Innehållsförteckning för No 248 August 2017 från NZ Performance Car

I’m hoping that you read last issue’s interview with Brendon White, from D1NZ, in which he outlined future plans for drifting in New Zealand and where D1NZ wishes to push what has become the single biggest motorsport discipline here. In short, what he said is very exciting if you love drifting — a blueprint for ownership of the national series, which, all going to plan, will lead to the development of a bunch of permanent drift-specific facilities being built around the country. There is no denying that it’s an ambitious project, but it’s one that I have faith in simply because of the people behind it. If anyone other than Brendon had come out and said it, I would have paid less attention, mainly because I know that many local…

The drift king himself, Keiichi Tsuchiya, took up piloting duties at the 2016 World Time Attack Challenge (WTAC) in Sydney, Australia — one of his drives being in Beau Yates’ AE86 (as featured in NZ Performance Car Issue No. 241) — and the news has just dropped that he will return for WTAC 2017. The former Honda and Toyota factory driver needs no introduction around these parts, having an unrivalled racing legacy and being widely credited with igniting the modern-day motorsport of drifting. The real kicker, though, is that he won’t borrow a local car as he did last year but intends to bring “something very special” with him from Japan: “I really enjoyed my trip to WTAC last year. The Australian fans are truly the best, and while my…

No doubt you’ve already heard the hype — whether from the news piece in our last issue or floating around on the net — which surrounds the pending release of the new 2017 Honda Civic Type R (CTR). It’s stirred things up among purists and non-Honda fans alike, due to the snail hanging off the side of the K20 heart, which helps it to produce 228kW. Oh, and the fact that it set a 7m 43.8s Nürburgring lap time and claimed the title of the world’s fastest production front-wheel-drive. The Civic is Honda’s longest-running and largest-selling model, globally, and the CTR has always been at the top of that list, amassing a cultlike following around the world. But will this blistering new CTR ever make it to our shores? The…

It’s not a show car; I don’t build f*cking show cars,” remarks Christchurch local Jono Smith, as our eyes survey the flow-coated hologram flake and perfect panel gaps of his ’91 Toyota Soarer. “I fang it pretty hard, but it’s still presented better than 99 per cent of the cars out there.” Jono has a point. His Soarer has had hundreds of hours of panel work spent on it — the same can’t be said for most drift cars. But when you earn your gas and tyre money through massaging panels, any standard below this is just not going to cut it. The crazy thing about this sort of undertaking is that the hard work and dedication might all be for nothing when you’re regularly dicing with danger on the…

The Canterbury area of the South Island sure knows how to party. When the banter’s still flying over a week after the stench of burned rubber has diffused and the last echo of rev-limiters has died down, you know one hell of a good time just happened. Two years on from the last Streetmeat drift day, organizer Jonny Martin — prolific signwriter, serial drift car seller, and all-round OK guy — pieced together arguably the finest grass-roots event that the ‘better island’ has witnessed. The premise was pretty basic, with a fairly time-honoured methodology. Take Mike Pero Motorsport Park (Ruapuna, for the old hands) and invite 30-something drift nuts with an eye for style, a knack for driving hard, and a one-for-all community attitude. For what’s now the fifth time,…

While the humble ‘people’s car’ — Volkswagen — has a cult following like no other around the world, it’s one that seems to invite all forms of blasphemy to be performed on the beloved bug chassis. A single glance at this cream-on-brown example (see Cadbury Top Deck) gives rise to thoughts of its owner being a complete and utter nutcase. Not for the obscure colour choice or the fact that it appears to make permanent contact with the asphalt but for the simple fact that, at the rear, you’ll find a lovingly positioned 12A bridgey singing through a centre-mounted SuperTrapp muffler. While we can’t confirm whether he has previously been the resident of the local loony bin, Greg Mather, of Midnight Upholstery fame, is most certainly on the loose at…

With hundreds of different products thrust under your nose on a daily basis, we don’t blame you if you feel a little dubious when a new product hits the market, especially when you’re supposed to trust it for use on your pride and joy. Luckily, we’re here to put these products through a rigorous ‘brofessional’ test, so that you can make a more informed choice when you’re staring at the shelf in your local. This month’s product is Play Dead Plastic and Rubber Restorer, and we tested it on the Ed.’s daily, which sits outside 365 days a year and takes a real beating from the elements. WHAT WE USED This one is a pretty billy basic — a tube of Play Dead Plastic and Rubber Restorer, which comes as…

