Antonio Alvendia'S BIO

Name: Antonio Alvendia

Location: Los Angeles CA, San Francisco CA, Tokyo Japan

Previous Locations: San Francisco Bay Area

Career Path: International NFS Speed Hunter, Commercial Photographer, Youth Automotive Consultant

Previous Career Paths: Owner of a young company specializing in commercial and editorial photography - Cipher Media Group ( www.ciphermediagroup.com ). Constantly working with automotive and lifestyle magazines all over the globe. Emcee for youth automotive lifestyle events, including Motoring J Style and nationwide Drift Showoff Series. Founding member of Cipher Garage - AE86 and vintage Toyota crew.

Notable Projects/Wins: Authored the photographic documentary book, DRIFTING: Sideways from Japan to America, the world's first hardcover book on the culture and history of drifting. Behind the scenes work and on-camera talent for Birth of Pro Street film on the history of tuner based street racing. Special effects set photographer for NBC Universal's Fast & Furious 3: Tokyo Drift.

Cars:

1973 TE27 Toyota Corolla 1600 SR-5

1985 AE86 Corolla GT-S hatchback

1985 AE86 Corolla - TRD USA/SCCA race car

1985 AE86 Sprinter Trueno 3-door

1986 AE86 Sprinter Trueno 3-door

1986 AE86 Corolla Levin 3-door

Fav Past Cars: 1969 KE17 Toyota Sprinter, 1974 TE27 Corolla SR-5, 1982 KP61 Toyota Starlet, 1984 AE86 Corolla SR5-GTS conversion, 1986 ST162 Toyota Celica, 1992 UCF10 Lexus LS400, 1987 FC3S Mazda RX7

Next Car: 1974 Corolla Levin (Japanese version), Toyota Tacoma truck

Car Passions: Curator of the Cipher Garage collection: negative offset wheels, rare steering wheels, horn buttons, shift knobs, books, and memorabilia, with huge collection of rare die cast AE86s & TE27s from all over the world. Also amassed an impressive library full of Japanese drifting magazines, nostalgic Japanese racing magazines, and Vintage Toyota related books. Fan of drifting, WRC, and JGTC photography. Also collect Japanese drift team stickers, race track stickers, and phone numbers from cute import models and Japanese race queens.

Personal Style: 1990s hip hop. I'm all about rocking fresh kicks and Kangols.

Favourite Band of the Moment: Kero One from the Plug Label Famalam ( www.pluglabel.com )

Personal Motto: Don't waste any opportunities to do something that drives you.

 


2,126 Posted Nov 20 2008, 07:33 AM by Antonio Alvendia with no comments

GALLERY>> LA AUTO SHOW HIGHLIGHTS
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Last night, I attended the Nissan 370Z launch party at J-Lounge in Downtown LA. Very fun, but after scoping out the scene, I decided I didn't really want to lug around my camera equipment in such a crowded atmosphere - especially since it was open bar. Drunk people spilling drinks on camera stuff isn't the best idea! However, prior to that, I did manage to snap a few photos at the LA Auto Show. There were tons of new cars and concepts, but I'll keep this short and sweet, and just post...

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Posted Nov 19 2008, 05:47 AM by Antonio Alvendia with 20 comment(s)

GALLERY>> FIRESMOKE AND TIRESMOKE
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This is sort of an alternative-styled post for Speedhunters. It's not necessarily focused on a car, and not necessarily lifestyle either. I just wanted to point this out to our loyal Speedhunters readers in other parts of the world - this past week, Southern California has been on alert because of several wildfires spreading throughout all ovdry brush and foliage-covered mountainser Southern California, coming dangerously close to many residential areas near the Red Bull World Drift Championship...

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2,126 Posted Nov 16 2008, 09:12 AM by Antonio Alvendia with 10 comment(s)

GALLERY>> INTERNATIONAL DRIFT SCENE IN LONG BEACH
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I'll keep this short and sweet, since you guys have been seeing a play by play from the other Speedhunters posts... I'm pretty sure we've written/published more about the Red Bull drift event than most other media outlets thus far, and the event isn't even over yet... I just woke up, and am about to get ready to drive back out from Irwindale area to Long Beach... Up top, that's Robbie Bolger driving Blake Fuller's Braille 350Z. Pretty nice of Blake to let Robbie drive his...

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Posted Nov 16 2008, 12:18 AM by Antonio Alvendia with 11 comment(s)

RANDOM SNAP>> ALL DAY I DREAM ABOUT SMOKE
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Super gangster, that's all I can say. I'm not even talking about the car; I'm talking about my boy Chris Manacop stopping it down to 1/25 of a second and capturing what might be the most "artistic" photo ever taken of the Retaks S13. From today's Red Bull event. There is a clearly defined subject - the car, which is sharp and crisp, as it should be. Framed nicely against a wide, blurry background. This is dope. This is the type of photo that the Retaks crew needs to get...
 
