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• Team Galag TG1 is a High-Powered Mutant of a Nissan GT-R

  In Tuning / By Tom Anderson / 21 May 2013

  

  If a bone stock Nissan GT-R isn’t special enough, there’s no shortage of tuners capable of making it look meaner, go faster, or both. However, it seems like most tuned R35 GT-Rs – even the double-throwdown 1,000+ horsepower ones from the likes of Switzer Performance – don’t look radically different from the ones rolling off the boats and into Nissan dealerships. Some people are okay with that, and some aren’t.

  For people who aren’t okay with a fairly stock appearance for their tuned GT-R, and would prefer more radical alterations, help is on the way. It comes from Florida-based Parker Brothers Concepts and Saudi Arabia’s Team Galag, and is called the TG1. And as you can see, this looks almost nothing like the off-the-shelf Godzilla.

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• Oh No, They Say It Really Goes: MotorTrend Wrings out the Nissan GT-R Track Pack [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 21 May 2013

  

  We’re all quite familiar with the criticisms leveled at the Nissan GT-R, right? It drives like a video game, it weighs as much as an SUV, no Average Joe can afford one, blah blah blah. If only there was a way to get these petrolhead Eeyores to shut their latte slots and appreciate Nissan’s supercar for what it really is: A 2+2 rocket sled that makes you question the veracity of your high school physics textbook (You know, the one in which you drew a 97% accurate Slayer logo on the inside back cover?).

  This video, hosted by MotorTrend’s Carlos Lago with a power lap cameo by the mag’s favorite pro shoe Randy Pobst, might not get all of Godzilla’s naysayers to pour their Haterade down the drain. But it’s hard to argue against the numbers the GT-R – specifically the new-to-America GT-R Track Pack – puts up. Those absurd, hypercar-harassing numbers…

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• USDM Tyte, Yo: Japanese Tuner Cultivates American Style J-Tin [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 16 May 2013

  

  Car geeks are intimately familiar with the well-worn saying “The grass is always greener on the other side.” No matter what country on this big wet marble you call home, there’s always some car or car part that was never available in your homeland that you will absolutely covet. How else do you think the JDM scene got to be so popular here in the U.S.?

  Conversely, there seems to be a growing demand for USDM cars and components in Japan. One man at the forefront of this movement is Masayoshi Nagano, propreietor of Nagano Koubou. One of his specialties is mating American S13-chassis Nissan 240SX noses with home market Silvia bodies to create what Japanese Nissan buffs call “Onevias” (The “one” in the name is derived from 180SX, the JDM version of the S13 hatchback that shared its front sheetmetal with all three American S13 body styles.). We quite like this two-way cultural exchange, and hope it continues for years to come.

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• Gran Turismo 6 is Playstation 3-Bound This Holiday Season [w/ Videos]

  In Video Games / By Tom Anderson / 15 May 2013

  

  After a gestation so lengthy that Axl Rose was quoted as saying “What the hell is taking Kazunori and crew so long?”, Gran Turismo 5 finally arrived in November of 2010. And while it was without question a tremendous game with gorgeous graphics and a mammoth car list, it felt, in many respects, rushed. Hard to believe when you consider it came out almost six years after Gran Turismo 4, but things like a new-but-half-baked damage model, continued use of angry appliance exhaust sounds, woeful under-utilizations of the WRC, NASCAR and Top Gear licenses and, perhaps most aggravating of all, many times more “Standard Cars” (i.e. models ported from GT4 and the Gran Turismo title for the PSP) than “Premium Cars” (i.e. brand new car models built from many thousands more polygons and featuring fully-modeled interiors) left many longtime fans of the franchise feeling underwhelmed, if not out-and-out cheated.

  So you can imagine our skepticism when we heard rumors that the father of Gran Turismo, Kazunori Yamauchi, and his team at Polyphony Digital would not only be revealing Gran Turismo 6 sooner rather than later, but also bring it to market by the end of the 2013 calendar year. Well, following a massive press event (which also served to celebrate the series’ 15^th anniversary) at England’s Silverstone Circuit earlier today, we can report there’s more than a little truth to those rumors. More than a little truth, and some gorgeous, gorgeous visuals.

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• 2013 Formula Drift Road Atlanta: Round 2 Sees Daigo Saito Get His Title Defense Back on Track

  In Motorsports / By Tom Anderson / 13 May 2013

  

  While none of the three podium finishers of last month’s opening round of the 2013 Formula Drift championship were very unexpected, the fact that the defending series champion wasn’t among them was. In fact, Daigo Saito was knocked out in the second round of eliminations in Long Beach, clearing the way for the likes of Dai Yoshihara and Vaughn Gittin Jr. to scoop up oodles of points. This begged the question: Was Saito’s fairy tale rookie season in America’s premier drifting series a fluke?

