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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…

Hilarious: Drifting with 4 people in a KE70

April 3, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

I really had to laugh about this video:

Ken Nomura, Daijiro Inada and Manabu Suzuki start drooling over a nicely 4AGE carbed Toyota Corolla KE70 with SSR Longchamps and the driver offers them a round on the circuit. The KE70 still has the rear bench, so why not cramp all four of them in that 4 door Corolla?

Inada sits, of course, shotgun while Nomuken and Suzuki are doomed to sit on the rear bench. This requires some squeezing by Suzuki to get in (I recon it was no trouble at all to get inside for Nomuken! ;) ) and as you can see there are no seatbelts in the rear. :D

When the driver takes off it starts snowing and you can hear at the straight all three shouting hayai. The driver probably must have scared them a bit!! :D :D

Carina Sightings: Turbo diesel Carina ice racing part 2

April 2, 2009 / banpei / 1 Comment

This week we continue about the Carina Turbo Diesel I posted last week. I had contact with the guy who posted the video and he sent me this video from the car before they bought it:As you can see in this video the turbo is sticking above the hood! :D
They changed it after they bought the car and now the turbo fits nicely under the hood.

!Edit! A video with all details on the Carina, Corolla and Mitsubishi was posted:

You can clearly see how they solved it now: the turbo is way lower than before… However: I did notice the original intake manifold (got Toyota 1C logo on it) going from the exhaust (on the RHD side) to the intake (on the LHD side) meaning that the engine was already a Turbo Diesel version!
I did some research which took me an hours and indeed Toyota made an 1C-T with this manifold from 1983 till 1985. Japanese Carinas never got the 1C-T so either Finland got this engine or this is a very rare engine swap! :)

The Carina is owned by three brothers from Finland and all three are racing with it. The guy I’m mailing with is only 13 years old! Amazing at what young age these Fins are starting with racing! Not surprising that so many good rally and track drivers are from Finland!

Rare Bosozoku cars: Mitsubishi Galant Lambda

March 31, 2009 / banpei / 6 Comments

This week we feature another rare Bosozoku styled car. This time I did find two Bosozoku styled examples of this car in contrary of the singular examples I previously posted.

This time we feature two Mitsubishi Galant Lambdas in different styles:

Mild Bosozoku styled Mitsubishi Galant Lambda
This Galant Lambda is a bit of a Kyusha styled car. Very nicely slammed to the ground with some phat rims and a nice oil cooler sticking under the bumper.

Wild Bosozoku styled Mitsubishi Galant Lambda
This wildly bosozoku styled Galant Lambda has it all: big overhanging lip at the front, big fenders, spoiler on the boot, 70s paint scheme, chromed mirrors and bumper, a hood ornament and let’s not forget the Astron 80 badge on the grille!

The Mitsubishi Galant Lambda was also known as the Mitsubishi Sapporo in the EU, Dodge Challenger and Plymouth Sapporo in the US, Chrysler Scorpion and the Mitsubishi Scorpion in Australia and the car was also known as the Colt Sapporo in the UK. That’s a lot of names!

Almost factory stock zenki (1976-1980) Galant Lambda
The Galant Lambda was marketed as a “personal luxury car” which meant it was not considered a coupe. It was supposed to be a two door luxury vehicle based on a car from the larger model lineup. Most likely to match the “hardtop” designation by Toyota for the Crown and Chaser which were immediate competitors.

The car had a facelift in 1980 which resulted in a new grille with fixed lights, B pilar going into the roof lining instead of being a seperate beam, new rear lights and a set of spoilers to get it into the 80s era.

Factory stock kouki (1980-1982) Galant Lambda
The Galant Lambda featured several engines but the 4 cylinder Astron 80 was the most favorable engine of them all: it featured the “silent shaft” system. The “silent shaft” system was an improved version of a single balance shaft which counter balanced the vibrations made by the inline piston engine design. This system was the first use of twin balance shafts which enabled Mitsubishi to improve stability in the Astron engine and enlarge the engine over 2 liters. The Galant Lambda Astron 80 featured a 2.6 liter engine, a figure which was in the 70s normally only obtainable by adding at least two extra cylinders!

The Galant Lambda featured a futuristic design both outside and inside. It features a single spoke steering wheel and a wild spaceage interior. This interiour looked just as good as the interior of a Citroen SM back in 1976!

Factory stock interior Galant Lambda

On one side I understand why the Galant Lambda is a rare Bosozoku car: it is already a very wild styled car, on the other hand I don’t understand it: it reads potential all over it.
Perhaps it has to do with the brand Mitsubishi: Mitsubishi focused primarily on smaller cars during the 60s and early 70s while Nissan and Toyota already sold the larger saloons. Resulting in Mitsubishi’s being the 5th largest car manufacturer in Japan. Also Mitsubishi focused on Rally and not on circuit racing so they missed the Granchan followers.

As an ex-Mitsubishi owner I always wanted to buy a good condition Sapporo, however an AE86 came in between. Who knows, maybe I’ll own one myself one day. One thing is for sure then: it won’t be Bosozoku styled! ;)

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

DIY: Fender widening by Video Option

March 30, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

I still remember encountering these techniques through AEU86 for the first time and it scared the hell out of me:

Back then when I saw this video I thought this guy is bashing up his own car in a very bad way: he’s not using the right hammers to do body work with and he just uses a pole to widen his rear fender with.

Nowadays I can truely enjoy this video: I’ve learned a lot in the last years and one of them is that you can’t keep your car clean if you want to go fast with it. People like this guy are doing this to improve the car, not the looks of the car. They don’t care how the car looks, as long as it is okay.

So actually seeing this video after such a long time made me laugh about how my own opinion changed during these years… I still wouldn’t do that to my own Carina because I would take a proper set of tools but I can understand and enjoy these DIY mods now. :)

I wonder if this car still lives… Or would it already be used as a drift missile after a while?

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