Screaming chicken and T-Tops! Doesn’t get any better than that! Check out Jamie’s ride page for more pics!

Let me preface this by saying how much I love the look that’s being perpetrated by certain members of the TunerCarDomain. Guys like Marc Arcenal of Fatlace/Hellaflush fame and Speedhunters Antonio Alvendia and Linhbergh Nguyen who not only talk the talk but jock the look on their rides.

Perhaps you aren’t familiar with this (life) style that involves dramatically lowered rides combined with aggressively offset wheels and stretched tire fitments allowing the outermost lip of the wheel to sit (hella) flush with the fender. Of course the lo-los have been stretching Vogue radials over 14-inch Ds for decades now and as an Eighties mini-trucker I can attest to the existence of elastic fantastic Fuldas over polished Centerlines. Within the tuner world the look first gained prominence in select enclaves of the JDM and Euro tuner communities most notably within the underground world of J-spec drifting outside of D1.

As this style gains frame-scraping ground Stateside I often dream about rolling in a Rauh-Welt matte S15 poured over a set of Bright Chrome Super Advan Racing Ver. 2s. Although I would probably ruin the look by rocking a Tap Out hoodie over an Affliction T. Damn, even in my dreams I’m a dork. But there’s another reason why this dream won’t work for me – form must follow function in my world.

I prefer a car with a proper set-up. Good wheel fitment, rubber with a proper aspect ratio, corner-balanced alignment with the just the right amount of ride height and suspension travel. This is what stiffens my strut bar, if you know what I’m saying. But what do you say? Am I off base here or is looking good just as important as being good?

Brian is hoping to be invited to the Grassroots Motorsports Ultimate Track Car Challenge. Check out his ride page, and if you think he deserves to go to VIR in July, rate him up!

Ken Block is the creator of the DC Shoes empire and a Rally America championship stud. But he’s best known as that heel toe god among us match-rev challenged mortals who pulled the Segue donut in that gymkhana practice video that has been straining the bandwidth of the entire interweb with some 20 million-plus streams to date. And earlier this week Ken Block tried to kill me – on three separate occasions! Get to jumping to read how.

Continue reading "Ken Block Tried to Kill Me – 3X!!" »

As I stood among the group of cars, the smell of strained oil and engine heat climbed up my nostrils, searching for the road to my brain. Instead, I felt the smell go deep into my soul and through my heart. I’d only been to this establishment, what, two or three times before? Something about the owner kept me coming back. His mysteriousness, his silence and his poise all made me think that he knew something, that he had a secret. His cars sat in front of his shop, some of them in not the greatest of shape, but it wasn’t so much how they looked, but what they stood for. They stood for strength, and soul, and with each one, I found a small story. All it took was a simple look and a glance to figure out that they all had a history.

Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "The Forgotten Man of Chiba’s Shop" »

A lot of us at CarDomain are unapologetic fans of unexpectedly pink cars, and when this bubble-gum-hued Pantera turned up on eBay, I couldn’t help but share it with you all. Panteras are cool at the best of times–there’s just something about a refined-looking Italian exotic with that burly muscle-car chortle coming out of it–but this one, with a shot of nitrous running through its 351 Cleveland, is awesome enough to get away with just about any color scheme it wants. The two-tone is a bit My Little Pony, but whatever. Check out the auction here.

The Swede won this week’s Showroom Showdown by a 2-to-1 margin. I can’t figure out why I don’t see more C30s on the road.

This particular accident occurred while an FBI Agent was taking the seized super car to storage and it’s getting blamed on “bald tires.” Well, you go ahead and blame it on the tires. I’ll blame it on the V12 and relatively inexperienced driver. Lots of damage was done, so hopefully the FBI is able to prosecute the drug dealer that formerly owned it, or they’ll have a pretty hefty bill on their hands.

