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Hilarious: GTR vs GTR

April 10, 2009 / banpei / 1 Comment

We all did see videos of GTRs versus the AE86, or two AE86 versus the R34. GTR versus GTR? You probably think I found a video of a Carina GTR versus a Skyline GTR… Well, wrong: never before did we see a Skyline GTR KPGC10 (Hakosuka) versus the Skyline GTR BNR32:

When I watched this I really thought WTF!? This is really early 90s stuff looking at the haircuts. These guys really look what we would call bosozoku nowadays: black long jackets and pompadour haircuts. Of course that was fashion for the tough guys back then, just like the mullets in the US and Europe! ;)

Kenji, the guy in the KPGC10 Skyline is apparently the good guy and the bad guy drives the brand new BNR32 Skyline. Kenji is a high school student who works at his fathers gas station who also owns a Skyline KPGC10. However he has to work somewhere else part time (labor shortage) and thats where he meets the bad guy, someone returning from Tokyo. Apparently one of his friends loses from this guy and Kenji seeks revenge. He learns from his uncle that his father used to be a mountain drifter and his uncle teaches him how to drift. That’s about where this finale kicks in. ;)

Hey! Myth ~ Quickening ~ OIRAZU Skyline

I think I did see some of these parts somewhere before… Something with a father being an ex drifter, a mountainpass, an old RWD car, a gas station, a R32 as rival… Hmmm… What was that again?? Initial something??

Comparing this with the improvements in drifting over the past 18 years (that many already!) with this movie I really think the action and drifting stinks! Looking at the tiny unnecessary drifts he makes make the movie look really ridiculous and the race is not even sped up and really looks like they are doing 50 kilometers per hour or something! Comparing it against Shuto Trials makes this movie look like an even further blast from the past! Then again Shuto Trials had Keiichi Tsuchiya as stunts coordinator.. Anyway, I couldn’t stop laughing watching this exciting action! :D

Also the acting is excellent! When watching anime like Initial D you already get the feeling people are talking to themselves all the time. Well in this movie you get to see people talking to themselves while racing! Excellent transition from anime to life action, more or less something like watching Dragonball Z live action movie! :D

Anyway, in case you are really interested in this movie, the title of this movie is ????? ???????????? and this translates into something like Hey! Myth ~ Quickening ~ OIRAZU Skyline and was made in 1991.
More info here:
http://www.jhv.jp/title/Video/original/KF-5236.html
Or you can buy it secondhand on VHS here:
Amazon Japan or Auctions Yahoo

BTW: I spotted a 180SX and a S13 Silvia with the bad guys as well. ;)

Carina Sightings: Carina AA63 4AGZE Supercharged Sedan

April 8, 2009 / banpei / 7 Comments

Some time ago I came across a gallery on photos.yahoo.co.jp with this very nice supercharged Carina GTR sedan:

Carina AA63 4AGZE Supercharged Sedan
Unfortunately there is not much info within this gallery, so we can only do guesswork here!

At least the car got a really nice old school Toyota decal on the bonnet! I still can’t understand why Toyota swapped this logo for the current one: it looks much better than the old one! (Of course I do know why… ;) )

Nice lip! I still need to mount mine, so I hope mine will look just as great as this one! ;)

Great stance on this Carina AA63
The stance of this Carina is just perfect: lowered just enough with just enough camber on the front! (rear goes automatically with lowering)

The car is pretty beaten up so I recon it is being used/abused often:

Used/abused front of the Carina

And it is also very rusted:
Rusted trunk under the Carina GTR logo
Rusted trunk under the GTR logo
I think this describes the state of the body pretty much.

But this makes everything right I guess:
4AGZE in the enginebay of a Carina AA63
4AGZE in the enginebay
The 4AGZE supercharger swap should be quite streightforward, just like on the AE86: supercharger flow is rerouted to the front and pushes the air through the front mounted intercooler.

There is no cage installed so it wasn’t used as a track or drift car, so this car should have seen a lot of action on the roads instead. Could be a touge drifter or maybe a drag racer?

