Preview: NZ Performance Car Issue No. 248

6 6 6 6 C U S T O M S D AT S U N 2 4 0 Z

HKS-EQUIPPED S15

416803 800821

248

THE GREATNESS OF GLORY DAZE BRIDGEPORTED-AND-BUMPED BEETLE TYPE R ROLL CALL

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AUG. 2017

INCL. GST

$9.99

ISSUE

1 4 , 0 0 0 R P M — B U I L D I N G A N AT U R A L LY A S P I R AT E D 3 2 0 K W T W O - L I T R E

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FORM RULES EVERYTHING AROUND ME

JONO SMITH’S GLOSS-MASTER 1.5JZ-GTE SOARER

“I’M MORE ABOUT FORM OVER FUNCTION, BUT IT FUNCTIONS REMARKABLY WELL”

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MR RELIABLE A MASTER CLASS IN BUILDING A SUPER-TOUGH S15 DRIFTER

GLORY DAZE

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CIVIC TYPE R BLOODLINE

AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF TYPE R HISTORY

GRASS-ROOTS DOOR BANGING IN CHRISTCHURCH

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ENGINEERING THE ULTIMATE 2.0-LITRE NEW ZEALAND–BUILT 14,000RPM V8

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008 EDITORIAL 010 ED. TEAM CHATTER 016 NEWS 048 SUBSCRIBE AND RECEIVE 080 TECH TEST — PLAY DEAD 082 WEEKEND WARRIOR 084 DEMON BABE 086 CRUISE MODE 094 NEW PRODUCTS 096 UNDER CONSTRUCTION 098 GIG GUIDE 099 DRAG TIMES 100 DAILY DRIVEN 102 LOCAL SPECIALISTS 104 WHAT’S COMING NEXT MONTH

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056 V-SPEC R34 062 21 MIDNIGHTS 068 KYUSHU CAR CULTURE 074 BORN ON THE KANJO FACTORY KNOWS BEST

12A-POWERED VW BEETLE BUILT IN 22 DAYS FLAT

SEEKING OUT LESS-TRAVELLED CORNERS OF JAPAN

KEI MIURA’S PANDEM S30

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1991 TOYOTA SOARER (JZZ30)

JONO SMITH’S SOARER SERVES UP PURE JDM DRIFT STYLE FROM AN ERA WHEN POWER WAS SECONDARY AND SWAGGER WAS KING WORDS: MARCUS GIBSON PHOTOS: RICHARD OPIE

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t’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 track. Any split second could spell disaster with one wrong move.

This is exactly what happened with Jono’s first 1.5JZpowered Soarer. “It was about my eighth day drifting it,” he recalls.

“I had just put a hydro handbrake, and knuckles in. It was a damp morning, and I was just testing it out. A dry line had formed, and my wheel touched the wet stuff, sending me into a half spin.” A newbie in hot pursuit failed to see what was happening and kicked the clutch, sending his car straight into the Soarer’s driver’s side B-pillar.

It was a big hit — it bent the sill, roof, floor, and came close to bending the tunnel. Two years of hard work was destroyed in 10 seconds. But, hey, that’s drifting, and the show must go on. Not one to give up, Jono soon sourced a complete shell for only $1K. He had decided that starting with a bare shell would be easier

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ome 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 highest-spec drift car in D1NZ awaiting his regular visits. What a way to spend your holidays!

Sliding SOUTHERN-STYLE

RAD CARS, WARM FUZZY FEELINGS, AND STYLE BY THE MILE COMBINED TO ENSURE THE STREETMEAT GLORY DAZE EXPERIENCE WAS ONE FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS WORDS AND PHOTOS: RICHARD OPIE

he 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, Jonny and his small team put the event together, expansion the name of the game — not necessarily in terms of attracting a massive number of entrants (entries sold out in a matter of minutes the day ticket sales went live), but, for 2017, the Streetmeat experience allowed all entrants not one but both weekend days of track time. Spectators were now encouraged to attend, and the icing on the cake was the Show and Pine line-up in the car park, a freeto-enter impromptu car show.

Jay Johnston’s vibrant yellow AE86 Trueno features an engine note as distinctive as its paint. With a cammed high-compression 16V 4A-GE under the bonnet, along with a quartet of Keihin CR carbs, the screaming induction and exhaust match the manner Jay drives the ’86 — urgent and with authority, the way any good Hachi should be driven

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Former show-winners and NZ Performance Car cover cars also got into the act — Zen proved his clean JZX100 Chaser isn’t merely a show-hall queen by putting it through its paces at Streetmeat, including some maximum-attack action through the turn-one water hazard

At the core of Streetmeat, it’s the people that make the Glory Daze weekend so damn great.

Not even the dismal weather conditions could detract from the absolute enjoyment the team created this year, with smiles on dials right until last light on the Sunday

2002 NISSAN SKYLINE GT-R M-SPEC NUR (BNR34)

V-SPEC PERFORMANCE’S M-SPEC NÜR R34 DELIVERS THE PERFECT CONTRADICTION: ROAD-GOING LUXURY AND RACE-BRED MECHANICALS SPRINKLED WITH A HEARTY SERVING FROM THE NISMO CATALOGUE WORDS: JADEN MARTIN PHOTOS: AARON MAI

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SHOES WHEELS: 19x9.5-inch (+12) Rays Nismo LMGT4 TYRES: 265/30R19 Yokohama Advan Neova AD08R

Now, if fitting a race-bred engine into a super-luxe model wasn’t already enough of a contradiction, after the M-Spec Nür landed down under, the guys at V-Spec replaced the entire front end with Nismo Z-Tune dry-carbon-fibre panels. Nismo engineers state that the new frontage produces 2.2-times more downforce than the stock example, and the styling takes on a very timeattack vibe, with flared front guards that feature louvres to help air flow out of the engine bay and arches. At half the weight of the factory pieces, and coming in at 2.7-times more rigid, the dry-carbon-fibre front is a mean piece of kit, further enhanced

by Steve Ling at SL Customs, who laid luscious coats of UVresistant matt-clear over the top instead of matching the factory Millennium Jade paintwork found on the rest of the body. The result causes so much confusion that onlookers question whether it’s a wrap, before feeling the carbon to test its validity.

The dry-carbonfibre front causes so much confusion that onlookers question whether it’s a wrap, before a quick feel of the carbon to test its validity

DRIVER PROFILE OWNER: V-Spec Performance LOCATION: Melbourne, Australia THANKS: Allen Cheng, Simon Ong, and Rey Jakov at V-Spec Performance, Steve Ling at SL Customs