Innehållsförteckning för No 261 September 2018 från NZ Performance Car

If you caught last issue, you will have seen my piece on Reg Cook and his now V10-powered streamliner. Being one of Judd’s masterpieces plucked from the highest level of motor sport we have — Formula 1 — it’s no ordinary production V10. With only 3000cc of capacity and a 14,000rpm rev limit, all the obvious performance stuff aside, it’s the sound that is going to make the streamliner ‘go viral’ once it hits Bonneville in a month’s time. I’ve had the pleasure of hearing it run (via video), and it’s the kind of sound that sends shivers all the way down your spine. Of course, what it sounds like was never on Reg’s list of must-haves, as all he cares about is record-setting performance, but being a petrolhead in…

2018 CHROME EXPRESSION SESSION HAMPTON DOWNS MOTORSPORT PARK, TE KAUWHATA The wildly successful Chrome Expression Sessions is back for the fifth year running, 3–5 August at Hampton Downs, for a three-day hit of on-track mayhem. Entries are all but gone now, but spectators are welcome and can purchase tickets online or at the gate to witness the premium track time first hand. The three-day bash features: drive with your mates, roll racing, circuit racing, burnouts, drifting, gymkhana, and a show and shine, with the ever-popular rotary-only sessions held alongside twilight sessions towards the end of each day. All this and more information, such as pricing, can be found at chromenz.co.nz. GOLD RUSH RALLY OF COROMANDEL MOEWAI PARK ROAD, WHITIANGA There’s no dispute that rallying is in Kiwis’ blood. And whether…

‘Pedigree’ isn’t usually a word associated with cars built specifically to crank sideways, with clouds of smoke billowing from a pair of tortured treads. The tag is normally attached to a classic that maybe graced the garage of someone notable, or antique racers with a competition logbook bursting at the seams, evidence of a hard-driven past. Maybe the sport’s a little too young? Perhaps the average enthusiast is more concerned with development rather than preservation of any history? If an argument was to be made for any local drift chassis imbued with even the slightest drop of pedigree, Keisuke Nagashima’s AE86 coupe (notchback, to some) is undoubtedly a solid contender. It’s a chassis that’s seen some things in its time. It’s especially fitting that its latest guise has been shaped…

There’s no motorsport discipline quite like drifting — comprising a mad mixed field of backyard-built heroes going up against factory-backed veterans in the ultimate David-and-Goliath battle with no guarantees as to who will be standing on the podium one weekend to the next. In the earlier years of the local championship, the cars were nothing more than sketchy road-goers converted to track hacks, but, as the sport started to be taken more seriously within the wider racing community, so too did the cars that teams were building, seeing an increasingly more insane collection of big strokers, big boosters, and big-angle weapons lining up that pushed the bounds of how far drift cars can go. And while a BNR32 GT-R has never been the drift chassis of choice, not only do…

The most famous and the most loved of these chassis are the Silvia and 180SX, which was extremely evident at Japan’s SR-only SR All Stars held in one of the outer car parks of the Shizuoka stadium in Fukuroi City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. Located just west of Nagoya, and south of Yokohama and Tokyo, the car park is located within a large forest, setting a very laid-back atmosphere for the event, which, now in its third year, is still very much underground, almost word of mouth. This year, close to 300 S13s, S14s, S15s, and 180SXs made the trek from all corners of Japan, representing pretty much any style of modification you could imagine for these chassis, from ’90s street drifters on 15s, to Time Attack, pro-drifter cars, show cars,…

WIN NEXT MONTHSEND SEND US YOUR PROJECT, AND IF IT’S FEATURED, YOU COULD BE CHOSEN TO RECEIVE A CENTURY BATTERIES GIFT WORTH $150 CORONA NO LIME There ain’t no cool like the old school, Daniel Tofts tells us. And he has a fair point — back in the day, the Japanese really were at the top of their game when it came to building cars. So when Daniel wrapped things up at school and wanted to sink his teeth into a project car, there was little chance that anything modern was going to make its way into his garage. What he chose was this 1979 Toyota Corona. It was listed on the modern day trade and exchange (Facebook marketplace) and was screaming out for an engine swap to replace its…

The last few issues saw a handful of cars gracing these pages that had one small thing in common. It’s not immediately obvious, either, yet I’ve fizzed over every single one of them because of it. Wiremu Bürkhardt’s B2000, Philip Huynh’s MX-5, and Brendan Duncker’s Escort all made use of this element — and no, I’m not talking about engine swaps. All three of these, and many more over the years, have used factory-style decals to enhance the overall appearance. It’s an addition that seems to be coming back into taste in recent years, with decals being thought of as more than just shopping lists slapped on doors and flames thrown up the sides. I’m not really sure what it is about all that vinyl slathered over bonnets, roofs, and…