Eventough this Carina is probably rusted through badly I would swap it for mine anytime! ;)

If you want to view all pictures, you can find the gallery here:
Gallery of the supercharged Carina GTR AA63

Popular Bosozoku cars: Nissan Fairlady S30

April 7, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

This week we have a very popular Bosozoku style car and I really had trouble with deciding which pictures would feature this item. This week we feature the very popular Nissan Fairlady Z S30:

Yanky style Fairlady S30 (with stars and stripes)
Most of the Fairlady Zs I came accross were Yanky style like the one above. It reflects how the Bosozoku cars were styled in the late 80s!

Especially this one is very well known:

Yanky Mate! Fairlady S30 replica
This is a Yanky Mate! replica of the Shakotan Boogie manga/anime. This Fairlady S30 featured in two colors in the manga: blue (early) and yellow (late). With the craze around Shakotan Boogie in the early 90s you can imagine that replicas of this car are very popular.

Another style which can be found in many numbers are the Gran Chan styled Fairladies:

Gran Chan style Fairlady S30
With big fender extenders, headlight covers and the bonnet/lip having smooth aerodynamic lines it really reflects the Fairladies used during races in the late 70s. Very beautifully styled!

And of course we have the Bosozoku styled Fairlady, but they are bit rarer than the other two styles so I only post a 280ZX:

Bosozoku style Fairlady 280ZX
This 280ZX model has a lot of fins, spoilers, ventilation holes and a really nice horn! With its paiting scheme it really looks bad ass Bosozoku styled, but its styling is not over the top. Good example in my opinion.

The Nissan Fairlady Z S30 (also known as the 240Z, 260Z and 280Z overseas) came out in Japan as the successor of the 60s Nissan Fairlady. This was a small compact roadster competing with European roadsters and it sold quite well in Japan and overseas. Nissan decided it needed a replacement for the roadster and teamed up with Yamaha. The Yamaha prototype did not meet the expectations of Nissan and Nissan terminated the cooperation and Yamaha turned to Toyota and created the 2000GT out of this prototype.

Nissan then decided it needed a more Americanized GT car which was stylish, innovative, fast, reliable and most importantly sharing parts with other Nissans to make it inexpensive! This became the Fairlady Z and in 1969 the production of this car started:

Factory stock Fairlady Z S30
As you can see: in stock form it may look awfull today, but back then it was one of the most stylish GT cars ever!

In Japan the car was launched with two engines: a 6 cylinder SOHC L20A (shared with the Bluebird) outputting 130hp and a limited run called Z432 featured the high performance 6 cylinder DOHC S20 (shared with the Skyline GTR) outputting 160 hp.
Later in Japan the limited run of the 240ZG appeared: a L24 (initially used for export market) powered Fairlady Z with a new aero dynamic nose, wide overfenders, acrylic headlight covers (like the one in the first picture), fender mirrors and a rear spoiler. This 240ZG was meant to homologate an uprated version for Group 4 racing. The nose was later on sold as a seperate option called the “G-nose”.

The Fairlady Z S30 appeared in many rally and circuit race events and became just about as famous as the Hakosuka Skyline GTR.

Factory racing Fairlady Z S30

Nowadays the Fairlady Z still has a huge following, especially after the animation version of Wangan Midnight featuring a blue Devil Z and Hakosukas suffering from insane price increases. Popular engine swaps are either the bigger engines L24, L26 and L28 or the whole drivetrain with the RB25 of a Skyline GTS.

Personally I really would like to own one someday: those Z cars are just awesome! :)

[I posted this article earlier today on Bosozokustyle.com]

Carina Sightings: awful Toyota Carina Coupe TA60 in Norway

April 7, 2009 / banpei / 9 Comments

I found this awful Carina Coupe on Flickr. The owner (Long Gone Silver) put some really awful 16 inch bling rims under the coupe, some vinyl flame decal, double antennas, taxi blocks stripe and the most hideous chin and boot spoiler!