Call them what you want — ‘trumpets’, ‘velocity stacks’, or ‘ram tubes’ — these small, seemingly insignificant pieces on your intake are anything but insignificant, and play a key role in any tuner’s handbook. If you need a bit of a crash course on their performance, a velocity stack has two jobs. First, it smooths out the air flow heading into an engine, which allows a denser air mixture to occupy the space in front of the butterfly. Second, it tunes the length of the intake track. This is important, because, as the air and fuel mixture is drawn into the combustion chamber by the piston’s downward stroke, the air will rush into the chamber until the valve slams shut. The mixture then has nowhere to go and builds pressure…

NEW ZEALAND DRIFT MATSURI: SPECIAL STAGE BRUCE MCLAREN MOTORSPORT PARK, TAUPO With the team at New Zealand Drift Matsuri busting ass nearly 365 days a year, a fully fledged drift comp was bound to surface sooner or later. Let us introduce to you the New Zealand Drift Matsuri Invitational Special Stage. After 12 months of deliberation, the team has bitten the bullet and are, to use the guys’ term, “winging it” — offering up invitational and by-application driver spots. For the first time ever, the exclusive Track Two reverse corkscrew at Bruce McLaren Motorsport Park, Taupo, will be used for competition. What does that mean? Guaranteed epic entries. Restrictions are yet to be finalized, but it appears that a maximum of 235-wide road tyres will be allowed on the rear,…

I’ve only driven a handful of turbo cars in my years, owned even fewer, and my current turbo is nothing to rave about. However, one thing that I can appreciate is a properly set up turbo engine. I’ve long enjoyed the intricacies associated with running a turbo engine, or fitting one where one hasn’t been before. And then there are the wickedly good power increases that you can achieve for a relatively small investment. A recent conversation in the office about the first turbo cars we had driven had me reminiscing about an experience some years earlier. I was living in Piha, on the west coast of Auckland, and a mate of mine, Stan*, had picked up a gig walking a local lady’s dog. For whatever reason, she insisted that…

Young Kiwi driving talent Richie Stanaway was handed the reins to Subaru’s WRX STi Type RA (Record Attempt) NBR Special recently with the sole intention of obtaining a lap record around the Nürburgring. The record Subaru was gunning for was the four-door title it had held previously with Tommi Mäkinen, now claimed by an Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio at 7min 32s. The car Richie was trusted to pedal had, in a previous trim, set the record around the Isle of Man, and is reported to push out around 447kW. The car also sports a decent amount of aero work, including a full under tray. Sadly, the weather didn’t play ball during the first attempt, and it bucketed down the entire time, so the team had to pull the pin on…

New Zealand’s fastest tin-top racing category, Tradezone GTRNZ, has undergone a shake-up ahead of the coming season, with breakout times for GT2, GT3, and GT4 being reviewed with the aim of promoting new drivers to join, without the risk they’ll be scared off by the current pace of the field. This will see many current cars from both GT3 and GT2 pushed up one bracket. GT1 is set to gain the likes of Hans Ruiterman, Shaun Judd, Brian Gray, and John Deveth, and six GT3 competitors will be moved to GT2 to fill that gap. GT4, which has traditionally seen low numbers, has also had its breakout adjusted to attract more competitors. GTRNZ expects between 30 and 40 cars for the five-round season, which will kick off December 1 at…

Some go on holiday to relax, others seek to find themselves, while a few prefer to lose themselves in some far-off location; but forget all that — the kind of holidays we’re interested in are those of the tyre-killing kind. While many instantly think of Ebisu as the Mecca for drift R & R, New Zealand’s actually a hotbed of such activities, and for good reason. We’re a cheap country to fly to, and if you’re looking for a well-rounded drift competition, D1NZ will offer you the chance to go door-to-door with some big talents in cars that don’t require a million-dollar budget. It’s for these very reasons that Kiwi expat Arthur Lee now travels back and forth from Hong Kong during the D1NZ season. And he has arguably the…

