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Posted
Nov 20 2009, 07:29 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 2 comment(s)
Hello Speedhunters! My name is Gary Bonner and I live in good ‘ol Houston, Tx. I’ve grown up with a special love for cars and racing. My parents have always had some sort of 60’s or 70’s hot rod as a daily, even till this day. My dad and his 6 brothers all loved to build cars and hot rod around town & the track.. Oddly enough, I’ve found myself doing the same things now that I’m all grown up. Dad and I have built many of projects together, so it wasn’t...
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Posted
Nov 19 2009, 01:53 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 23 comment(s)
This past August, I was invited to be a guest judge at a local drift Drift Mania West event, held at Western Speedway in Victoria BC, Canada. As you can expect at typical North American grass roots drift event, the majority of the cars competing were S chassis of various types. But one drifter chose to break the mold with his choice of car and went in a more old school direction: his name is Chris Scremin and this is his 1985 SR-86. Chris is one of the top drifters in the west coast Canadian scene...
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Posted
Nov 17 2009, 09:10 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 22 comment(s)
Well I'm glad the slammed BMW post from yesterday has gone down a treat... you can never tell with you guys are going to respond sometimes! So here's a quick look at a car from the opposite end of the spectrum to the BMW... It's a good example of an USDM Air Ride VIP styled machine. We spotted Vinh Vo's ground hugging Lexus IS350 last month at the Access Zero 42 car meet in Houston, Texas and instantly knew we had to move it to the opposite end of the parking lot for a quick photoshoot...
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Posted
Nov 16 2009, 06:04 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 59 comment(s)
It seems like the current November "Slammed Month" theme has divided the Speedhunters audience up into two polarized camps. Some of you hold fast to the premise: Form Follows Function and that all upgrades and alterations to a car should be in the pursuit of handing and speed... or at least gives the appearance of this. Others prefer to weigh visual style over performance and are more about show than go . You like cars which place a greater value on aesthetic impact over easy functionality...
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Posted
Nov 13 2009, 06:39 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 15 comment(s)
With the Mustang, Ford is in possession of a very valuable property: a modern car with soul and character. Think about it: the vast majority of car companies these days make all of their models with uniform styling features. It's even hard to distinguish between different cars of the same class these days. It's for this reason I've developed a bit of a soft spot for this retro macho machine, especially the hotted up versions that companies like Shelby and now RTR are putting out. The...
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Posted
Nov 13 2009, 08:46 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 31 comment(s)
Ok this is my last SEMA car spotlight. I think Mike has a few more cars to showcase but this is the last entry for me. For this blogpost, I thought you might be interested to have a closer look at Vaughn Gittin JR's new toy: the Mustang RTR-C. The RTR-C stood out amongst all the various customized 2010 Mustangs on show at SEMA last week. Rather bolt on huge 20 inch wheels and ungainly wings, JR and the crew at ASD took it upon themselves the daunting task to completely reskin a donor Mustang...
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Posted
Nov 12 2009, 03:30 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 24 comment(s)
This giant scaled up Hot Rod is the latest creation from the Southern Oregon based Blastolene shop. These are the same crazy minds responsible for Jay Leno's tank car.... It's a connection which immediately makes a lot of sense! Designed by Randy Grubb, the Blastolene design philosophy is based around finding unusual large displacement engines and building up drivable "sculptures" around them. The 12v71 Detroit Diesel with twin 671 superchargers is an industrial application engine...
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Posted
Nov 11 2009, 04:12 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 18 comment(s)
The spirit of the scene that some people are calling "Rat Rodding" is a counter culture against the smoothster style million dollar "cheque book" Rods which are still dominating the big Hot Rod awards. A true Rat Rod normally looks like it's been built with period specific components, which give the impression of being found in the open desert, river beds, swap meets and junkyards. This style of car started out with machines that were inspired by the original jalopy street...
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Posted
Nov 11 2009, 03:12 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 37 comment(s)
Of all the "new" pony cars on the market today I like the look of the Mustang the best. In my books, it's the only one of the three which doesn't look over bloated and fat compared to its original version. SEMA itself was filled with modified 2010 Mustangs, most of which didn't do much for me though. I also didn't pay much attention to most of the big wheeled Pro Touring "Stangs either... But there was one Mustang that caused me to stop in my tracks: the JM Enterprises...
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Posted
Nov 11 2009, 07:41 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 46 comment(s)
If you were to try and create a demographic history of VIP Style car owners in the USA, it's likely that most of these guys (and gals?) would've previously graduated from some kind of a sport compact car. It's a well established pattern; the owner would have spent some time modifying front drive cars (probably Hondas) and has now graduated to the ranks of large, stately Japanese sedans. Texas resident Zeem Choudhury definitely fits this mold. He's an ex-Honda guy who wanted a new...
