I’ll begin with a quick back story on why it was that Mitchell and I even took this trip in the first place. Through the wonders of the internet, and a shared interested in a specific niche of cars, we’ve come to build a small network of friends spanning from Vancouver, and Seattle – right down to LA. It’s not all that often we get to see these friends, but because of how frequently we’ll chat online, and the constant exchange of photos and cool cars they’ll discover on Minkara, whenever we do get together face to face it’s always reminiscent of seeing an old friend – you catch up on what’s current and everything keeps rolling without missing a beat. While seemingly confusing to others, I’ve always thought it’s kind of neat that a common interest in cars was all that sparked these relationships.
Anticipating some crap weather here in Southern Ontario through February, Mitchell and I decided it might be a good time to get the hell out of dodge and head south to enjoy some time in the sun.
With the exchange rate the way it was, Mitchell and I were keen to cut costs wherever possible. This meant lodging for this trip was care of the Norush boys in the form of a shop mezzanine. Not exactly the Holiday Inn, but the price was right, and waking up to a shop full of cool cars was quite nice each morning.
Jay’s S13 has been under the knife for the past few years – and short of a few body panels and a lick of paint – it’s just about due for completion.
If any of you frequent the Narita Dogfight blog you’ll recognize this Civic as Sean’s time attack build. Another Norush car that’s currently under the knife, and has been for the past few years. Up until recently it was operational, but Sean finally decided to pull the previously turbo’ed low-compression B16, and rebuild a more suiting naturally aspirated B18.
Another car dormant in the shop is Dom’s Porsche. Dom’s had great success running local events like Redline and VTEC Club in his S2000, but recently decided to part ways with it and focus on the 944 race car. A bit of an unloved chassis in the Porsche world, but he certainly makes it work for him.
I can always appreciate the ambiance of the decor in a well put together shop.
Just down the way was Chronicles HQ. Neither Mitchell or I bothered to purchase a roaming plan for the occasion, so we spent some time loitering at HQ borrowing Joey’s Wifi each morning. Thanks, Joey! The Odyssey that normally serves as his daily driver was down for the count, so he was rolling around in his Y33.
Not typically a fan of multi-piece wheels, but I thought the SSR Professor MS3’s suited the build quite well.
Another car we were both excited to see was Yuta’s sedan. It’s been through quite a few changes in past years, but none as drastic as the current iteration. The most notable visual changes are the blistered and adapted S2000 fenders up front, along with radiused and flared rear quarters.
Because of how far back the seating position has been adjusted in the car, Yuta’s drivers side mirror is positioned substantially further back on the door to still allow ample viewing from the MRacing GT mirror. If I wasn’t already so heavily invested in the Ganador’s on my CR-Z this would have also been my mirror solution.
This perspective gives you a good idea of how far the fenders were blistered in order to contain the 18 x 11J wheels up front, currently wrapped in 285-width Neova’s.
The C-West wing is fastened to a carbon trunk stay that was originally intended for an FD RX7. Looks good against the carbon trunk of the Civic.
The rear arches along with the radius reminds me of an older BTCC car – add’s the width required without being an eyesore, or having to create a new body line. The subtlety of it makes the front end seem that much crazier by comparison. Not sure if the SE37K’s are staying on the rear, but I quite like the current wheel stagger.
Always cool memorabilia to be found around HQ.
We had an afternoon to kill while we waited for some friends to get off work, so we moseyed over to HQ to borrow some Wifi after a morning spent at Huntington Beach. We shot the shit with Joey, and he mentioned that he needed to shoot some stuff for the Ray’s catalog over at Rywire if we wanted to tag along. This wasn’t a shop we anticipated having the chance to visit, so we jumped at the opportunity.
The GT3 Integra was inside being shot for a magazine feature, so I didn’t want to overstep my bounds and intrude on their session, so unfortunately no images of that one. But, as a consolation, here’s Ryan’s Porsche that was parked out front.
Another car I hadn’t anticipated seeing at the shop was Ryan’s Wonder Civic. (I may have actually been more excited about this than the Integra!) I didn’t know this previously, but apparently there had been some mapping issues which Ryan had just recently resolved with AEM, so the car was finally operating as intended. I think I was so drawn to it because of how clean and tidy the execution was – very timeless looking.
Monday brought even more shop visits to our schedule. First stop was Mooneyes in Santa Fe springs. I’ve always thought the brand as a whole was really cool, so to see the shop in person was great. I had to remind myself frequently how poor the exchange rate was, and that I really didn’t need anymore stickers to hoard at home.
They had the garage opened up next to the store front, and their rail dragster was working on it’s tan in the California sun.
Pretty wild to think you’re quite literally sitting on top of the rear end. Not sure it’s a place I’d ever want to find myself, personally.
As you can appreciate, the place was just littered with cool memorabilia.
One of the guys noticed we’d taken a pretty keen interest in all that was going on, so they invited us to snoop around in the second building on their lot. This one housed all the tooling and fab equipment. One thing that struck me was how clean this place was. The complete opposite of how you’d normally picture a workshop to be – this place was clinical.
They had a land speed car sitting just inside the door with some pretty immaculate paint work on it – had a real retro vibe to it with all the pinstriping.
Next up was Evasive, which was only a few minutes away from the Mooneyes compound. Friends of ours had given Mmuoi at Evasive a heads up that we might be stopping by, and she gave us a rather gracious tour of their facility. For Mitchell and I, the two Evasive S2000’s embody everything we enjoy about what you’d normally find in a Japanese time attack build. There’s a heavy emphasis on going fast, but this doesn’t come at the expense of sacrificing visually pleasing aesthetic qualities like ride height and genuine parts. Take note, Southern Ontario!
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get many shots of the blue car as it was parked between two cars outside and the sun was rather harsh at the time.
This post is getting rather lengthy, so I’ll close it out with some photos of Justin’s daily driver. While they were once plentiful, I think this is the only S2000 remaining at Norush. It should also be noted that Justin drives like a crazy person – which is probably part of the reason we get along so well.
