Goddamn I love Super GT. As if there could be nothing better than a Japanese sports car anyway, they go and build them all out of CF, make them wider than Rosie O’Donnell’s arse, tune the engines so they’re putting out the same power as a small star and then race them a super high speeds against each other around a track. Could there be anything better?
Well in fact there could and that would be if that a large majority of the pack ends up spearing off at a high speed creating much excitement and joy for all. I don’t want anyone to get hurt or anything, it’s just that everyone can appreciate a good 200kph+ accident.
Anyway, the second round of the Super GT starts tomorrow at Okayama with practice on Friday, qualifying on Saturday and the race itself on Sunday. This will also be the first race where the Lexus IS350 will be making its debut in the GT300 class.
Okayama is not an overly high-speed course with the longest straight being only 700 meters, and the course record is currently held by Michael Krumm who posted a 1′22.404 lap in the Motul Pitworks Z back in 2004, though there is a lot of speculation that the record may be up for grabs this year with the GT-R on the scene, and we should get some idea of whether that’s possible after the practice lap times are posted tomorrow.
I’ll keep you all posted as the weekend progresses!
Many a time I’ve heard people saying that it’s the wheels that make the car, however of late I’ve been wondering if that common saying should be revered to say that it’s the car that makes the wheels. So that you might understand this slightly-pointless rant a little better, let me elaborate.
I don’t know if it’s the same with everyone or if it’s just that my brain is a little more warped than the average Joe because of a large history of eating certain species of fungus I probably shouldn’t have, but have you ever noticed that you might not think very highly of a certain type of wheel until you saw them on a car you absolutely adored?
For me this happened only a few days ago when I dug up a photo of that absolutely pristine series VIII Evo owned and built by A Spec. While I never hated the Volk RE30 type of wheel, I never actually liked them much either and I didn’t seem to think much of them whenever I saw them on any car. And I certainly could never see myself buying a set for any car I would personally own either.
This all changed when I spied them on this car and now I think these wheels are the automotive equivalent of a particularly good traditional serving of Nasi Ayam (look it up if you don’t know it) when you get down to the salty bones of the bird and suck on them for five minutes to get all the flavour out.
I’ve been thnking for a while that my next car would be a CT9A Evo of some description but I did plan on putting CE28Ns on it as I’ve always had a soft spot for those babies, however I think my mind is now permanantly fixated on getting a set of bronze RE30s.
I mean really they’re not a whole lot different than the CE28N anyway, but if that was the case then why didn’t I like them in the first place? Perplexing I know, if slightly unecessary.
So back to my point at the start, if it truly were the wheels that made the car, I would have loved every car I set eyes on which were wearing RE30 shoes. But I didn’t. But when I saw them on this Evo, I wet my pants a little which I think gives credibility to the fact that it’s the car that makes the wheel.
So, todays rant; pointless? Probably. You still read it though.
Hey guys, I planned to write a few more posts todat as I wanted to cover the top cars from the Exciting Car Showdown among some other jazzy JDM stuff, however my Internet connection is seriously screwy and It’s taken me an hour to get to this page in order to write this post…Damn budget hotel WiFi…
Anyway, I’ll post a whole lot more stuff up tomorrow, though if you want to check out the top 10 cars from the Exciting Car Showdown, click here to be taken to the site. And make sure you lay your peepers on the stunning hyper-yellow shod R Magic FD; absolutely amazing
As if the R35 GT-R couldn’t get any more insane, Nissan decides to go on and develop a V-Spec version. And that’s a good thing because as we all know, you can never, and I mean never, have too much power.
They’re currently testing the car at the infamous Nürburgring in Germany, where Nissan have set a goal to achieve a time below 7 minutes 25 seconds for the V-Spec; some 18 seconds quicker than the standard GT-R.
Nissan are upping the boost to produce just under 560PS and will be putting the V-Spec on a crash diet in order to lose 150kg to make it slimmer than its fatter and more standard older brother. You’ll also notice there are some new ducts in the front bar which are most likely there to feed more air to what is rumoured to be a brand new carbon-ceramic braking package.
