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Posted
Oct 28 2009, 05:30 PM
by
Dino Dalle Carbonare
with 19 comment(s)
It was hard to pick a second D1 driver to do a small retrospective on, following the post on Ueo's career as a professional drifter. There are just so many great drivers in Japan to choose from, but after much deliberation it just had to be Nobuteru Taniguchi. Taniguchi is one driver I have great respect for, having managed to build a racing career with his own two hands, starting off in small one make racing sereis making it all the way to Super GT. In fact as I write this he is preparing to...
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Posted
Jul 21 2009, 04:00 AM
by
Dino Dalle Carbonare
with 27 comment(s)
HKS Technical Factory has always liked to impress by creating some pretty rare cars in the past. Their most well known has to be the BNR32-based Zero-R built in the early nineties. Only 4 were ever made, HKS kept 3 due to homologation problems and one was bought by the Sultan of Brunei to add to his vast collection of exotics. But the car you see here, the HKS CT200MR is, believe it or not, even rarer than that. There is only one in the world! The idea was to create a street-going edition of the...
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Posted
Jul 01 2009, 12:00 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 31 comment(s)
What's better? Saving the best for last, or starting things off with a bang? Right now I'm going to choose the latter. To kick off Speedhunters AWD month, I'm going to feature what just might be the greatest tuner car of all time. To even call the HKS CT230R a tuner car is a bit of a stretch, but since the car is built and campaigned by one of the world's biggest tuning companies I'd say the name fits. I got to spend some time inspecting every surface of this monster when I visited the HKS factory in Japan last winter, and have been patiently waiting until now to post this feature....
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Posted
Jul 01 2009, 02:02 AM
by
Andy Blackmore
with 7 comment(s)
We start off July, otherwise known as 'AWD Feature Month' with our Calendar Desktop, featuring the awesome HKS CT230R EVO. Check back later today for an in depth feature on this car by Mike Garrett. Not to be missed. You can download the July Calendar in Standard (1600) and Wide Screen (1900) formats in our desktop section. -Andy Blackmore PS: Happy Canada Day!
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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
Mar 20 2009, 06:02 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 4 comment(s)
Today has been a pretty good day for those of you that like to constantly change your desktop wallpaper. Here's my contribution - a high res shot of the HKS CZ200S Evo X from my recent feature on the car. Widescreen and standard versions are available now in the Desktops section.
Enjoy your weekend!
-Mike Garrett...
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Posted
Mar 20 2009, 04:31 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 16 comment(s)
As promised, here's some more photos from my visit last month to the small museum at the HKS factory in Japan. As I was reading through the comments section of the previous post, I noticed a lot of you guys wanted to see the HKS Mercedes Benz CLK JGTC car from 2002. Of course I didn't forget about this awesome piece of machinery from what many people consider to be the glory days of GT racing in Japan....
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Posted
Mar 19 2009, 05:37 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 27 comment(s)
Do you ever find yourself wondering what happens to a company's race cars and tuner cars after their services are no longer needed? Sometimes they will wind up in the hands of private buyers (often overseas), in other cases they will be destroyed or dismantled, and every once in a while they'll be preserved or displayed as part of the company's heritage. In it's 35+ years of existence, HKS has built dozens of these historic competition and street vehicles, and a number of them are kept on display in a special room at the sprawling HKS factory in Fujinomiya City, Japan....
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Posted
Mar 18 2009, 05:12 PM
by
Mike Garrett
with 23 comment(s)
If you were looking for HKS at this year's Tokyo Auto Salon, you may have been disappointed to find that the company didn't have much of a presence this year. Like a lot of companies, HKS was forced to cut back on their TAS showing due to the economic turndown in Japan and around the world. They might not have had a proper booth at TAS 2009,but a few of HKS cars did manage to find their way into the show. For example, on display outside of the Makuhari Messe near the makeshift D1 course, was this rather unassuming white HKS-built Lancer Evolution X....
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Posted
Mar 10 2009, 08:31 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 2 comment(s)
As I write this, I'm sitting on the floor of my furniture-less apartment taking a short break from the hustle and bustle of moving out. My posts this week will be a bit less frequent than usual, but I thought you might like this high res desktop wallpaper of the HKS JZS161 Aristo plus a few other HKS cars making cameo appearances in the background. Widescreen and standard versions are available now in the Desktops section.
Stay tuned for more interesting stories from my HKS visit soon.
OK, back to moving...
-Mike Garrett...
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Posted
Mar 06 2009, 05:49 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 45 comment(s)
Less than a week from now I'll be back home in California eating at my favorite burger joint for first time in nearly a year and a half, but right now I can't think about that stuff too much as I'm trying to focus on keeping the posts coming while at the same time helping the wife with moving preparations and last minute packing.