  Well, Daigo Saito responded to that question with an emphatic “No” by winning this past weekend’s second round of the Formula Drift championship trail, held at the world-renown Road Atlanta circuit in Braselton, Georgia. The venue’s Formula D course utilizes the track’s Turn 10a and 10b complex, before negotiating a paved loop through the gravel trap and winding its way back through the chicane in the opposite direction. So who, along with Saito, was best able to tame this tricky layout? Read on and find out!

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• Feeling Board: Downhill Skateboarder Kevin Reimer and His Nissan Skyline GT-R [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 13 May 2013

  

  It is often assumed that because athletes are able to get their adrenaline fixes when in competition, their lives off the field or course are pretty chill. For example: Downhill skateboarder Kevin Reimer probably drives some milquetoast, beige (in spirit, if not color) transportation appliance when he’s not using gravity to get around/risk severe bodily harm, right? Well, not quite: Mr. Reimer’s motorized vehicle of choice is actually an R32-chassis Nissan Skyline GT-R.

  But lest you assume this Canadian (Hence why he was able to import it, thanks to the Great White North’s far more sensible laws regarding four-wheeled forbidden fruit.) extreme sports star hitched his wagon to the ur-Godzilla by accident, know that Kevin and this classic Nissan super coupe have both won races on Australia’s Mount Panorama, home to the Bathurst 1000. Some things are just meant to be.

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• Violence against Tires (and Other Things): Grand Theft Gymkhana 2 Drops [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 30 April 2013

  

  It’s been more than a month since we brought you YouTube user domesticmango’s Grand Theft Auto IV/Ken Block Gymkhana mashup, “Grand Theft Gymkhana.”  And considering how straight-up redonkulous that video was, we knew that crafty locally-sourced fruit was going to have a hard time concocting a sequel capable of topping it. But you know what? He’s managed to do exactly that.

  Check it: Highly-customized Nissan S13 hatchback. Random cartoon characters. Vert ramps. And explosions. Lots and lots of explosions, like enough to make even Michael Bay say, “Dude, pace yourself!” Long story short, “Grand Theft Gymkhana 2” is one of the maddest machinimas (i.e. CGI movies and short films rendered in real time, usually with video games) we’ve ever witnessed. And we can’t wait to see what domesticmango cooks up next.

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• Syrena Sport is Polish Sports Car History Revisited

  In Auto News / By Tom Anderson / 23 April 2013

  

  We know what you’re thinking: Poland has a sports car history? Well, yes. It’s just a very, very brief history. In 1960, designers and engineers at Polish automaker FSO took one of the company’s Syrena 100 sedans (Syrena is, according to local legend, the mermaid guardian of FSO’s home city of Warsaw.), fitted it with a snazzy fiberglass sport coupe body, and called the resulting prototype the Syrena Sport. Unfortunately, it would remain a prototype, as economic woes and sociopolitical tensions in the then-communist nation quickly took priority over the state-run car company building a sports car.

  Fast forward to 2013 and there’s a group of investors – led by one Rafal Czubaj – that wants to pick up where FSO left off all those years ago. But instead of being based on some Eastern Bloc tin can of a car, this new Syrena Sport will be based on a proper sports car. And it will also perform like a sports car.

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• Generation Z: Tuned Datsun 240Z and Nissan 370Z Face Off [Video]

  In Fast Forward / By Tom Anderson / 18 April 2013

  

  The debate about whether the cars of yesterday were better than the cars of today (and vice versa) has raged for ages, and will likely always continue to rage. Heck, we occasionally do our share of flame-fanning. But the fact of the matter is when it comes to performance, newer is almost always better.

  Of course, that doesn’t stop people from putting cars of different generations head to head. Take the video seen here: Nissan and Motor Trend wanted to pit Nissan’s crowd-sourced 370Z project car against a fan’s Z. Gordon MacSwain and his RB26DETT-swapped ’70 Datsun 240Z won the chance to do battle, and this video shows how this epic dual between a pair of twin-turbo Zs went down.

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• The Top 25 Homologation Specials of All Time

  In Featured / By Tom Anderson / 18 April 2013

  

  Purpose-built racing cars – be they single seat open wheelers, sports prototypes, dragsters or any other automobile whose sole reason for being is to compete – have always inspired awe and been capable of extraordinary performance. But when it comes to truly connecting with the fans in the stands, these thoroughbreds are no match for production-based (even if it’s just the shape of the body) machinery. The idea of watching a particular car win a race and then walking out to the parking lot and driving home in or driving to the local dealer to check out an identical (save for some safety and performance equipment and a whole heap-o-decals) car holds widespread (if not universal) appeal.

  Of course, to stand a better chance at winning on Sunday so they can sell on Monday, manufacturers load their showroom-bred competition models with go-fast bits. However, many sanctioning bodies used to require (though, sadly, very few still do) that those same upgrades to be fitted to a certain number of the street-legal models Joe Bloe can buy, meaning the factories have to sell what are known as homologation specials in order to race that model. The annals of automotive history are brimming with such four-wheeled entry forms, yet we’ve managed to pare that manifest down to the 25 fastest, coolest and most outrageous ones ever to wear a license plate.

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