There is also rumoured to be a host of carbon fiber items such as body panels and a rear wing, which has been blacked out on the V-Spec on it’s trundles around the track.
So if you’ve been dreaming about being the toast of your town and buying a new GT-R, maybe you should hold off and wait for this to come out. Or you could just buy both - why not?
This is the new aero gear that Deck debuted for the Evo X recently and as you can see, it’s very subtle. Almost a little too subtle if you ask me.
All up there’s a front lip spoiler, carbon wing mirrors and a teeny-weenie rear spoiler (if you can call it that), which you can nab for just under 78,000 Yen (RM2415, $760 USD), but for that price you’re not getting a whole lot are you? I can’t say that its the most expensive set of aero mods out there, but it’s also not very noticeable.
I can see this appealing to a certain mindset of people, however I don’t think the minimalist thing works so well with the hostile and angular form of the Evo X. You need jutting carbon canards, bodykits that were styled to look like a stealth fighter and a rear wing that wouldn’t look out of place on a top fuel drag racer.
You want your brand new Evo X to look as if it’s going to rip the head off anyone who dares to oppose it, feast on their still-warm entrails and then ask for seconds. This just doesn’t do that for the car.
I’ll say that it’s nice, but I won’t say much more.
Sorry to any of the Evo X fanatics who read this blog, but I always have loved the CT9A series Evos and I can safely say I’d rather have one parked in my garage than one of the new series 10 Evolutions. Hey, that could just be my own misguided personal opinion, however its examples like this one here that make a pretty good argument for my case.
This is a stateside Evo VIII, one of the demo cars hailing from the garage of A Spec Performance. And if you thought the outside of this thing looked overly-aggresive as if it were about to deliver a ball-rending kick to your groin, just wait until you hear what’s lurking underneath.
Just about every unecessary piece of embellishment has been removed from the bosom of this Evo, being replaced with an aluminium rear firewall, SPL rollcage, Recaro bench and a Nardi Deep Corn Rally 350 wheel.
As far as the heart of this titan is concerned, the 4G63 was turned over to legendary F1 engine builders Cosworth in order to wring every possible horse out of the Mitsubishi powerplant. The pistons were replaced with CP forged items, while the rings and rods were rejected in favour of pieces that could handle the eventual power output. Cosworth then ported the head, balanced and blueprinted the piston assembly back to the stock crank, added new springs, retainers, valves, camshafts, camgears and then put the whole lot back together.
And as for forced induction, this duty would now be handled by a Garrett 3071 turbocharger which would coerce the rebuilt engine into producing a mighty-excellent 470PS.
Visually the car is decked out with a Gram Lights front bar — which I think is one of the best you can get for this series of Evo — A Spec front fenders, APR carbon mirrors and GT wing, as well as a Seibon bonnet and trunk. As for the rolling stock, a set of Volk RE30s were chosen, which hide some serious Project Mu 4-piston stopping power.
As far as Evos go, they simply don’t get much better than this. And if you disagree with me, just remember; I know where you live.
The other day I noticed a couple of the new Nissan GT-Rs being sold on Motortrader, which is Malaysia’s biggest car sales website. One thing that grabbed my attention was how much more expensive the car is when compared to prices I’d heard them going for in other parts of the world - especially Japan.
I thought I’d put together a list of the prices I found for the exact same car just in different countries, and you’ll probably be surprised as I was at the immense difference between some of them.
Bear in mind when looking at the list that I didn’t research or take into account stuff like dealer charges, tax and all those other costs that come associated with a new car, and also the fact is that most of these cars are not delivered into the country by the manufacturer and are all grey imports. Also, I listed the price of the cheapest example I could find in all the countries specified.