Awful Carina Coupe with the most hideous chin spoiler

Awful Carina Coupe with the most hideous boot spoiler and double antenna

Funny thing is that I didn’t know some of the TA60 Coupes actually were delivered with independent rear suspension (IRS):

Carina Coupe with independent rear suspension

And, if I’m correct, there is a Carina station van in the background. ;)

It is sad to see such a waste… But then again, this car is in itself already a parody of itself. ;)

Optionland Exciting Car Showdown 2009 the day after

April 6, 2009 / banpei / 1 Comment

The Optionland Exciting Car Showdown 2009 I blogged about was held this weekend. I did find some sources with pictures of the event (mostly Speedhunters of course) and surely there are a lot of exciting things going on there! :)

First of all: as I wrote before, Impulse was invited this year and they arrived with three Corolla Levins from which two were AE86 and one AE111:

Three Impulse Levins: AE86 and AE111

One AE86 was a “stock” AE86 with some really nice Doridoris and a N2 racer:

Two Impulse Levins AE86

Better view of the N2 racer:

Better view of the Impulse Levin AE86 N2 racer
According to Dino Dalle Carbonare this N2 racer has a smallport 4AGE with Toda ITBs and outputting 213HP at 9000rpm. I don’t want to know what its rev limit is!
In case you’re wondering why the N2 doesn’t have a fender on the left side: this is a showcase of how the fender is mounted. Most of the N2 conversions are done with removing all metal from the fender so it is an irreversible process. This one has its fender lip cut away nicely and the N2 fender is mounted with a few drilled holes. Nice! :)

Furthermore I came accross this new feature, Electro Luminescence Car Vinyl by ELLighting Japan:

This is most probably the next big thing and will feature very very soon on D1GP cars and most probably be picked up soon on F1 cars for the night races!This example is a bit less clear to see because of the surrounding lights are too bright, but imagine this black car with illuminating vinyl drifing on a night event! Can’t wait! :)

Furthermore this Odyvia (Silvia with third generation Honda Odyssey) was something everybody talked about so I won’t post any pictures of it. ;)

And this was also something exciting:

Champ Road Skyline HCR32 by RYO
RYO calls it the Champ Road Skyline and it is very like the Bosozoku Style. Maybe you can call more or less the successor of the Gran Chan style but I expect this style to be picked up soon. :)

Well, that’s about it. You can read more about the Nagoya Exciting Car Showdown here:
Speedhunters
Jdmego
and probably soon more. ;)

Hashiriya Exports on D1GP

April 5, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

Hashiriya Exports hit the nail on the head in their rant against D1GP. I think this small citation is the core of the blog item:

Your car is all ready, you have paid the ridiculous 70,000 yen entry fee again, the truck is loaded and everything is packed, you just got off the phone to your new tire sponsor, this year Yokohama who are happy to have you on board but did they forget to mention that you will never ever have a chance of wining D1 because of their main tire competitor Goodyear. Goodyear is one of the D1GP’s main sponsors who will always have the last say in who wins, thank the King for the that. You happen to being doing flawless runs but yet the Goodyear backed big guns still manage to score more points then you every run without fail, you can also thank the King for that.

I do have to agree for a great deal with them: we all saw D1GP changing over the year and getting to a much more “professional” level each season. D1GP is starting to get more and more criticism lately which is mainly due to the sport growing in such rapid way.

The whole D1GP circus is starting to look more and more like an insiders only circus for which we, the outsiders, are allowed to pay a great deal in entry tickets, magazines, videos and merchandising. Apparently we are not allowed to share the fun with them, however once in a while the clown (Nomuken) is asking some volunteer to go along in his act and he shows you can be as big a clown as he is!
BTW: don’t get me wrong here: Kazama, Tsuchiya, Inada and Nomuken are still my heroes!

D1GP going sideways or downward?
Of course we still have Formula D, Prodrift and several other bigger series but the question is how long it will take till those series have the same kind of trouble as D1GP is in?

Well, maybe it is the same as with the Formula One: the larger audience likes it anyway as long as there is enough action. Only the enthusiasts are complaining…

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