By Steve Neill

Steve Neill

As most of you have likely guessed, I’m an avid JDM man. I’ve been around them ever since I could remember, and I fell in love with them at the tender young age of six. Thankfully, I write for CarDomain from time to time, and I also work for some big players in the industry now as an adult.

Most enthusiasts who associate JDM love the Nissan Skyline. With it’s fortified body, RB26DETT engine, and crazy tuning possibilities, it is quite simply one of the worlds most desirable cars. Thankfully, I’ve had a hand in quite a few Skylines and Nissans myself, and have done work for R.I.P.S Racing.

Have you ever wondered how much horsepower you could extract from a Skyline? Well, R.I.P.S. Racing takes it to the limit, and then some, making some of the worlds fastest Nissans period. Their newest work, a 3.3 litre RB Engine, the first of it’s kind in the world, is truly a mind boggler. Their daily job is turning RB26′s into RB30′s, and now they’ve done gone crazy and pumped out a 1000-1200 hp RB33. Take a look at their promo video linked below to truly see how bonkers these men have gone.

Continue reading "R.I.P.S Racing and JDM Aero" »

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Some guy in Kuwait likes taking photos of car wrecks. Many seem to involve trees. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car fold around a tree like that. See the full collection at flickr.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

Mini wins. Some funny captions over at VWVortex

Hey, GM restorers! GM and Helm Inc. just got together and launched GMRestorationParts.com, a new site devoted to the restoration parts for GM vehicles. Reproduction resto parts will now be available from a centralized warehouse to both the general public and GM dealers. Now that you know this, what are you waiting for? Get back to the garage!

I just wanted to let you guys know that the "Add to Favorites" functionality called in sick today and probably won’t be back until next week.  We’re sorry for any inconvenience this may be causing you.

I feel the need to defend my buddy Ben Schaffer from Wes Siler’s post at Jalopnik, which claimed that Ben’s harness setup in the GT-R was unsafe. Wes claimed that, "By attaching the shoulder belts to a point lower than the shoulders, the driver and passenger’s spines will be compressed in the event of the car running into something. This will crush the vertebrae and could even lead to paralysis in extreme cases."

Now, since I’m always trying to figure out ways to improve the safety in old 60s Mopars, I’m interested in this stuff. Yes a lot of tuner kids do have improperly mounted harnesses, which are quite unsafe. But Ben is no tuner kid. When I asked Ben about the setup, he wrote back, "simply put, those harnesses were installed by a professional race shop to the recommended spec of the Takata harness installation guide. That’s the best install anyone with a gt-r will get without making a custom harness bar."

Now, I’ve typically heard you want to keep the angle to 15 degrees or less (and various sactioning bodies have different limits), but Takata seems to think that something in the neighborhood of 25 degress is within spec. So there you have it folks. RTFM.

On Friday I asked you guys whether or not we should bail out Detroit. About 55% of you think we should. CNN asked a similar question and got basically the same result. Personally, I believe we need to bail out Detroit. We bailed out the banks, so why not help an industry that supports over two million people? Some naysayers seem to want to punish Detroit for "poor quality" or "poor planning," but there are a host of reasons why Detroit is in this situation, and Detroit is not the only one to blame. Will it work out as well as the Chrysler bailout in 1979?

Last month the Rocky Mountrain Institute held a conference in Portland which brought together representatives from the auto industry, utility companies and major corporations. Forbes has a good article on as we get closer to the "smart garage" concept.

By Rob Einaudi

Editor-in-Chief

On Friday Brian Fox told me that Michelin didn’t have a booth at SEMA this year. I immediately called Michelin PR, left some voicemails with a few folks over there, and… they didn’t call me back. Well, Brian was right. No Michelin. Here’s John with the Michelin man last year. Now, having to tell John that the Michelin man wouldn’t be here is like telling a little kid there is no such thing as Santa. It also sucks cause Michelin always has good food.

By Katherine Helmetag

AKA atomicalex

Hankook’s answer to the tuner market is the Ventus RS3. Flame graphics haven’t made production yet, as molding-in color is not an easy process. Plans for now are to simply cut the pattern into the tread. The base tread compound is good for the track and slots in at 140 treadwear rating. I like the blocking on the base tread pattern—it’s sized for what passes for a sportscar these days. I’m thinking of trying it out (sans flames) this spring when it’s time to re-tire the wagon.