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Posted
Nov 08 2009, 06:54 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 30 comment(s)
Last year at SEMA , I spent a lot of time walking the floor, processing photos and preparing stories for Speedhunters.com. However this year, we had Mike Garrett taking care of these duties, so I was free to focus on securing some exciting new Speedhunters business partnerships and collaborations for 2010. My partner in crime, Rachel Kelly and I were so busy doing back to back meetings, that I didn't get to shoot the whole show. Oh well... I still have some Speedhunters reports coming out this...
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Posted
Nov 06 2009, 06:25 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 15 comment(s)
Those of you who are "friends" with me on Facebook will know that last week Speedhunter's editor Riley Vigier and I were crunching to finishing up two videos for the 2009 SEMA Show. You've already seen our tribute to the new Formula D champion Chris Forsberg, and here's our second year end video offering: Falkenhunting 2009. A new Speedhunters film which debuted at Falken's SEMA booth on Tuesday. It covers our season long collaboration with the Team Falken drift family....
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Posted
Nov 02 2009, 03:20 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 114 comment(s)
VIP Style... Drift Style... Hella Flush (?) style... Lux Style... Time Attack Style... JDM Style... These are all different labels which have been thrown around the US import car scene in the past few years. Once a style gets solidified, a rule set gets made and standards are created for what one should and shouldn't do with a car build. However, every once and a while a car will come up which makes you scratch your head. This 2006 Nissan 350Z is certainly Hella Flush approved, but it's clean...
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Posted
Nov 02 2009, 10:24 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 82 comment(s)
"Offset is everything" : This is a mantra which many of you guys have been preaching for some time now... But I want to question if wheel offset is indeed the be-all-end-all of modified cars aesthetics around the world. For me cars with offset wheels are usually great, but it's a rule that doesn't always apply to all cars across multiple styles and genres. So let me put this alternative idea forward: Stance is Everything. How the car sits on its wheels -the stance, is the one element...
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Posted
Oct 30 2009, 03:32 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 10 comment(s)
This Speedhunters film is going to be my final contribution to the Driver's Month special features.
It's a quick portrait of the multiple World Touring Car Champion, Andy Priaulx.
Shot last month at the Imola round of the WTTC, we've done our best to capture the essence of Touring Car racing. The intensity, the aggressive driving and the on track dramatics.
Thanks Andy Priaulx for taking the time to talk to us. Enjoy the film!
...
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Posted
Oct 28 2009, 08:10 AM
by
Rod Chong
with 61 comment(s)
Wow what a response we are getting to our Access Zero 42 coverage! Glad you lot like the photos, but the true testament has to go to the organizers of the show who brought a lot of fellow auto enthusiasts together for this meet. Linhbergh and I decided we were going to select 1 car from the event to shoot as the November "Slammed" theme calendar desktop. It needed to be a car that we hadn't already shot as photo features, and one that we weren't already aware of. I wasn't sure...
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Posted
Oct 27 2009, 01:20 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 78 comment(s)
We're in a bit of a video post production crunch right now as we have two videos to get completed in the next couple of days. They are going to be debuting next week at SEMA so we're putting a bit of pressure on ourselves to make these new films the hottest things ever. I'm having a bit of difficulty concentrating on writing right now to give you a review of the adventure that Linhbergh and I had in Houston this past weekend, but the site has been a bit empty this morning so let's try and get something written up here!...
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Posted
Oct 23 2009, 05:45 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 144 comment(s)
I'm currently sitting in the lounge area at the Planet Zero Anime center in Houston, Texas overseeing a room filled with JDM import arcade machines. The sun is going down and I'm working away on updating the Speedhunters website while Linhbergh is out shooting two amazing super-slammed Nissans. We've come here to shoot a raff of dropped cars in preparation for November's "Slammed" theme and Texas seems to be one of the best places to source this style of car. We're also...
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Posted
Oct 23 2009, 12:30 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 13 comment(s)
I'll finish up blogging about my recent trip to California with a quick story about the journey from the hotel to the airport this past Monday. The plan was to drop off the NFS Terlingua off at Shelby's LA HQ and take a cab to LAX, but this isn't exactly how things turned out. So here we are parking up the Mustang for another sad good bye. The giant SUV belongs to everyone's favourite Scion stalwart, Chris Rado. Some of you may remember we featured this supercharged 600 hp truck exactly...
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Posted
Oct 22 2009, 10:20 PM
by
Rod Chong
with 11 comment(s)
I suppose some people might call me a bit of a workaholic as I very rarely stop working. This past weekend though I had a little too much on my plate. I had two camera operators shooting 2 different drift films, was collaborating with our team of Speedhunters photographers, was helping to organize the Royal Purple video game contest and was also following five different drifters around for their Speedhunters guest blogs. Ack!... So the weekend was perhaps a bit pressurized for my own taste, but that’s...
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