The unmistakable chatter of the twin-plate clutch, the stunted yet aggressive idle of the 280/288-degree cams, and the clunk from the dog-box as first gear is engaged. These are the tell-tale signs of something far more serious than what you’re surveying when you first lay eyes on Tommie Morris’ understated Evo III. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a mildly modified survivor car that made it out of the early 2000s with all its panels intact and no screw holes left gaping where neons once lit up the tarmac while pulsing to the bass on Dei Hamo’s ‘We Gon’ Ride’. Maybe owned by a guy in his mid-40s who dreamt of Saturday mornings carving backroads, and Sunday arvos cleaning every millimetre with a toothbrush. But in reality, while it might…

There ain’t going to be many of you that can remember back 50 years. Hell, half of us have probably inhaled enough petrol fumes to not remember most of what we did last week, but if there’s one nameplate that seems to have burnt itself into the nation’s memory, it’s the Ford Escort. Whether it’s for being the indestructible rear-wheel drive rally weapons that smashed the gas through forest stages like it was nothing; the cheap and cheerful thrasher that your dad bought you on the first day you had your license; or the rusted out, struggling to idle supermarket trolley of your elderly neighbour that has no business being on the road. Whatever you remember it for, Kiwis have a long running love affair with the pesky Esky, having…

The 156 corners of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC) now have a new daddy, Volkswagen Motorsport driver Romain Dumas, who claimed the overall record at the 96th running with a blisteringly fast 7min 57.148s. But, unlike the three previous assaults — in which Dumas also claimed victory — this time, his ascent was made to the soundtrack of a 120dB warning bell, in the form of the fully electric VW I.D. R Pikes Peak. Developed in only eight months with the help of Porsche, the VW I.D. R features a complete carbon monocoque chassis that was first developed in half scale for wind-tunnel testing. Three-dimensional printing played a huge role in the car’s development, with VW’s computational fluid dynamics (CFD) team said to have produced over 2000 parts.…

1990 MITSUBISHI GALANT VR-4 RS NAME: TAYLOR INGLE AGE: 22 LOCATION: WELLINGTON OCCUPATION: SELF-EMPLOYED NZ Performance Car: Hey, Taylor. We understand that you’re pretty fond of Galants — tell us about your first car. Taylor: Hi, NZPC. Yeah, you could say that. My first car was a non-turbo ZR-4 Galant that was absolutely shocking. Not one day would go by without something breaking on it — seeing it at Pick-A-Part two weeks after selling was a laugh. But my first turbo car was a rear-wheel-drive 1990 VR-4 RS, which was a death machine — unbelievably loose being rear-wheel drive. It ended up sitting for ages, because the chassis had seen better days, so I decided [that] I would use it as a parts car to build this one. Speaking of…

WHEELS/TYRES MAGS, TYRES, WHEEL ALIGNMENTS, WHEEL BALANCING, AND REPAIRS AUCKLAND MTS PERFORMANCE Lowest price guaranteed on wheels, tyres, and suspensionmtsp.co.nz / 021 4 TYRES (021 489 737)/ 82 Wairau Road, Glenfield ARROW WHEELS NZ’s leading builder, repairer, refurbisher of alloy wheels for 35 years arrowwheels.co.nz / 09 818 8388/ 6D Westech Place, Kelston, Auckland BRUGAR ENGINEERING Mag wheel repair specialists since 1979 magwheelrepairs.co.nz / 09 486 6832/ 7 Barrys Point Road, Takapuna, Auckland WAIKATO WORLD OF TYRES Hamilton’s leading retailer of tyres, wheels, batteries, and wheel alignment servicing worldoftyres.co.nz / 07 847 0330/ 62 Greenwood Street, Frankton, Hamilton TARANAKI TARANAKI TYRETORQUE LTD Taranaki’s leading tyre/mag specialist, providing automotive services and customization tyretorque.co.nz / 06 757 5988/ 53 Molesworth St, New Plymouth WELLINGTON 41 DEGREE WHEELS Three-piece wheel specialists, custom offsets,…

LANDSPEED C7 IN THE WORKS Stu Goldsworthy is the kind of man who if he says he is going to do something, it’s going to happen in one form or another. So when he said that he, and his ‘C0KANE’ R35 GT-R, were going to break records back in NZ Performance Car #226, he wasn’t wrong — running a 202mph on his supercharged Kawasaki at Goudies Road, while his Nissan GT-R hit 222mph, albeit under new ownership, both setting records on the same weekend in April. As Stu explains, “I was originally going to run in my GT-R, but, in the back of my mind, I wanted to run in a big block supercharged V8 Chev. But, after some research, we decided a twin-turbo small block was a better way…

