Feature

Influence is a rather interesting phenomenon in automotive culture. There are, on the whole, three major camps: the European, the East Asian, and the North American, each of which has a near unlimited amount of subcultures and movements. While each of the spheres has their own unique aesthetics, individuals are constantly pulling ideas from each other and blending those designs into their own region's styles. One can look to the American hot-rod culture's influence on the European air-cooled Volkswagens or the American adoption of the Japanese tuner style.  Eventually these influences get passed around so many times, that they end up coming back to the original source in new ways. For example, the Japanese VIP scene was inspired by the large, classy sedans of Europe.  Japanese tuners were drawn to the imposing characters of cars like the Mercedes S Class and BMW 7 series, and sought to apply those same styling cues to their own domestic sedans, mixing the classy Old World style with the existing shakotan look. Michael Milano-Picardi was inspired by that bippu look and has applied it to his own Mercedes CL500; an American, modifying his European sports coupe in a manner invented by the Japanese for to mimic stately European sedans. Wunderbar! Read More »

As the new year comes along, new builds will appear here and there. Most of the time we feature rides once, however, there are builds that are worth mentioning more than once. This is the third time we are introducing Alan's clean black on black BMW 335i coupe. This time it's back with a brand new interior and engine bay. This bad boy is part of the worldwide car group, EuroProjektz. The sole goal of EuroProjektz is to increase the influence of European car builds to the show circuit. This 335i is here to prove that not all show cars need to be over the top. Sometimes there are finer details that are missed. This is a build we wouldn't mind following until the end. Read More »

One of the most fascinating aspects of our slice of automotive culture has been to watch the maturation of the "import tuner". While acknowledging that there are those who have been modifying imports since the cars first arrived in the states, our scene was largely defined in the first half of the 1990's by magazines like Sport Compact Car and Super Street. Cars such as the 5th generation Honda Civic and the 2nd generation DSM twins were kings, as most of the iconic 90's Japanese sports cars heralded today were out of the price range of the average import enthusiast.  These humble starting points, however, created opportunities for truly epic builds. These first generations of our scene built like they had something to prove; because frankly, they did. They were building the economy cars of the time and lacked the acceptance of the mainstream American performance community. Japanese cars were simply rice burners; most true Japanese performance was still out of reach, either economically or geographically. While the Japanese had established performance pedigrees decades prior, those series mostly took place in European or Asian venues.  Our Nascar Nation was not ready to accept that a Honda was anything but an economical way to get from point A to point B. Read More »

As the year ends, another season of shows will end with it. To close out 2011, we present our Autocon coverage for you. The event, along with the turn out, was much larger than last year. We were excited to use that opportunity to booth for the first time on the West Coast. Organized as a charity event, the show was a great experience for us, and we enjoyed meeting everyone. We'd like to thank the Royal Origin guys for coming out to show at our booth with their quality cars and hilarious entertainment throughout the day. Four different photographers covered Autocon for us just to make sure we didn't miss anything. Enjoy, and we hope to see you next year! Read More »

A short but quality video showcasing some of our friends cars from the group Level One out of Toronto, Canada. We had the pleasure of meeting a few of the guys when they made the trip down to New Jersey earlier this year for Honda Day, and we hope to make it up to Toronto for an event or two next year! This isn't the entire crew but it gives you an idea of the quality and variety these guys represent. "We aren't a car club... we're a family..." Read More »

For those of you who attended SEMA a while back should recognize this photo. If not, then this was just a shoot of some JDM cars from southern California. It's pretty rare to get all these cars to show up all together so we made it happen. From left to right is a Toyota Supra, Mitsubishi Evo X, Acura NSX (Veilside inspired), Mazda Speed3, Nissan 370z. Read More »

The Hawaiian Islands, for all of their natural beauty and tropical vistas, have a rather tumultuous geological history. Located above a Pacific Ocean hotspot, the islands that form the 50th state were created through a series of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and subsequent erosion. This pattern of destruction and rebirth has allowed the islands to continually turn mountains of magma, ash, and fire into tropical paradises. Albert Lee, a resident of the capital city of  Honolulu, saw his last project, a turboed GS300, burn to the ground after a faulty turbo install. Determined to come back bigger than ever, Albert teamed up with VIP Modular to create this gorgeous VIP Modular GS350. Read More »

There's always a reason behind why we love cars and why we modify them. Depending on the person, some will go for show while others will go for a car that can perform. No matter what type of person you are we all share one common interest that brings us together and that is we all love modifying our cars. Ricky, the owner of this GT-R, decided to go the track and performance route for his build. Ricky is not a newbie when it comes to building functional track-ready cars, his whole garage only consists of track-ready cars. You might remember his red BMW M3 that I posted a while back. Yup, this is the same owner. Read More »

For many people, the extent of their automobile enthusiast life is lived out in the forums and the blogs.  One can spend hours hopping from site to site, post to post, in search of something to awe, shock, or bewilder; and that niche will always be filled. Soon enough, however, one becomes jaded to the big, expensive wheels, enormous turbos, and seemingly impossible suspension set-ups. Rather than appreciating the cars as personal projects with their own investments of time, money, and effort, the cars simply become objects to judge and rank in a personal hierarchy of acceptable norms. This corruption is where statements like, "V8 drift cars are played out!" come from. Just because the internet has introduced a handful of fully swapped, functional engine-swapped cars in a period of several months, the forum junkie's brain pushes this "trend" into the "been there, done that" folder; not even considering that there's maybe been one within his own arm's reach before, and the chances of him actually shaking the hand of a builder is slim to none. Read More »

It's always a huge plus when we feature cars that are not typically modified in the scene, but it makes it even more special when it's from a different parts of the world. It's one of those cars like the recently re-released VW Scirocco that we in the states can only see and admire online but not enjoy it in person everyday. Since we are an international car blog we are fortunate enough to to feature Tony Lin's unique BMW 120i hatch straight from the south of China. Read More »