For this post, I want to quickly share with you something I spotted last week when I was visiting HKS. As Saitou-san was showing me around the place, we walked by one the company's many R&D garages where I caught a peak of this red S15 Silvia sitting within. ...
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Posted
Mar 05 2009, 07:46 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 21 comment(s)
As you probably gathered from the teaser photo I posted the other day, I recently took a trip to the famous headquarters and factory of HKS, which is located near the base of Mt. Fuji in Shizuoka Prefecture. Japan's clogged highways made for a long drive out to Shizuoka from Tsukuba, but It was more than worth it to experience the home of what's probably Japan's biggest tuning company. I'll be posting more about my visit to the HQ itself later on, but right now I want talk about the the JZS161 Toyota Aristo drift car which was designed for HKS's favorite racing driver, Nobuteru Taniguchi....
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Posted
Nov 27 2008, 01:10 PM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 48 comment(s)
Over the past few years I have collected a lot of photo's from all sorts of cars that are of interest to me. As my favorite brand is Nissan, and the car that I like the most is the Skyline R34, you can figure I have a vast amount of pictures of these cars from all over the world.... In looking through my photo collection, I thought it would be interesting to try and decide on the best R34 GT-R out there .... It's a really hard question to answer! Let's look though some tuned R34s that...
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Posted
Sep 22 2008, 12:05 PM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 18 comment(s)
I was just browsing through some of the blogs I visit on a daily basis. One of them pointed me to a new website called HKS TV, It's some sort of HKS version of youtube. You can find all sorts of cool video's, from product reviews to onboard Time Attack video's of the HKS CT230R. Although everything is in Japanese you still get a good understanding for all things HKS. I especially like this video where you can see some ‘historic' HKS race cars like the Drag 70 Supra and their...
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Posted
Sep 12 2008, 04:25 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 13 comment(s)
Time for some more coverage from Thursday's HKS Hiper Meeting at Tsukuba Circuit. There was just too much cool stuff to jam into one post. I read through the comments you guys left on the first post and tried to include some more photos of the cars you wanted to see (they happen to be the same ones I was digging). Just look at the first shot with a pair of Subarus, an S2000, an Evo X and an R32 GT-R in the background. This is why I love hanging out at Tsukuba Circuit!...
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Posted
Sep 11 2008, 10:42 AM
by
Mike Garrett
with 16 comment(s)
Today as I was driving out to Tsukuba Circuit, I realized that it has been quite a while since I have shot any traditional "tuning car" race events. I have covered other Tsukuba events recently like the Idlers Games and the JCCA Summer Meeting, but I was looking forward to seeing some fully tuned GT-R's, RX7's, S2000's attacking the circuit. With fall in the air, Tsukuba is again becoming busy with time trial and soukoukai events and I for one am happy be putting the humid, rainy summer behind me. The event I was going to was the HKS Hiper Challenge at the Tsukuba 2000 Course, part of a series of events held by HKS at tracks all over Japan. This particular event was it's second of three Hiper Challenges at Tsukuba this year. The Hiper Challenge includes time trial and free run classes for everyone from beginners in their daily drivers to pros driving shop demo cars. After spending a little time at the Hiper Challenge, my tuning car thirst would be more than quenched....
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Posted
Sep 04 2008, 04:59 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 36 comment(s)
HKS USA just announced that they will have a Hyundai Genesis Coupe ready for the Sema show that will be held in November. The car is set to be released in the spring of 2009, but Hyundai already let HKS USA have a go at it. According to their press release, HKS will upgrade the engine with a GT Turbo, new internals, exhaust system, intake and a HKS engine management. Although no power figures are yet released, I'm sure it will be enough to hold its own on the track. Other improvements are in...
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Posted
Jul 10 2008, 03:16 AM
by
Jeroen Willemsen
with 13 comment(s)
Once a week I always check the Japanese Yahoo auctions for cars. It's just a habit I have, a lot of the times there's some real junk, but there's always one seller that seems to have the most well built Skylines. I'm talking about Global Auto, that name should sound familiar to at least some of you guys. When I was browsing today I spotted this monster R34 Skyline with a massive spec. list. I don't even know where to begin! So I'll guess I will start at the front where the...
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Posted
Jun 25 2008, 12:46 PM
by
Antonio Alvendia
with 17 comment(s)
I was quite honored to be given the opportunity to shoot this Do-Luck UK Supra at Brooklands , the first motor racing circuit in the world . I've been to more racetracks across the world than most people, but this was a special thing for me. I mean, I was wheeling my stickered-up lens case around, and standing on the first automotive racetrack in the world. In the world! It was quite an experience for me. I walked up the steep bank (that was kind of difficult!) to take different types of photos...
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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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