 

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2,126 Posted Nov 15 2008, 09:15 AM by Antonio Alvendia with 13 comment(s)

EVENT>> IT'S ALL ABOUT THE FD PRO AM!
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So I was going through my photos late last night after I got home from the Formula D Pro Am in Long Beach, and I fell asleep. I won't lie. I was tired as hell! Speedhunting is a 7-day-a-week job. You shoot on the weekends and you post up stuff every weekday... So here's a few of my photos from Pro-Am, I'll try to post some more later... but right now I need to get in the car and drive to Long Beach to do this all over again... This being said, big ups to the Drift Association crew and...

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Posted Nov 14 2008, 08:25 PM by Antonio Alvendia with 5 comment(s)

EVENT>> RED BULL EVENT SETUP AND LOAD-IN
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Just got back to the office, after being at the Port of Long Beach all day for the Red Bull World Drift Championship setup day and Formula D Pro Am... so I just thought I'd show some of the scenes today. The backdrop is really cool... all the shipping containers and cranes and bridges surrounding the port... I dig it. It looks very cool, kind of like (okay, don't roll your eyes too hard here) a video game. Okay, sorry, I said it. So sue me. Actually, no, don't sue me. I don't have...

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2,126 Posted Nov 14 2008, 09:41 AM by Antonio Alvendia with 13 comment(s)

EYE CANDY>> SEMA SHOW MODELS
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Real quick before I head out to Long Beach today... I thought I'd post up some eye candy for you guys. Here are some of my favorite girls from the SEMA Show this year... There was consistently a big crowd around the Falken Tire booth - was it because of their new products? Or maybe it was because of their 2009 Falken Girl All-Star lineup...? On the left we have Lindsay, a new Falken girl, and everyone's favorite Nihonjin... Eri Moriyama. But let's take it back to the old school! Let's...

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Posted Nov 13 2008, 07:28 PM by Antonio Alvendia with 10 comment(s)

EVENT>> BEHIND THE SCENES OF SUPER LAP BATTLE
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There were a ton of race cars on trailers driving through Highway 5 and the Grapevine to LA last night. It was cool seeing these cars on the back of the trailers, cruising at 70mph on the freeway... little would most people know what these cars are really capable of once they're put on a race track. From the starting grid at Buttonwillow yesterday, I spotted the M-Workz 350Z in line waiting to go out on track. I think this Z33 looks cool! Keep an eye out for an upcoming Speedhunters story on...

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2,126 Posted Nov 13 2008, 04:34 PM by Antonio Alvendia with 13 comment(s)

ARCHIVE>> NISSAN SENTRA SE-R
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It seems these days, when people think of Nissans, they automatically think of S13s, S14s, 350z, and such. However, I just wanted to remind everyone that in the mid to late 1990s, when FF Honda drag racing was the rage, the Nissan Sentra SE-R was one of the most popular Nissans to modify. It was Nissan's answer to the heavy hitting front wheel drive cars, like the Civic and Integra... especially with the popularity of SR20DET engines and turbo upgrades! I test drove a newer Nissan Sentra SE-R...
 
 

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Posted Nov 12 2008, 12:08 AM by Antonio Alvendia with 17 comment(s)

ARCHIVE>> NISSAN MANIA AT EBISU CIRCUIT
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Nissan month is November... and as I pack up my gear for tomorrow's shoot at Buttonwillow Raceway's Super Street Superlap Battle, I just can't help but think of Ebisu Circuit, one of my favorite racetracks that I've ever experienced. Anyway, looking back through photos on one of my hard drives, I thought I'd post up a photo that I snapped in 2005. This photo was a view of the pit area at Big X, the first fusion of drifting with other extreme sports, like freestyle motorcross,...
 
 

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2,126 Posted Nov 11 2008, 06:10 PM by Antonio Alvendia with 4 comment(s)

CAR FEATURE>> SUMO POWER R33 DRAG MONSTER
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On our trip to the UK earlier this year, I came face to face with a big pink monster. Get any ideas of fuzzy dinosaurs out of your head - I'm talking about a pink R33 Skyline drag monster from Sumo Power, in the UK. This car is very well known in the UK - it's gotten features inked from all the big magazines out there; this R33 has been stirring up quite a bit of attention from its performance numbers and overall impact! The vehicle is a 1994 Nissan Skyline GTR, which was imported from Japan...

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Posted Nov 11 2008, 09:40 AM by Antonio Alvendia with 20 comment(s)

DRIVING IMPRESSION>> CRUISING LA WITH AN R35 NISSAN GTR
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When I was told that Nissan was delivering a bright red R35 GTR to my office, I was more than excited! It wasn't my first time experiencing an R35 - I had already seen the car at the 2008 Tokyo Auto Salon , and even accompanied my friend, Nobushige Kumakubo of Team Orange , to the Nissan dealer in Fukushima Japan when he decided to buy one this past January. In fact, Kumakubo generously gave me the opportunity to test out his new GTR at speed when I returned to Japan this past August; I couldn't...

