Thursday, 19 May 2005
Car Modification 101 - Sport Compact Nights 2005, Vancouver
By Michael Kwan, for THECOMMENTARY.CA
This past Saturday, Sport Compact Nights made its way back under the dome at BC Place Stadium, sponsored by BF Goodrich, Rocawear, Castrol, and a number of other companies involved in the 'import tuner' scene. Designed to showcase the different vehicles and the modifications available to them, car enthusiasts from the Vancouver area and beyond gathered to show off their cars. You can find anything from a non-driveable classic Impala pimped out in chrome and gold, complete with a hood airbrushed with the likeness of Tony Montana from Scarface to a 'CRVtec' '92 Acura Integra bred for the race track, making nearly 250 horsepower at the wheels. Modifications to this Integra include a full engine swap, mating the b20z block from a 1999 Honda CRV with the head from a 1997 Integra GSR.
Christian Coujin's Veilside Toyota Supra
This show was a competition for several awards, ranging from Best Drift to Best Paint to Best Old School. Christian Coujin of Seattle, last year's winner of "Best of Show," returned with his twin-turbo Veilside Toyota Supra and took home second place overall, receiving a cash prize of $250. Other cars returning to this year's competition included the aforementioned Impala, owned by Don Tre, and several vehicles from local car tuner shops including Garage Five (Stage Five), Advance Motorsports and A & J Racing. Indeed, David Yu of Garage Five and his Nissan 240sx took the award for second place Nissan and Justin Law of A&J Racing and his Acura Integra Type R won the award for best JDM.
JDM? What's JDM? JDM is one of the hottest new trends, especially in the Vancouver area. JDM stands for Japanese Domestic Market and local tuners seek out parts to make their CDM/USDM (Canadian and United States Domestic Market, respectively) vehicles more closely approximate to their Japanese equivalents. For example, Justin's Integra has a full JDM front end conversion, switching his stock front head lights from the bug-eye look of local 1994-2001 Integras to the JDM headlights, which are rectangular and look more like earlier generation Honda Accords. He has also swapped in a K-series engine from the current generation RSX, keeping in mind that the RSX is simply the new generation Integra in Japan. Justin is better known as 'teh leader' (no that's not a typo), 'MooMan'or 'Mooman Hasaset' among the online import community in Vancouver.
A subset of the JDM trend is the push for 'VIP style.' Several luxury cars in Japan and the modifications they have received have inspired local car enthusiasts to follow suit. VIP style calls for higher end luxury vehicles - BMWs, Mercedes, and others - and the addition of clean, simple body kits, large flat silver or chrome rims, and "slamming them," that is, lowering the vehicle several inches to the point where the rear wheels in some cases must be angled. Indeed, there was an entire team dedicated to the VIP style, but the eventual winner of the Best VIP Award went to an Acura NSX, which is better known for its race-bred technology and styling rather than luxury.
For this and several other reasons, several entrants were upset with the judging by the National Custom Car Association (NCCA). I overheard comments like, "I think they were hokey pokey at best. There were lots of nice rides out yesterday that deserved to win something but lost to teams/booths that were big sponsors. When people enter a car show to compete, you kind of expect to at least see judges walking around and actually judging." Others called the judging "dodgy." One participant voiced his frustration: "I could not figure out what kind of system they were using for who gets judged first or what not . . . . I thought they were judging by classes or brands/types of cars, which makes sense, go around to judge all the cars that are eligible for one class or that are of the same model or make and use the same judge(s) for consistent point scorings… but then I just see different judges judging a few cars near the same area . . . . The judging system kind of sucked. (sic)"
An older trend popularised by The Fast and the Furious, that is, altezza-style tail lights, aggressive body kits, several neon or led lights, and substantial sound systems isn't nearly as popular in Vancouver as it used to be, but continues to win awards and attract attention, as evidenced by Benson Wong's neon light and LCD clad 2nd generation Integra, which won best Integra 1993 and earlier.
Team Menace
Several car clubs, most if not all of which have online forums where the members keep in touch, again made appearances in this year's Sport Compact Nights. Vancouver Civics (http://www.vancouvercivics.com), Club Integra (http://www.club-integra.net), and others came in full force as usual, but this year, more car clubs from outside of Vancouver also entered the show. Most notably, we saw the entrants by Team Mospeed (http://www.mospeed.com), Northwest Evolutions (http://forums.evolutionm.net/archive/index.php/f-41.html), and the winner of best team, Team Menace (http://www.teammenace.com). Northwest Evolutions entered the show with nearly a dozen Mitsubishi Lancer Evolutions, which are not available in Canada due to front bumper regulations, are more affectionately known as 'Evos.' All three of these teams come by way of Seattle, Washington.
Vancouver is growing into a central hub for the import tuner scene, catching up to such places as Los Angeles, California. The next major event where you can catch all these 'souped-up' cars is at Driven To Perform (http://www.driventoperform.ca), brought to you by Toyo Tires, Mobil 1, Future Shop, and Honda. DTP is traditionally more performance based and calls itself "Western Canada's Largest and Most Established Automotive Lifestyles Tour." We'll see you at BC Place Stadium on June 25.
Michael Kwan's own website is at http://www.geocities.com/now_thats_entertainment.
©1999-2005. The Commentary, Joseph Planta