Rallying is a discipline that requires a special kind of driver — jumping over blind crests in sixth gear; snaking down an icy road lined with trees; and threading the needle around the narrow roads of Corsica, perched on the very edge of a cliff, isn’t for the faint of heart. In fact, the Finnish even have a word for it — sisu. While the setting for the World Rally Championship (WRC) might require skills that are almost superhuman, rallying is very much a motorsport for the people; there are no millionaire playboy drivers or excessively technological cars with access to infinite budgets. However, the WRC has the crème de la crème of rallying’s best drivers, demanding a special set of skills from a driver and co-driver combination. The crew…

When it comes to selecting aerodynamic devices for your car, the rear wing is the icing on your cake, the last line in what was hopefully a well planned string of aerodynamic devices, which if selected right will work in harmony and produce huge amounts of downforce with minimal drag, but get it wrong and that wing’s nothing more than a fancy little peacock tail, or worse, a lift generator. When selecting a wing, one of the first questions will be whether to go flat or have a twisted or stepped element. We’ve roped in Kinetic Sim’s David Higgins to lay down the knowledge, so before you go clicking ‘buy now’ on that generic wing element with no available data to support its function, there is a lot more to…

Once the realm of screaming SRs, RBs, and 4A-GEs, America’s Formula Drift has become dominated by big capacity pushrod V8s, so much so that there is now only one team running a four-cylinder in the top ranks. And they’re proving that the little four cylinder can still bang. We are, of course, talking about Stephan Papadakis Racing and their 2019 Toyota Corolla powered by a RWD 1000hp 2AR-FXE and pedaled by the ‘Norwegian Hammer’ Fredric Aasbø. Stephan’s team have been steadily developing the 2AR since 2015 in the search of reliability, power, wheel speed, and rpm. Despite this, plenty of components direct from the Toyota factory remain, including the block and head castings. Inside the motor, however, it’s a different story, with a tonne of specifically developed components, which, if…

There’s the old saying, ‘measure twice, cut once’. While the words are clichéd, you can’t argue that they aren’t wise. It’s about doing your research and doing things right, so, when it comes to buying a car 20-plus years old that every man and his dog want to get their hands on, sight unseen, it’s like playing a game of lucky dip: you either rip back the wrapping paper to find handfuls of pure untouched gloriousness awaiting underneath or are served a hefty pile of unappealing shit — especially when the unknown pile of tin that you’re handing over cash for is one that someone else has already had a crack at modifying themselves before deciding it was simply too-hard basket for them. No car is ever really going to…

1994 MITSUBISHI L200 DOUBLE CAB NAME: DWAYNE GROVES AGE: 27 LOCATION: WEST AUCKLAND OCCUPATION: BUILDING SUPPLIES SALES REP NZ Performance Car: Hey, Dwayne. Your L200 has been years in the build, but it looks to be on the home stretch now? Dwayne: Yeah, it’s getting there, man. Tastes always change and age doesn’t help with that, especially when you’ve been building it for so long. I think it’s been six years and counting now — they say you should plan things at the beginning, but, geez, that’s hard work when you’re only going to change it anyway [laughs]. Hats off to those that build the mean cars that you guys feature. We know it ain’t an easy task — solid work! How did you find yourself ripping the heart of…

1989 TOYOTA LEVIN GT APEX (AE92) NAME: MURRAY ROACHE AGE: 28 LOCATION: AUCKLAND OCCUPATION: ELECTRICAL WHOLESALER ENGINE: Black-top 4A-GE, 1600cc, four-cylinder DRIVELINE: C52 five-speed, custom short-throw shifter INTERIOR: Momo steering wheel EXTERIOR: GTZ bonnet scoop, bonnet pins WHEELS/TYRES: 16x7-inch Work CR Kai, 215/45R16 Hankook Optimo K415 SUSPENSION: Manon Racing Products coilovers POWER: 122kW FUEL TYPE: Gull 98 NZ Performance Car: Hey, Murray. Is this your first AE92, and what was it about the car that made you want to buy it? Murray: Hi, NZPC. I was actually building an FX-GT with a black-top 4A-GE swap before this. But when I came across the Levin for sale I fell for it immediately. I’ve seen plenty of FX-GTs that have had the 20V swap, but never a Levin like this. Was the…