I can hear Robbie Longley’s Mazda wagon, as I’m sure anyone else in a couple of miles radius can too, but I can’t see it. A few seconds ago he had flicked the switch marked LINE LOCK and stepped on the gas. Now all I see is white, and all I can taste is the [...]
When it comes to rotary tuning, the exploits of two countries at the bottom of the world need little introduction. For as long as I can remember the Australasian region has been home to some of the fastest, loudest, wildest and most innovative rotary-powered vehicles on the face of the planet, and there are no [...]
Big engines and big cars are kind of obvious huh? Don’t get me wrong, I love a good V8 and have owned more than a few. An Audi R8 with that V10 sat behind my head? All day, every day my friend. Yet if I’m honest I think my ego gets in the way sometimes. [...]
It’s not often I get stopped in my tracks. I’ve been a lucky boy over the years and have seen a lot of different things around the globe. I’m not jaded or tired of it, no, but usually I can take in the details with relative calm. Not today though. What you see above is [...]
In your head will be the perfect workspace. It might be buried under a pile of magazine articles or lost in the middle of project plans that have yet to come to fruition, but it’s there. For some it will be clinically clean: tiled floors, tools aligned in unison waiting for usage. Others may crave [...]
Forgive the obvious fact that the car you are actually looking at hasn’t really got anything to do with the little 80′s theme we have going on here at the moment, but if you look closely you might begin to understand why we have decided to run it today. You see this particular hachiroku that TRD built [...]
1980s Week on Speedhunters has been a stark reminder about one of my own personal cars from that era. When I look at my 1989 Volvo 245 estate, I wonder what it could have been by now if I’d have realised that it was a proper project car and not just a bit of fun. [...]
There are plenty of different ways I could do this, but as some of my fellow new Speedhunters have opened with a discussion about how amazing it is here, a point on which we all agree, I’ll move on. As part of my year end indulgences I’m going to discuss the breadth of car [...]
What you see here has literally nothing to do with Japan’s freshest tuning brand, except for being Ueta-san’s new daily driver. It seems the man behind BenSopra craved a little character from the car he spends most of his time in and believe it or not this P130 Nissan Cedric has replaced a very luxurious [...]
Inspiration; it’s a word we all use and understand, but I believe we seldom realize just how strongly it impacts our lives. No matter what it is we’re going through we draw inspiration from past experiences which inevitably define our future. In the world of cars inspiration is the common bond we as enthusiasts have [...]
The 1980s are remembered for a lot of things, but in the motorsport world those years represent the golden era of rallying. Group B took the World Rally Championship and turned it on its head. In matter of just a few short years factory-backed cars had doubled their power output and were packed full of cutting edge technology and exotic components. Many people likened them to Formula 1 cars for the gravel, and that wasn’t far from the truth. But they were too fast and ultimately too dangerous, which is why we will, unfortunately, never see anything like Group B in the WRC ever again. The spirit, however, will always live on.
While I consider myself to be an open-minded fan of countless forms of automobiles, there are a few car related subcultures which have especially fascinated me. One of these is the one that revolves around customizing Japanese sedans from the 1970s and 80s. It’s hard for me to put my finger on it, but there’s just something special about these Laurels, Cedrics, Crowns, Mark IIs, and other lowdown cruisers from the Showa Era.
I can’t possibly imagine what your average Joe might think when being confronted with a shakotan ride from Japan. For me these sort of cars are as much as part of Japanese car culture as drifting is, but I’m sure a lot of people out there, including enthusiasts, might scratch their heads in confusion when [...]
Today, we live in a world where we demand instant results, news and gratification. No longer have we the patience or time to linger on something and truly appreciate its value. We live in a culture where it seems we are all rushing towards our death, not taking the time to savor the moment. We quickly skim over things, often missing out on the important things in life.
I’ve been hovering over this feature for a couple of days now, in-between writing and preparing the rest of our Gatebil coverage. Putting together this story has always been in the back of my mind, and I’m not really sure how to approach it. I don’t want to do it just to have it done, I want you to know this car. Ironically, whilst I’ve been changing words here and there and adjusting color tones in post processing, our friends at StanceWorks pipped us to the post with this one. Thankfully, the StanceWorks crew, like us, are here to celebrate all that is wonderful with cars and we have some more celebrating to do …
Democracy is a powerful thing, and it’s because of you guys that I present the following car feature.
Late last year when we did our Speedhunters Awards, we included a category for Reader Cars of the Year – a group that included a huge selection vehicles from across the world. We asked our loyal readers to select their favorite, and when the voting finished a 1973 Datsun 240Z out of Northern California had emerged as the winner.
