fun because not only was a friend of mine driving, but I somehow talked them into giving me a media pass. With the media pass I was able to get down onto the track and up close to the cars as they made their runs. It was an incredible experience, and I think I got some pretty killer shots as well. I was at the exit of the bank on the first turn. It was a pretty sick spot because I was behind the wall, maybe 10-15 feet from the cars. Read more...
GALLERY> More Scenes from JCCS 2009
WEBMINING> Diary of a Serial Tire Killer
Motor Mavens has never really featured any “build videos” on the site before, but today as I was browsing the internet looking for information about MX83 Cressidas, 5-speed swaps, and 1JZ swaps… I found this video, from the Serial Nine guys in Canada. This has GOT to be the most entertaining, amateur made “build video” I’ve ever seen. Yep, gotta love those amateur videos. Wait… what? Oh… umm, well I mean the video is informative, but it’s funny at the same time! The Serial Nine crew definitely looks like they’d be fun to kick it with.
So what do you guys think…? Some of us were thinking of having a little fun by building a Motor Mavens project car on a BUDGET. Ideally, the car would be inexpensive and also daily drivable on the street without much hassle from cops. Just brainstorming, some of us were talking about maybe building an FC or an S13… but this video is sparking some MX83 dreams… what do you guys think? MX83 build? Yay or nay?
:: Motor Mavens
The Beginning of SERIALNINE. from SERIALNINE on Vimeo.
COVERAGE> Japanese Classic Car Show 2009 Pt.1
There were TONS of people at JCCS this year. I really need to give props to Koji and Terry Yamaguchi for creating this show and making it better and better and better every single year. Instead of droning on and on about the history of the JCCS show and talking about how many people traveled from all over the USA to bring their cars to this event, let's just dive into the photos of the cars! After all, that's what you came here for! Read more...
COVERAGE> Last Weekend in Washington
CARSPOTTING> We Dig Northwest Style!
COVERAGE> Ratsuns x Japanese Nostalgic Car Meet
