By John Coyle

Deputy Editor

There were a whole bunch of signs warning the guys from Motor Mavens not to bring cameras into the warehouse where Lexus is storing its new LF-A before the LA Auto Show. Good thing they didn’t care and came equipped with recording gear anyway. Bravo, gentlemen!

By Antonio Alvendia

Antonio Alvendia

This just in! You heard it FIRST from MotorMavens.com!!! Some of our readers may remember Luke Loneberger’s Chevy LS1 turbo-engined S14 from our All Star Bash and Megan Racing Competition stories. Well, apparently we were just given the green light to release the big news that we’ve been keeping under our hats for the past couple months! Los Gatos, California based Luke Loneberger will be building Conrad Grunewald’s new competition car for the 2010 Formula Drift season – a brand new Chevrolet Camaro SS, with Hankook as the tire sponsor.

Apparently all of Conrad’s work as a driving instructor at Skip Barber Racing School and his unmistakable presence when driving the Tanaka Racing Corvette in Formula D last year has finally paid off. Let’s also not forget – Conrad isn’t a stranger to the Formula D podium! We have photos to prove it!

Thanks to Andrew and Conrad from CG Racing, we’re able to present you with these sneak peek photos on MotorMavens.com!

By Antonio Alvendia

Antonio Alvendia

You don’t have to have a Harvard MBA to realize that “more” is the four-letter word that drives the exotic supercar market. More power. More speed. More sex appeal. More exclusivity. And, let’s get real: when folks slide into the driver’s seat of an exotic, many of them wind up needing more room — for their egos. So what’s up with the latest-and-greatest Lamborghini Gallardo?

As its numeric designation indicates, the new 550-horsepower LP 550-2 Valentino Balboni gives up 10 ponies to the reigning mainstream model, the Gallardo LP 560-4. (Lucky you, if you’re in a tax bracket where a $233,000 car is mainsteam.) The 550-2 takes a couple tenths longer to sprint from zero to 62 mph (3.9 seconds vs. 3.7). The Baboni Gallardo even comes up short in the top speed department: 199 mph vs. a hair under 202 for the 560-4.

If this all sounds, well, backward, no one at Lamborghini will argue with you. If fact Valentino Balboni himself is the first to agree, because the car that bears his name is about going back — to basics. Basic, in this case, being rear-wheel-drive like the Countach and Miura.

Continue reading and view more photos at MOTORMAVENS.Com

By Antonio Alvendia

Antonio Alvendia

I know that many people have been waiting for our coverage of this weekend’s Nisei Showoff carshow, which made its final show in Downtown LA/Little Tokyo. Since I knew I’d run into a ton of old friends at the show, I knew that it would be smart to come to the show early; that was a very good decision. My friend Travis brought his Canon DSLR and his video camera to help me capture the event too, since we knew that it would be hard for me to make my way around the whole show, in between saying hello to all our old school friends that come out the woodwork just for the Nisei Showoff. For some reason, some of these guys don’t go to Formula D events or Just Drift events, but they always make it to Nisei. So for many of us, Nisei Showoff is a time for us to reconnect and chill with good friends who we don’t have the pleasure of seeing all the time, due to the busy work and travel schedules that we all have.

I was happy to see several media outlets at the event covering the show as well; I’m hoping that all the magazines and websites out there run coverage of the show. Super Street Magazine and Project Car Magazine both had a strong showing at Nisei, with booths and a build-off competition of the magazine editors’ personally owned cars. I also saw people from Import Tuner, Japanese Nostalgic Car, Urbanracer, Auto Otaku, DSport, even an ex-Jtuned guy and several other media outlets out there to support and shoot photos of Nisei Showoff. Make sure to check out their coverage of the show as well.

For any other media outlets who weren’t able to make it to the show, but still want to run coverage of the event, please contact us at motormavens(at)gmail.com and we will supply you with photos for free, just to help out our friend Ken Miyoshi who runs the show.

While it may seem to some outsiders that we’ve been hyping this event quite a lot, it’s only because Nisei Showoff really is a big deal to those of us who go there with our friends and family every year – it’s a tradition that we’ve all kept up for the past nine years.

Continue reading and view more photos at MotorMavens.com

By Antonio Alvendia

Antonio Alvendia

Detroit’s annual Woodward Dream Cruise rolled into town this weekend along with droves of visitors looking to get in on the fun and Cruise Woodward. The estimated attendance was to the tune of just over 1 million visitors, which is said to be a few hundred thousand less than last year, although I’m not sure exactly how you’d go about counting everyone. Despite the Los Angeles-style traffic that comes with so many visitors, the boost in the economy is more than welcome around these parts. I even saw a few nuns, of all people, hustling visitors for their prime parking spots at a church parking lot. Well done sisters!

For Detroiters, it was a pleasant surprise to see the American automakers on hand and still showing their support for the event. Ford went as far as shutting down a portion of 9 mile Rd. in Ferndale,MI to turn it into Mustang Alley, lining both sides of the street with Mustangs from all generations and styles. It was pretty impressive such a variety of Mustangs including the original Shelby’s from the mid-60′s.

Continue reading and view more photos at MotorMavens.com

By Antonio Alvendia

Antonio Alvendia

Since I’ll be joining CarDomain as a contributing writer, Editor-in-Chief Rob Einaudi thought it would be fitting that I give CarDomain readers some background info. As a contributor to the hot new car culture/photography site, MotorMavens.com and a  founding member of the original team that created Speedhunters.com, blogging about cars definitely isn’t new to me. In fact, I’ve been ‘blogging’ about cars online since the late 1990s when I made my first site, which dealt with old school Japanese cars, especially AE86s, TE27s, and drifting, import car shows in the USA, Tokyo Auto Salon, and other aspects of Japanese car culture.

I’ve also been fortunate enough to shoot covers and write stories for several magazines in the USA (Super Street, Modified, Grassroots Motorsports, 0-60, Rides, FHM, Classic Motorsports, etc) and in other parts of the world (Battle Magazine, Daytona, Speed, Drift Battle, Carboy, etc).

In 2006, my first hardcover book, entitled “Drifting,” was released at book retailers worldwide. Drifting was the first book that documented the history of drifting as it came from Japan and spread in popularity across the USA and to other parts of the world.

My love of car culture doesn’t just stop at photography though. I have a pretty large collection of vintage Toyota cars and memorabilia, like my AE86s and my original paint 1973 Toyota Corolla 1600SR 5-speed (TE27), which is an extremely rare find in the United States. You can check out some photos of my cars on my Cipher Garage profile on Cardomain, on my Cipher Garage Myspace, and on my new website, MotorMavens.com as well. Please feel free to drop me some comments! I’d love to hear from everyone!