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Posted
Jul 15 2009, 03:27 AM
by
John Brooks
with 7 comment(s)
Going along the events like the Retro Show you get to meet enthusiasts, folks who spend their own time and money on things that go faster. It is completely different from the mindset of professional sport encountered at places like Le Mans and none the worse for that. We all started as petrol heads even though some of us are lucky enough to scrape a living from this frivolous activity. So as I strolled round the paddock area I thought it would be appropriate to make notes and tell the stories of...
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Posted
Jul 03 2009, 11:19 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 19 comment(s)
I noticed that there's been a lot of demand for Nissan Stagea content this month. I'm currently on the hunt (tips anyone?) for interesting Stageas to showcase, but for now here's a shot I took of one getting ready for its run down the strip last year at the Trust Zeroyon Festival in Japan.
-Mike Garrett...
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Posted
Jul 02 2009, 08:49 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 20 comment(s)
I was on the phone just now with Andy Barnes from the UK Time Attack/NFS European Drift Series and was discussing our plans for AWD month with him. He suggested I look up this brand new Evo 8 drag car run out of the UK from an outfit called JR Motorsports... The AWD 1400bhp car has been built to a target of 6 seconds if you can believe that... Madness! We are going to need to send a Speedhunter round their shop to see what this car is about. :R
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Posted
Apr 21 2009, 04:50 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 10 comment(s)
A Sunny will never look the same to me after seeing this drag version.
Mike had taken pictures of this car previously, during one his Speedhunters' features on the Tuning Powers Show in Tokyo, but I've just found a video of this same car on the Beeoneoneoh blog....
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Posted
Mar 30 2009, 03:21 PM
by
Jonathan Moore
with 14 comment(s)
There was an impressive turn-out for the GTI Spring Festival, the first big VW event of 2009 - and also my first posting for Speedhunters. Even the British weather (which threw hail down the day before) smiled on us, with the rain holding off and the odd ray of sun burning through the clouds. Warmer than Japan, for sure...
Santa Pod was crammed with thousands of pristine examples of GTIs, and rocked to the sounds of booming bass and shredding tyres. ...
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Posted
Mar 26 2009, 01:06 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 13 comment(s)
In keeping with the "cool cars in cool garages" theme we have going this month with all the build stories on the site, I wanted to add this shot of the HKS 180SX drag car. When we arrived at the garge where the CT230R and some of the other HKS cars we boring stored, I was delighted to see this RB26-powered monster sitting there in one of the service bays undergoing some work.
With all the focus on the drift cand time attack cars that HKS has built, you can sometimes forget about the incredible HKS drag cars. The HKS 180's 1,200hp and seven second quarter mile times are just as impressive today as they were when the car was first built.
-Mike Garrett...
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Posted
Jan 27 2009, 08:14 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 18 comment(s)
Sometimes people come up to us and ask "what exactly is the purpose of Speedhunters... why are we doing this? What is this project all about?" The answer to this question is not simple... on one hand "we", as in the Need for Speed team are connected into all sorts of automotive scenes, events, teams and manufacturers around the world, so we thought it would be exciting and interesting to start documenting our travels in photography, writing and video.... on the other hand, we...
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Posted
Oct 27 2008, 02:25 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 12 comment(s)
For the vast majority of the Speedhunters' readership, Irwindale Speedway is the House of Drift. It is considered by most people to be the epicenter of the US drift scene; the place that has seen the evolution from amateurs making smoke in the parking lot, to the professional, multi-car, factory supported teams we see today.
However, for an entirely different group of people, Irwindale Speedway is the place to be on Thursday nights.... and not for drifting... no not at all... it's the home of a group of people who like to call themselves "Street Legal Drag Racers"....
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Posted
Oct 20 2008, 04:50 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 10 comment(s)
You know I'm a bit in a state of shock putting this piece together... I only spend 2 days collaborating with the photographer, David Lister, but have been supplied with literally hundreds of amazing photos. It's a bit of a challenge to edit them down tbh! A good place to be in no doubt.... So you'll likely have seen the retro funny car story we published a few days back... now let's wrap up our coverage of the 2008 California Hot Rot Reunion with a look at the other drag classes and...
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Posted
Oct 17 2008, 05:15 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 13 comment(s)
You know, in all my life of shooting motorsports events, I have never had a competiion car make me cry before... These were not tears of joy, not tears of sadness, no... they were tears from the toxic clouds of spent nitro gas being belched from a 3000bhp retro funny car. On the day after the Formula Drift Irwindale Final, the UK-based photographer David Lister and I hopped into the special Need for Speed Edition Shelby Terlingua Mustang and rumbled our way up to Famoso Raceway near Bakersfield,...
