Wangan - December 2010

Dardilly, France. 10 pm. Outside temperature: 2°C. A number of cars discreetly make their way to the underground carpark of a supermarket. Slowly but surely, a small crowd gathers. Their common point: they are all driving Japanese cars. 

Undeterred by the cold and the snow, these enthusiasts gather about every two month to talk about cars and show off their prized possession. This December’s meetup had a turn up of about 30 cars, a mere number compared to the 150 attendees of October. Nevertheless, some beautiful cars were present, including a couple of EDM DC2 Integras, a score of Civics from all generations, a certain CRX that will be covered in more details very soon, a Lexus IS200, an Mx-5, and an old Rx-7 FC that had recently been reborn from the grave, and is planned to be given a second youth, from a smoky, rusty car to an Initial D-style beauty.

 

All of these rides are very clean and well kept and sport all levels of mods, from stock to totally illegal modifications by Singaporean (and probably also French standards).

This ground scraping Civic had to have its fenders hand rolled to make room for the rubber, as you can see by the slightly chipped paint along the wheel arch.

One notable thing about French modding is the fact that most of the work is home-made by the drivers, who seek for help and advice from friends or forums, and all of these rides are built with a goal in mind. Few cars are modified just to look good, and while some have fun elements added to give a stronger identity to the car, like the Raving Rabbits DC2, that sports a blue LED-eyed Raving Rabbit hanging under the rear bumper to “scare” followers, and that will soon be equipped with a Raving Rabbit horn tune, most of these Japanese cars are made to tackle small curvy roads and mountain passes and getting the most fun out of it.

Probably every single one of these guys can sit with you for an hour and talk about the modifications they’ve done to their cars, why and how they’ve done it. Likewise, most if not all of these drivers can tell you about all-out driving experiences they’ve lived at the wheel of their beloved cars.

That doesn’t mean of course that all these cars are rat rods; you can see some cars with well maintained looks and bodies, such as the “Christmas wrapped” silver civic or the gorgeous red 200SX.

All in all, it was nice to see how different the car culture has grown in another country, and just shows a different interpretation of the word “modifying”.

A big thanks to Charles Gaillard, Adrien Tomasini, and all the guys from the Wangan Import and Japancar forums for the warm welcome and all your awesome rides!

Here are more pics for you all to enjoy!(click on them to see them full size)

Mettle Games

The next event on my agenda: the Mettle Games.

The concept, honestly, is good and ambitious, especially for Singapore where people seem to be more willing to go jump off a bridge than going to events. Take two week ends, and throw in a fest of street sports, sea sports, motorsports, martial arts and live music… Basically anything young, hip and extreme. Welcome to the Mettle Games.

The idea is good, there seemed to be quite a good backing from the industry with three drift teams present, Russ Swift himself (for those of you who don’t know him, shame on you. Google.), and quite a few drag cars. I’ll only be talking about the second week end, as it was the motorsports week end and that’s the only one I felt like going to, surprisingly.

The industry backing was there, the local scene was present, even international talents were there (not just Russ Swift but also Ryuji Miki the pro drifter from Japan), the only thing that was lacking was only a minor detail, something we call spectators…

Friday’s turnout was quite poor, but some hope was still there as it was a national day and maybe people had planned to spend time with their families (unless there was some sales on orchard or discounts at Tangs, then you know where the crowd went). I couldn’t make it on saturday, but I was back on the crime scene on sunday and although there was a bigger turn up, I felt there should have been more people around.

Maybe there wasn’t enough advertising (I personally only heard about it a little more than a week before the event itself thanks to the drifters at D Experience – Thanks guys!-). Too bad because the organization efforts were there…

Still it was a fun event, I got to ride shotgun with Russ Swift… On two wheels. That was quite different from anything I had experienced before. Everyone knows about front to back forces (accelerating and braking), lateral Gs (cornering), a few lucky people know the feeling of sliding sideways thanks to drifting. This was yet another feeling. The first thing that goes through your mind is what-the-damn-it-were-gonna-topple-hey-this-is-actually-quite-enjoyable… 

Really, even tho I knew what was coming up, you can hardly get ready for it, the angle is such that I really expected the car to topple. You can hear the engine slowly hauling the car on two suffering tire walls and looking ahead just makes you realize the crazy angle you’re sitting at. Of course, this was just a stroll in the park for Russ Swift, who has been doing this for over 40 years, so after the first run he goes to get a second passenger. And then a third. And then a fourth. We end up running on two wheels with five people in the car: Russ (of course), me in the front passenger seat (got lucky there, at least I’m comfy) and three on the back seat, getting squished.

I recorded two runs for you to enjoy (too bad you don’t get the whole feeling).

Run 1

Run 2

The “sorry” you hear at the end of the second run is one of the girls in the back apologizing for hitting her neighbor when the car got back on all fours… As I said, I’m glad I was riding shotgun!

Another highlight is the close call I got during the Spark Motorsports drift demo…
basically I was shooting the cars at the clipping point just before the hairpin. Great place, ate a mouthful of rubber every run but the place was great.

That’s how close I was. Since I was using a wide angle lens, I had to get close to have nice shots. Very close. The cars were passing by sideways only an arm length away from me. I got a few shots there, then decide to move a few meters up course to catch the cars from a different angle. Got one run, no problem. Then the second run is the one where things got spiky: Ryuji Miki, at the wheel of the Supra hit the rear of Ivan Lim’s Sylvia, pushing him straight in the barriers less than 10 meters away from me, at the spot I was standing about three minutes earlier. I cursed myself for not having the reflex of shooting more of it, but I’m still glad I got some of it.

Ok that still got me a scolding by the track marshal, but at least I got some nice shots!