I figured it was time for some import tuner love in this week’s eBay Motors Showdown. The Veilside RX-7 is a magazine quality FD with $50k in mods according to the seller. And the Hakosuka Clone looks sweet and has lots of authentic JDM touches. Oh, and both of these rides are John Naderi approved. So, which would you choose?

GT-RR’s third signature build has come to a close over the weekend. This car was conceptualized to do only one thing, to make our client “R” as proud of a GT-R owner as possible. Unlike our previous two GT-R signature builds which aimed to be essentially all things to all people (show cars, magazine cover cars, track cars AND to please our clients), this car is a focused and direct ode to “R” and his desire to own his dream GT-R.

As such, I can say already (without hearing any feedback from anyone else) that this project was a success because “R” was happy! As “R” called it “perfect” and “10 out of 10″, I let out a sigh of relief that months of planning and building this car resulted in the very success I envisioned for it. Continue reading at The Real JDM

Via Jalopnik

Looking back, we still feel so grateful that last year we were given the chance by two of our clients to build them award winning GT-Rs for last SEMA. One of the biggest rewards of those projects has been the trust placed in us to take on new projects for new clients. This is one of those new projects, and I’m, as always, very excited about it!

Taking advantage of our strong partner network, our client “R” asked us to build him his own version of an ultimate GT-R and to do so on the East Coast of the US. We have been fortunate over the years to have built up an incredible partnership with who we feel are some of the best tuning shops, body shops and partners the industry has to offer and this project was a chance for us to put our partner network into action with a full build!

Recently I bought a brand new GT-R 2010 Premium Edition on behalf of “R” to begin the build. The goal was to buy and build a complete car to be delivered to our client “R” upon completion. You can see the stock 2010 GT-R pictured below. I snapped that picture about 10 days ago, last time I was in New York managing the build. Continue reading at The Real JDM

I’m a bit worried about SEMA this year. It seems like most of the good companies have pulled out of the show for financial reasons. Usually trade shows are some of the worst hit by the recession and this year SEMA looks ultra depressing.

I’m left with all of the really cool ideas/concepts of cars I want to make, but no booths to put them in. I really hope SEMA wont be as dissapointing as I’m afraid it will be.

As most of you already know, I built Toyo’s SEMA booth and ad cars two years in a row and now there’s no Toyo booth at all this year…

I think I might need to go one better this year and build a car for Tokyo Auto Salon instead of SEMA. I always wanted to build a car to compete on JDM home turf. That would be a really fun challenge. Plus I always wanted to run Tsukuba…hmm, now I’m dreaming up something worth while.

Is there any actually good news about SEMA this year? Anyone?

Thinking back on this summer’s epic All Star Bash weekend, I’ve begun to come to the conclusion that it just might have been the best American grassroots drifting event that I’ve ever been to in my whole life. Now THAT is a pretty strong statement – especially when you’ve been to as many grassroots drifting events in different states as I have. Of course, one of the things that naturally attracts me to the All Star Bash is the presence of some pretty awesome cars, most of which are S13s and S14s.

However, there was a certain non S-chassis that caught my attention – it was a white R32 Nissan Skyline with license plates from Washington state. It wasn’t until the end of the last day of All Star Bash that I met the owner of this car – Jon Jaffe from Washington’s own Team Instant Party. When we spoke at Willow Springs, it was hot, so I just gave him props on his car and a couple stickers, and went on my way.

Fast forward about a month – on my way back from the Formula D Seattle trip, BN Sports Raymond and I found ourselves chillin out in Bothell, Washington with Instant Party driver Roland Gallagher and his dad. On the day I was supposed to return to Los Angeles, I asked Raymond if we could stop by Roland’s house on the way to the airport so I could check out his car really quick and say what’s up. Shortly after we arrived at Roland’s house, Jon took a break from his workday to come over and say hello. Perfect timing. I wanted to get a closer look at his Skyline anyway! Continue reading and view more photos at MotorMavens!

We recently picked up a brand new black on black 2010 GT-R to build which is in progress out here on the east coast (more on that in a couple of weeks), and we’re finishing up our white GT-R build which is well known as the GT-RR / Toyo Tires car.

Continue reading "GT-RR R35 Demo Car On The Dyno!" »

One of my friends loves the GT-R so much that he bought a push pedal toy GT-R for his one year old daughter! We imported the toy from Japan for them last year. Here in this picture you can see a true GT-R loving family with the R34, R35 and the toy car!

I love this picture! (Quality note – this is a photo of a photo, taken with my iPhone and published remotely from my iPhone in NY)

Just found this cool shot of an R32, R33, R34 and last but not least an R35. My choice would be the R33 because I know that particular car. Which one would you choose?

By Jeroen Willemsen

Although it’s purely cosmetic, this Voltex build R35 wouldn’t look out of place on the Wangan.

By Jeroen Willemsen

This morning I did a quick walk around of the GT-RR demo car. The result is our first video on youtube and I thought it would be a fun way to show the car with something other than still pictures.

Mainly I wanted to showcase the recently installed Top Secret suspension which still is a bit of a trip to see. As far as I can tell, the R35 GT-R community has never seen this system in action yet.  People just don’t expect a race suspension to be able to lift or lower a car by remote control. This version of the suspension still uses the stock electronic controlled dampers. We set the spring height at an ideal level for a street driven car (which this car is designed to be).  I run the same Top Secret height adjustable suspension on my S2000 and its awesome! The fact that Top Secret builds industry leading race cars that run this stuff means that its certified pure function both on the track and when you drive it back home and need to clear your car over an entry into a garage.

Chris has one of the top-rated Nissans on CarDomain. And no wonder, cause his R34 looks amazing with the Seibon Z-Tune carbon fiber hood and Volk Racing wheels. Check out his ride page for more pics and all the specs.

Seems Nissan is on an unrelenting mission to make the R35 GT-R the fastest supercar in the world. Check out this video of their latest record lap done back in April at the Nurbugring. The driver is Toshio Suzuki and the laptime of 7:26.7 is simply outstanding. I wonder what Porsche will have to say about this one!

By Dino Dalle Carbonare

Following on from my post on the Mine’s R35, I thought it would be worth going back in history a little and featuring a slightly older GT-R. The BNR32 is what put Nissan on the supercar map back in 1989, and pretty much fueled the tuning boom in Japan during the 90’s. Garage Saurus have been around since the beginning, building some of the most extreme cars the streets of Japan have ever seen. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Dino Dalle Carbonare

When Nissan first introduced the original Hakosuka Skyline GT-R in the late ’60s , the only body style available was a four-door sedan. Shortly after, the GT-R would be moved the two-door Skyline platform and it would be quite some time (40 years to be exact) until a Skyline GT-R sedan would appear again. In 1998 Autech released a limited production four-door R33 Skyline GT-R, which paid homage to the original Hakosuka sedan. The Autech car featured all of the high tech GT-R items including the ATTESA E-TS AWD system (man, that’s a lot of letters) , the RB26 engine, and widened GT-R style body work. Today they are very rare to see, so I was surprised to find this all-original example in Tokyo earlier this year. Until we see the oft-rumored R35 sedan, GT-R nuts with families to haul will have to stick with this…

By Mike Garrett