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Posted
Aug 14 2008, 01:35 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 8 comment(s)
Just uploaded a couple new desktop wallpapers for you guys. This time we have a shot a of an S13 Silvia drag car blasting down the 0-400 at the Trust Zeroyon Festival, as well as a vintage Alfa Romeo action photo from Tsukuba Circuit.
As usual, they can be found in our Desktops section. Head over and have a look....
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Posted
Jul 22 2008, 12:04 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 15 comment(s)
It's time to continue the coverage from my trip to last weekend's Tuning Powers show in Tokyo. As you saw in my first post, there were plenty of really cool and unique cars to be found at the event. While I said that the show draws a lot of the smaller tuners from around Japan, as you can see in the photo above, it also draws some of the bigger ones like JUN Auto who brought out their now famous Evo X demo car. They have done even more work to this car since the last time I saw it and I'm hoping I'll get the chance to see it in action at Tsukuba Circuit again soon......
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Posted
Jul 21 2008, 04:20 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 28 comment(s)
When you think of annual Japanese tuning shows, the big ones like Tokyo Auto Salon or Osaka Auto Messe probably come to mind. But there is another tuning show held every year in Tokyo that is very much worthy of a look. The show is called Tuning Powers and unlike TAS, this show is geared strictly towards hardcore gearheads who are interested in seeing the latest in performance technology. At Tuning Powers you won't find any flashy VIP sedans or crazy wagons, nor will you see any campaign girls surrounded being ambushed by photographers. What you will see are some of the most impressively built performance machines from all over Japan. With a select mix of domestic and imported cars of both classic and modern styles, Tuning Powers is more about the technical aspects and ingenuity of tuning than outright flashiness....
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Posted
Jul 17 2008, 11:16 AM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 13 comment(s)
Since we already posted a previous story about Battle of the Imports, I thought I'd just make a quick gallery of some of the drag Hondas at the event. There were TONS of them all over the place! It seems like Battle of the Imports is the place to be if you want to see the best of the privateer drag race prepared Hondas. The west coast had a strong showing at this event, but I know it's only a fraction of the cars that are really out there! It seemed like there were quite a few drag Hondas...
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Posted
Jun 30 2008, 01:56 PM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 10 comment(s)
First of all, I really gotta say thank you to my friends Francis and Rich from The Speedlounge for introducing us to Tim Grey, the owner of this green EG Civic drag car you see here. In my opinion, the east coast has always been die hard with drive and dedication to drag racing, and there are so many privateers out there in the east coast that put down consistent timeslips that really give the pro "full sponsored" guys a run for their money. One such guy is Tim Grey, who's showing people...
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Posted
May 30 2008, 04:33 PM
by
Andy Barnes
with 20 comment(s)
Fuujin Gets 7.5 second spec cage in preparation for 2008. We've just finished the work to make our Drag GTR ( and current European 4WD record holder ) even more compliant and safe to meet the rules for 7.5 second doorslammer cars. The car was previously spec'd to 8.5 second rules however late last year we started to dip into the lowe 8's with a best of 8.27 @164mph which was the milestone for the next phase of our cars development. Since the inception, the cars purpose is to run quicker...
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Posted
May 30 2008, 07:47 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 1 comment(s)
One awesome shot of the famous Garage Saurus R32. The car is running a stroked RB 2.7 liter with 780ps from a T88 turbo. Picture courtesy of Garage Saurus
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Posted
May 28 2008, 12:05 PM
by
Andy Barnes
with 6 comment(s)
I am the co-owner of Sumo Power and also the Time Attack Series and European Drift Championship, all 3 of which are based in the UK. In 2002 we started Sumo Power as a main HKS distributor in the UK and we began making cars to show the parts off. Pretty quickly we got deep with how we wanted the cars to be and before long we had an array of cars for different things. We normally name each of our cars to give it character, for instance, Ichiban ( Japanese for No. 1 ), Hercules ( Greek god known for...
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Posted
May 22 2008, 11:00 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 6 comment(s)
I’m a great fan of Garage Saurus. In the past they have build some really outstanding cars, like their R32 Drag R that ran consistent 9 second runs on the quarter mile. They even have a race team called 884 Racing. Some of the top contenders in the Japanese Drag Series are in that team. One of those cars is this Skyline R32. It was built by Garage Saurus for a customer that wanted to race it on the circuit and on the drag strip. For the quarter mile it recorded a time of 9.167 seconds. What...
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