PERFORMANCE
Alright folks, you’ve heard my ramblings all year about hooking up all sorts of different vehicles — from Escalades to Metros, and back again. Hopefully, you’ve been able to get some pointers for your own ride, or you’ve at least enjoy my Martha Stewart jokes.
This time around, I’m dropping the flipside — the people behind the cars. It’s the hype tuner version of a bad VH1 special. Ladies and gentleman, P. Diddy style, this is the remix!
Who builds hot cars? These guys do. Take their advice and you too could someday wind up in this story. But no Xeroxing allowed — keep it original. Copy these guys and you might end up in cement shoes, or at the least get made fun of.
Specimen A: The Rookie
Justin Breitmaier of NY spared no cost to become elite. He imported a 1996 Nissan Skyline GT-R LM edition from overseas. Driving on the right hand side of the car makes it not only the perfect mail-route vehicle, it’s also fun as hell to go through the drive through and ask them why their window is on the wrong side, then race off cursing at them. (Not that Justin would do this, but it sure sounds like a good idea to a nincompoop like me.) Justin has taken the new thought of JDM tuning to an extreme by acquiring this vehicle. To make him even more exclusive, his car is 1 of only 98 produced.
“The LM LTD model was a limited run of production cars made between June 1st and July 31st of 1996,” he explains. “The color was limited to the LM edition. The LM was produced to commemorate the GT-R running in the LeMans.”
Who am I to argue that?
Asked why he does this stuff to cars, he’s quick to answer: “Mostly for fun, but I get bored with the same thing all the time, so I need to keep changing my car to make it a little more exciting! I had an IS300 before the Skyline, but felt it was not unique enough, so that why I purchased the Nissan”.
His take on trends is very to the point: “The Clean look is so much more appealing than the Rice look.”
Check for Justin at drags and shows all over the northeast.
Specimen B: The All-Star
John Marsh’s ‘97 Eclipse, of Atlanta GA’s, is an example of everything a hot tuner car should be. The best part about it is he didn’t intend for it to be a show car at all, as its primary use is for sound quality competitions. John’s been doing his thang in the scene for about 10 years now. His car features an amazing custom paint job, insane fiberglass work on the stereo install, Supra taillights, and just about everything else a show car needs. Add that to its bling-bling engine bay, and John is an official pimp-o-riffic tuner (not that I have any clue what that means). He backs it up with 2002 and 2003 SLAPshow national champ honors for SQ in Pro Ultimate 601+. John definitely is respected amongst audio heads and tuners alike.
His advice for newbies: “Don’t half-ass anything. If you cannot afford to do a modification properly, don’t do it! Take pride in your work. Don’t be afraid to try new things!”
John is quick to point out that he feels the state of the import scene is like a roller coaster, “some times are up, and some are down”. And his dear soundoff scene is “in a world of hurt”.
Specimen C, The Hall-Of-Famer
Hailing from NY, AJ Russo’s. claim to fame is the old school, having tuned probably the worlds most famous VW Scirocco. His car was produced in 1986. Some of us have no idea when 1986 even existed — it was like, even before 1987.
AJ showed peeps how the old school can be vogue today by taking his classic and tuning it with today’s parts. His car was transformed to look like any modern machine in the show scene. Setting it off with its color, the porn star-sounding ‘Amber Fire Pearl’, right down to the gunmetal Axis wheels. AJ’s Scirocco started out as an autocross car, but eventually he switched to show “to see what it could do”. The most distinguished feature on the ride is its Mercedes 190e taillights.
“It took 70 hours to reshape the back of the vehicle to accept them,” says AJ.
That’s around the same amount of time it takes me to install neon windshield washer squirters, only to find out I put them on backwards and am pissing off the guy in front of me.
AJ, talking like your dad, is quick to defend his car’s old school heritage. “Everyone does late model cars and forgets about the cars that the new cars came from,” he states. “Try to come up with your own style — don’t rip off what everyone else is doing. The new people getting into this is what keeps the industry exciting”. Spoken like a true OG fo’ sho’.
The Conclusion
As you can see, the key with all these players is being unique. No one ever made it famous by copying the next man’s formula, unless were talking about crappy produced reality shows. In the words of every hip-hop CD I own, “keep it real.”
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