By John Naderi

StreetFire.net

The SpoCom show took place this past weekend in Long Beach. Our complete coverage is posted over on StreetFire, but I wanted to share a few pictures of the cars on display. Check out the best of show: Lyle Engleson’s Auto Concept Elite 1975 Mini Cooper. The craftsmanship on this old Mini is remarkable with a custom widebody and a rear-mounted 408hp Borg Warner S362 turbocharged Honda K20Z1 driving the rear wheels. As much as I love the ACE crew and I appreciate the work that Lyle has put into his Mini this car just doesn’t do it for me. Do you agree with me or not? Hit the jump to see some other cars from the show.

Continue reading "What Show Car Style Do You Prefer?" »

By Katherine Helmetag

Atomicalex

The driver of this Spec Focus walked away from a slow-motion roll and remarked “well, I did buy it used.” The order of events is not clear, but it involved a broken rear rotor, a locked up wheel (same), and turn 1 at Waterford Hills. Damage to the Focus was minimal thanks to the slow speed, but even so, I was completely impressed with the lack of intrusion. Aside from the jacked up rear suspension and panel damage, the unitbody was intact with no contacts to the cage. Good work on the part of the Focus team over at Ford, and excellent control on the part of the driver. This could have gone waaaay worse! See a pic of the failed rotor after the jump.

Continue reading "Safety First For This Spec Focus" »

By 993C4S

Porsche Purist

Leave it to Porsche to create a 2 1/2 hour “film” documenting their storied history. Released today, The Porsche Way provides an insiders view of the achievements of Ferdinand and Ferry Porsche and progresses from decade to decade (over eight chapters) on the development of the famous sports car manufacturer.

Using footage from more than 5000 hours of archived films, races, commercials and interviews, the DVD presents a number of never before scenes of the Company, the product and Porsche motorsport.

The only catch to all this? If you want to buy the DVD, you’ll have to take a visit to the Porsche Museum in Germany as that’s the only place it is currently available (price is about $35 US). Let’s hope it makes its way to Amazon sometime soon.

Trailer courtesy of Porsche! No, your speakers aren’t broken

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Victor sent this to me. I can’t read Russian, but Victor tells me this kit is from Status Design and that it will be available in October. See more pic here. Like it?

By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

Given the events of the last week, it’s awful nice to post a video of a Ferrari ripping up the track instead of burning to death. Since legendary racer Derek Bell won his first race at Goodwood—way back in 1966—it must have been especially sweet to pilot his favorite Ferrari there, and this footage reflects his excitement. Since the course is so narrow, it’s amazing to see him pitch the wheel so severely on seemingly straight sections, and from the way the 333 SP breaks loose at the start, it’s clear this 600HP beast is probably a handful to drive. Of course, since all those ponies are coming from one of Enzo’s beloved V12s, the soundtrack is amazing.

By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

First off, am I the only one that thinks the guys fighting this fire should be wearing more than shorts and t-shirts? If there’s a bottle of nitrous in a burning car, nobody knows for sure what’s going to happen, and this situation could have resulted in an explosion. Another thing? Why the hell didn’t the driver shut the motor down before he bailed? That seems like a no-brainer to me. Anyway, while there are some pretty big fireballs—at one point it gets so bright you can barely see anything in the frame—it doesn’t look like anyone got away with anything worse than some singed eyebrows.

By Chris Bicknell

Bick66

With help from John at Autosport I installed all new bearings and spider gears in the rear end of my ’66 Impala Convertible and got the car back on the road again.

What did you do this weekend?

By Brian Lohnes

BangShift.com

300 plus muscle cars, street machines, and customs cruised Van Nuys Blvd in San Fernando Valley for the first time in decades, and we were there for all the action. What started as a grassroots movement to hold a “reunion” cruise night, turned into something far more bitchin’ than anyone expected. Van Nuys Blvd was well known in the ’70s as one of the most insane cruise scenes in the country, and further reinforced California’s San Fernando Valley as one of the horsepower hot spots of the times. The 2009 version didn’t disappoint, with Novas, Camaros, Mustangs, and Mopars a plenty. From Pro Street to Street Race, Road Race to Custom, and everything in between, it could all be found this week in the San Fernando Valley.

Although the festivities were scheduled to start at 8 pm, the lot at Rydell Chevrolet in Van Nuys was almost full by the time 8 rolled around. So was the Ralph’s parking lot down the street, along with all the gas stations within blocks. And this was no lawnchair crowd either, with cars cruising up and down Van Nuys Blvd for a couple miles. Scott Liggett (Rebeldryver) and Ryan Walker (Ryan Walker) from our forums were on hand for the festivities, and cruised the boulevard in Scott’s 383, 4 speed, ’65 Impala SS.

Police were on scene making sure nobody was stupid, but allowed everyone to have fun and did not cause any grief. Several cars were running slicks, open headers, and race gas which is what we all expect when talking about Van Nuys.

Word on the street is that this may happen again a couple more times this year, and we sure hope so. We’ll let you know when we hear something, and we’ll be there with video cameras in hand to bring you all the sites and sounds.

Special thanks to Scott Liggett for helping out with a few photos and captions from the show.

Click here to see 26 photos from the event.

By Speedhunters

Car Culture At Large

I was originally planning on making this part of the “Car Sightings” posts I’m working on, but decided it was strange enough to warrant its own post. I had to do a double take the other day when I saw this SW20 MR2 roadster driving down the street. Now as far as I know Toyota never made a convertible of this generation, so I’m assuming it’s an aftermarket kit of some sort.

Whatever it was, I thought it looked surprisingly decent, and know it would look even better with the top down. Do any of the the Toyota guys know more about this?

By Mike Garrett

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Very sad… Story at Jalopnik