Typically, in this day and age, when we talk about someone building a powerful engine, it’s centred on extracting power by modifying a production power plant. But when you’re Reg Cook, a man who has spent his life developing factory-based 2.0-litres to obtain every last bit of power from them, eventually, you will reach a point where the only real option is to start with a clean slab of billet — especially when you are looking to go faster than any other 2.0-litre on the planet. Reg’s relationship with the 2.0-litre is a long-standing one. If it’s a 2.0-litre worth knowing about, then chances are it’s seen some serious time on Reg’s dyno. But, on our recent trip to the South Auckland shop, hidden amongst chaotic wires and baling twine…

If you’re reading this magazine, you’ve probably got at least some idea of how ridiculously cool Japan’s car scene is. Having spent the better part of the last half decade actively learning about car culture here, I still feel like I’m only just starting to scratch the surface — that’s how big it is! I’ve spent most of this time exploring in the Kanto and Kansai regions and really wanted to head south to Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four largest islands. When I finally made it, in terms of its car culture, Kyushu felt like uncharted territory. I only knew about a few different car events taking place there each year, and I knew very few people who had visited before. Our destination was Autopolis, a large racing facility…

NAME: CRAIG JAMES // AGE: 26 LOCATION: CHRISTCHURCH // OCCUPATION: BUILDER NZ Performance Car : Hi, Craig. Let’s get down to brass tacks — what was the first car you built? Craig: Hey, guys. Believe it or not, it was a ’91 Mitsubishi Mirage Asti coupe. I put GSR running gear in it and did the whole two-tone black / white paint job with custom Evo III kit and the like. It didn’t last all that long though, as we managed to snap the crank doing skids [laughs]. Live and learn, eh. What are your thoughts on the current car scene / motorsport world in New Zealand? The custom car scene here is as crazy and wild as it’s ever been, with all the crazy wild conversions, etc. On the…

LIGHT ’EM UP Dim lights on a dark road plain and simple suck — the last thing you want is to struggle to see where you’re going at night. Narva Intense globes achieve the maximum legal blue headlight performance, with a bright white light output and steel blue appearance, offering 30 per cent more light volume than a standard globe. They’re suitable for polycarbonate headlights, there is no power consumption or heat increase to run the Intense globe. For further information, or to check out the other globes in Narva’s range, head to narva.co.nz. TOTAL CONTROL Getting the valvetrain wrong can make or break an engine build, so don’t take your choices lightly — valves springs are just as responsible for power as camshafts. The spring holds onto the valve…

NAME: VARUN DHIMAN AGE: 30 LOCATION: AUCKLAND OCCUPATION: TEAM MANAGER NZ Performance Car : Hi, Varun. How did you get into modifying cars? Varun: Hey, team. I wanted to get a car that would stand out and have that one-of-a-kind look. Vick Bhatti from XRacing helped make that happen for me with this one — it’s the first car where I’ve dabbled with modifying. Interesting choice — what made you go with a Mustang? Mustangs have always been my childhood dream car. So, in June last year [2016], I decided to go for a test drive at North Harbour Ford. Even though the engine is a turbo 2.3-litre, instead of the popular five-litre GT, the car had a good amount of power, and it drove so smoothly that I decided…

Long-time Australian touring-car fans may recall when a new kid appeared in 1991, and decimated all that stood in its way. That car put Australian racing legend Jim Richards on the podium, where he called the series’ fans “a pack of assholes” after he piloted his Nissan R32 GT-R to victory. The GT-R Godzilla was banned from the series, but has been lusted over by race fans ever since in the hope that it would return some day. They thought their wishes had been granted when the noose was loosened to allow other makes to join in on the long-standing Holden versus Ford battle that the series had become. But Nissan chose instead to campaign a Patrol V8–powered Altima to meet the then four-door sedan body and V8-only regulations. Now,…