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2,126 Posted Nov 10 2008, 04:12 PM by Antonio Alvendia with 5 comment(s)

DRIVING IMPRESSION>> 2009 MAXIMA WITH 350Z ENGINE
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I was fortunate enough to be invited to a special Nissan media event featuring the all new Nissan Maxima at the luxuriously redeveloped Thompson Hotel in Beverly Hills. To be very honest, I was kind of skeptical when I heard Nissan marketing it as a revival of their “4 door Sportscar” at first, but that skepticism was very short lived. After an all day drive through a mixture of freeways and winding mountain roads on the way to Ojai, CA, I was able to thoroughly test out all 290 horsepower...

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Posted Nov 06 2008, 01:10 PM by Antonio Alvendia with 8 comment(s)

EVENT>> MORE SCENES FROM SEMA
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Live and direct from the SEMA show, here are some more photos for you to check out... this Porsche at the Toyo booth was definitely turning some heads! This 2001 996 turbo is owned by David Huang, and was apparently built up in only 30 days! (Obviously, he was collecting parts for it all year though) Don't recognize the face? Either did I - apparently it's outfitted with the exclusive Top Secret (yes, Top Secret from Japan) Porsche aero kit, painted with Mazoora white paint, with blue pearl...

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2,126 Posted Nov 05 2008, 02:03 PM by Antonio Alvendia with 16 comment(s)

EVENT>> SEMA SHOW FAVORITES
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While I was navigating my way through the SEMA Show yesterday, I spent most of the morning yawning from lack of enthusiasm for the cars I was looking at. The first hall I went through had me rolling my eyes pretty frequently - I was certainly disappointed with the lack of style on the cars in the first hall I walked through. So imagine my surprise when I came across this Scion TC. I'm not even the biggest fan of the TC; everyone knows I'm an FR car guy. However, I just had to give supreme...

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Posted Oct 31 2008, 11:10 PM by Antonio Alvendia with 9 comment(s)

NEWS>> R.I.P. RICEBOY TV
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Tonight is Halloween night. While many people spent the night trick-or-treating or braving haunted houses with ghosts, graveyards, cobwebs and RIP signs , there appears to be an all-too-real RIP sign in the ground for our friends at RiceboyTV.com . It hasn't been officially announced yet, but a lot of people in the industry have been talking about it today... and I guess news travels fast! Just before you think I'm trying to spread bad rumors about other websites, hold your horses... when...
 
 

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2,126 Posted Oct 31 2008, 07:01 PM by Antonio Alvendia with no comments

ARCHIVE>> WORLD RACING SCION TC DESKTOP
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Just before we head into the weekend, I thought I'd post this desktop of Chris Rado's Scion TC heading down the dragstrip... Pick it up on our desktops section ! -Antonio Alvendia
 
 

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Posted Oct 30 2008, 04:45 PM by Antonio Alvendia with 23 comment(s)

CAR FEATURE>> FJ45 LAND CRUISER LOWBOY HOT ROD
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The first time I saw this car, it was at the Toyota booth at SEMA. Since I spent soooo much time drooling and just plain jocking this FJ45, I was obviously very happy to run into it again this year at JCCS. This car is a definite head turner because at first, you’re really not sure what kind of hot rod this is, and become even more confused when you see TOYOTA stamped on it. Even in the world of highly modified classic cars, this one-off specially built FJ45 Low-Boy is an extremely rare breed...

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2,126 Posted Oct 30 2008, 12:55 PM by Antonio Alvendia with 19 comment(s)

RANDOM SNAP>> WALD JZS147 GS300/ARISTO
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I was just talking about first gen Lexus GS300s (JZS147) with my good friend Chris Manacop ; soon after our conversation, he emailed me a photo he shot of this black JZS147 GS300, which has been refreshed with a new black paint job, Wald aero kit, and Japanese OEM Aristo 3-piece taillight conversion. Very nice - simple and clean is my favorite style, so I think this GS looks pretty good! Don't you guys think so? I don't know what's under the hood of this car, but it seems to me that this...
 
 

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Posted Oct 30 2008, 11:10 AM by Antonio Alvendia with 16 comment(s)

CAR BUILDER>> SMOOTHLINEZ IN THE SGV
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When I mentioned to my good friend Felix Tang that I'd be interested in shooting some garages and car shops that were relatively close to where I live, he mentioned that I should check out Smoothlinez , which is in San Gabriel Valley. I had never previously heard of Smoothlinez, because apparently the way they get most of their customers is from word of mouth advertising; people posting photos of their engine builds or swaps on the internet, etc. I'll admit that I don't normally check...

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