But the story doesn’t end there—not for me. It happened in Lexington, KY, which is where I live. I’ve met the drug dealer that owned this car several times and he seemed like a really nice guy. I always wondered why he left it running when he went into Kroger. Via WreckedExotics

Canada’s Magna finally gets its wish. After failing to win Chrysler, they have reached an agreement in principle with GM Europe and will start to take over Opel. This is great news for the Europeans—Magna have been building cars on a contract basis for many years and actually know something about manufacturing. That’s more than I can say for either Cerberus (Chrysler’s owner) or Uncle Sam. Saturn may not die after all! More details at Reuters.

Join Rich Truesdell in the hunt for the next big (automotive) thing. Here’s what rich has to say about this adventure:

Automotive spy photography is a bit like fishing. It involves getting up very early in the morning, and the results are not always what you hope for. If you enjoy the thrill of the hunt and are one of the lucky readers who will accompany me this season, we will arrange a designated rendezvous point in Riverside or San Bernardino County before heading north for a day’s fun in the desert. We’ll arrive at our destination well before lunch and won’t head back until after sundown, so it will be a very long day, but when it’s over, you’ll have a very clear idea of the obstacles–natural and man-made–that spy photographers encounter in their effort to get the shot that will be published on dozens of websites and land on the pages of your favorite car magazines.

If this sounds like your kind of adventure, read the article here.

Continue reading "Be an Automotive Spy Photographer for a Day" »

You’re going to get familiar with the names Gary and Pam Beineke. We invaded their privacy to shoot and video several cars from their way awesome collection, and we’ll be featuring those cars in coming weeks. Most are cars that the couple built from scratch, but there’s one that they just picked up along the way. That’s this one, a 1987 Buick GNX that the couple bought brand new back in 1987 and has held on ever since.

Ironically, every other piece in their collection is a Mopar product, but this Buick holds a special place in their hearts. As one of only 547 ever produced, there are plenty of reasons why.

The GNX was basically the parting shot fired by Buick when it came to be known that the Grand National would be dead at the end of 1987. Buick teamed up with ASC/Mclaren to design a package that would totally optimize the drivetrain and upgrade the suspension of the car to levels previously unheard of in factory cars. The name was an homage to the legendary GSX moniker that was used on the highest performing Buicks from 1970-1972. They used 455ci to shred tires, this car used less than 250 to haul the mail.

The devil is totally in the details, so click here to see the gallery that’s loaded with photos and captions that spill the beans on this pinnacle Buick.

Oh yeah, right below there’s also the kickass video of the 8,000-mile original shredding tires. The ones it rolled out of the factory on.

We never know what we’ll see in the Hemmings parking lot, and one recent morning was no exception. Josh Recave of Falmouth, Massachusetts, stopped by on his way to a woodie gathering in Waterloo, New York, hauling his Campbell-bodied 1942 Plymouth Deluxe woodie station wagon. Josh knows it’s a rather rare bird, and he said he’d like to finish the restoration some day (the wood was redone in 1992), but we think it’s great, Driveable Dream material as is. In fact, we may just shoot it for HCC, so keep your eyes peeled there for more of the woodie. More pics at Hemmings

I’ll be honest and tell you straight away, I never knew that Volkswagen made a car called the Derby….. But it seems that the car in the picture is called just that. From what I can gather, VW called the saloon version of the Polo the Derby…. but they dropped the name in 1984. This car reminded me in some ways of a Japanese build car with its wide arches and wheels. The custom made diffuser and centre exhaust hint at its capacities.

Does anybody have more info on this car?

By Jeroen Willemsen

Welcome to the CarDomain Obscure Muscle Car Parking Lot, a regular feature which aims to expand the notion of what a muscle car is, and to see if a Supercharged bomb can be included. Ford was fighting for dominance at the stock car tracks throughout the country, and was neck and neck with it’s crosstown rival Chevrolet. Little did anyone know, Ford had an ace up it’s sleeve. Lets discover the 1957 Ford Supercharged “F” Series. And no, that was not the truck!

Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "CarDomain Obscure Muscle Car Parking Lot: the 1957 Ford (Supercharged) F Series" »

Another great one from Jalopnik. You know the drill: Come up with a caption for the picture below by noon PST next Thursday. If you submit the funniest one, we’ll send you some CarDomain swag. Three entries per member max. Good luck!