The D1NZ grid will look a whole lot more European this season, if the projects currently underway in workshops around New Zealand are anything to go by. Auckland-based Ching Jin has on-sold his Boss-fronted S14 and purchased an E92 BMW M3 coupe. “I like to do something different, and most people are still using traditional drift platforms like Silvia or JZX. I was very lucky to find the M3, so my team decided to do it,” Ching explained. The coupe will run a full Liberty Walk kit, Wisefab suspension, and the same potent driveline from his S14. The LSA 6.2-litre factorysupercharged V8 and GForce four-speed have been mounted, and the factory diff was replaced with a Winters quick-change unit. DKM Fabrication is undertaking all the fabrication, including the rear-mounted radiator…

New Zealand’s fastest import racer, Rod Harvey, has achieved his long-term goal of running a fivesecond pass in the Yuasa Celica, a feat he achieved at the Winternationals at Willowbank Raceway, in Aus. Although it’s taken constant development to ultimately push the car to this point, it was the ECU upgrade to MoTeC’s latest M150 that opened the door to the five-second club. Previously, the car ran a pair of MoTeC M800s and getting them to talk to each other in harmony was never easy. The M150 has brought everything into one unit, although it took a serious amount of work for tuner Glenn from Dodson’s, working alongside MoTeC technicians, to program every element in the ECU. The team had tested the Celica the weekend prior to the Winternats, focusing…

With the new generation of Honda Civic Type R (FK8) set to drop in September, we wanted to take a look back at where it all began and at those that have worn the Type R badge in the past. Designed as a simple recipe that was available straight from the factory — combine a little bit of power with a stiff-chassis for a nimble, track-ready, street-legal speed demon — the CTR has always had a focus on minimal weight; maximum tunability; and having further potential in the engine, suspension, and braking departments. It has long been a staple on professional circuits and used for street duties over the last 20 years — this isn’t surprising considering the diehard fan base it has amassed along the way. As the model…

DRIVELINE GEARBOX: Six-speed CLUTCH: Nismo Super Coppermix Competition SUPPORT STRUTS: Nismo R-Tune coilovers BRAKES: (F) R35 GT-R Brembo six-pot calipers, R35 GT-R Dixcel rotors; (R) R35 Brembo four-pot calipers, R35 GT-R Dixcel rotors EXTRA: Nismo titanium front strut brace acking your bags, booking a ticket, and jumping on a plane to another country is always exciting, especially when your main objective is to experience a local car culture. While we might be led to believe that the internet is an all-seeing eye that shows us any- and everything worth laying our eyes on, the reality is that tons of cars slip through the so-called World Wide Web. On a recent trip to Melbourne, we left not a stone unturned or garage door shut in our quest to find something fresh,…

ei Miura has long been a leader and a trendsetter when it comes to automotive styling, and, like any leader who dares to step out of the box, he has taken his fair share of heat. But the mark of a true leader is shunning those naysayers, believing in your passion and continuing to create complete standouts, and that’s what he’s done with his personal TRA-Kyoto S30Z, a model many seem to stay clear of reimagining — especially when it comes to body styling. You just can’t throw a new-school aesthetic at an oldschool car and expect it to work, which is why Miura-san, with his lessis- more approach, is the perfect candidate to tackle a base such as the S30. His talent for crafting new kits on iconic old-school…

NZ Performance Car: Hi, Caleb. How did you get into the car scene, and what was the first car you bought? Caleb: Hey, guys. Like most people, it was because of family and friends. When I started working, a lot of the people I worked with had Evos and WRXs, so I knew where all my pay cheques were going from then on — the first car I ever bought, an Altezza. I had a vision for that one, but it just wasn’t a great base to start with, being auto and not as tidy as the current one, so I flicked it. First car I could say I ‘built’ would have been this Altezza. Not a bad first car. What was it about the Altezza(s) that you liked? It…

What do you do when you have a Mitsubishi Lancer Cedia wagon sitting around and some time to kill? Well, Jacky Tse of J-Tune fame’s answer was to sink a healthy dose of spare race car parts into it, which saw a full AMS Performance 2.2-litre 4G63 with its coveted turbo kit adorning the engine bay. “The running gear was just spare parts left over after I upgraded my race car, not worth selling, so [I thought I] might as well put a fun car together for practice,” he said. Running a Radium surge tank with twin E85 fuel pumps, the package produces 450kW on 30psi of boost. To back it, there’s an Albin dogbox, along with Quaife ATB front and rear diffs, which leave the centre active to be…