JAPAN - 7.7 million Yen ($75,225 USD) SINGAPORE - $299,000 SGD ($216,500 USD) MALAYSIA - RM750,000 ($235,825 USD) AUSTRALIA - $150,000 AUD ($138,930 USD) US - $96,000 USD UK - £65,000 ($125,250 USD)
As you can see the price jumps around more than a nine year old immediately after ingesting a stomach full of red cordial, and unfortunately for me, I’m currently living in the country where the car appears to be the most expensive - and I thought Australia was bad.
If anyone else can track down a price for the Nissan GT-R in another country and can support it with a link, please let me know with a comment or by emailing it to me at jdmasia@gmail.com and I’ll add it to the list!
Kakimoto recently released another exhaust system for the new CZ4A Evo just over a week ago, however I must have been sniffing too much glue that day as I missed it. Anyway, I thought I’d bring it to the attention of all the Evo X buffs that are regular readers of the blog.
Slightly differenty to the single-outlet Hyper Fullmega N1 setup they released a few weeks back, this one has twin pipes like the standard affair that comes bolted on from the factory. It’s slightly pricier than the 5Zigen item I featured yesterday at 131,250 yen (RM4085, $1285), though I think this one is a whole lot sexier, featuring the blued burned tips which are missing from the 5Zigen pipes.
And as is the case with all Kakimoto exhausts, I can guarantee you that this one will sound absolutely astonishing when compared to the factory item, and is a little more exclusive than the more-common 5Zigen pipes.
It seems we can’t get through a news week without having our eyes assailed with a picture of some rich specimen whose totalled his priceless supercar. Not long ago it was the prize tool who will go down in the history books as the one who destroyed the first ever Nissan GT-R — and on a test drive no less — and this week it’s a guy in Chengsha City China who mutilated his rare Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 while showing off and attempting to flick the rear out around a corner.
I know of course that the media is going to pay a lot more attention when a half million dollar piece of exotica is wrecked than for instance if you hit a telegraph pole in your Daewoo Nubira, though it doesn’t stop me from wondering if when your wallet size and ego increase, your driving skill decreases substantially.
The old adage “Pride comes before a fall” always springs into mind when I think about this because it always seems to be the case of a overpaid executive trying to impress the commoners on the street with his flamboyant driving skills when things seem to all go wrong.
And whenever I read a story like this, I always feel that smug emotion creep up insde my brain and begin to laugh internally at how much of an idiot you’d have to be to do something like that, but in reality if I had the bankroll to splash out on a Ferrari F430, Nissan GT-R or whatever, would I be any different? Could I possibly have been in exactly the same situation as the Chinese guy who just turned his LP640 into an expensive paperweight?
In reality, I don’t think there’s one of us alive who wouldn’t want to show their car off if they owned something like that. Hell, I know a guy who own an R31 Skyline and he prances around in it like it was a Bugatti Veyron - and most of us in this scene are the same, whether you like to admit it or not. Some of us might not be as adept in the art of showboating as others, but the fact remains we all love to flaunt what we’ve got.
In retrospect, I do think that an increased wallet does decrease driving skill slightly, simply based on the wank-factor of the car you own. The fact of the matter is, the better the car you own, the higher your likelihood to want to show it off, and the higher the likelihood you’re going to do something stupid - like wrecking a GT-R on a test drive, or something.
I just received this video through the freshly-launched JDM Asia Myspace page (add friend now!) showing HKS’s latest demo cars, the new Nissan R35 GT-R and Subaru Impreza WRX Sti.
As the video is in Japanese I can’t understand what they’re talking about in terms of the specifications of these machines, but from the video footage showing under the hoods of these cars, it’s obvious they’re both sporting some serious HKS upgrades.
Externally they both look pretty bland and it’s almost as if HKS have put no effort in even making the graphic work look decent which is okay for the jaw-droppingly menacing GT-R, however it’s not so good for the absolutely horrendous Sti - this car is already an ugly swine and it doesn’t need dodgy graphics and stickers making it look even worse.
JDM Asia is the personal blog of an Australian ex-patriot living in Malaysia who lives and breathes all-things JDM. Come here for the best in JDM news, wicked go-fast goodies and other useless junk relating to modern performance motoring.
