It’s been a minute but I had a chance to stop by Stanceworks Garage last night to see the current progress on Mike Burrough’s K24 turbo swapped Ferrari 308 GTBi. This is one of those projects that has probably taken longer than expected but it’s not like there are just a bunch of K-swapped Ferrari out and about. Great things take time especially considering the amount of custom fabrication involved and so many little one-off minute details.
Earlier this year, I was contacted by Meguiar’s and invited to be one of five creator’s to be on their “Portrait of an Icon” campaign to celebrate their 120-year anniversary. I was honestly a little surprised at first to hear from them since there are so many good content creators out there in the industry but was deeply honored when I got the details of what the project was all about. It was to be a generational piece, spanning five-decades from the 1980s to the 2020s, each themed according to the time period and the main caveat being that there had to be a “Meguiar’s Easter Egg” hidden in the photo. Each photo must have one of their products, that existed during that particular generation, present. It didn’t have to be blatant or in your face, and just had to appear somewhere within the photo. Think “Where’s Waldo” type of hiding, which is basically hiding in plain sight. The more it blended-in with the photo the better. It didn’t take a whole lot of convincing for me to agree to be a featured artist in their campaign because I was presented with absolute freedom to do whatever I wanted. Over the years, I’ve been offered and turned down a number of projects because I felt it was too restrictive in what they wanted and expected from me. When I feel that type of creative ‘stunting’, if you will, I shut off and just can’t find myself wanting to produce anything. This project was the opposite of that. I could get a check and have creative freedom doing what I enjoyed? I’m in…
On this episode, I take you guys back on the road with me on three different photoshoots throughout Southern California for the ongoing project I’m working on for Meguiar’s. You guys got a short glimpse of the 80s-themed shoot I did for them with a E-AT Civic a few episodes back and the next one I’m shooting is dedicated to the 1990s. If you’re a Honda guy then the nineties will undoubtedly be your favorite era. That’s when Honda made the best cars and the import scene was still in its very exciting early infancy. Being that it was a shoot focused on that era, many tiny details had to be incorporated into the shoot that were plucked from that time and obviously, the cars themselves as well. In-between shoots, we also found some time to stop by Unit B to celebrate our good friend Kristian Wong’s birthday. This is a good one and I hope you get overwhelmed with that nineties feeling while watching!
We’re out and about for this one! Since it’s been getting pretty hot lately out here in Southern California and Der is taking a break from working on his Civic, we decide to go out for the weekend to check out some events. Things are starting to open up everywhere so car stuff seems to be happening throughout the city. I head down to Evasive Motorsports first for a private event where they reveal this year’s Pikes Peak Hill Climb competition car before Der and I attend a couple other local events. There is quite a bit of diversity in this episode with all types of different builds of all styles so check it out!!
We haven’t done a Chronicles & Coffee gathering at the shop in a while but since Memorial Day weekend was coming and we didn’t have any plans, I decided to go ahead and set one up last minute! So in this episode, you get a glimpse of what happened that day and whether or not people actually showed-up or not! Before that however, I give you guys a glimpse into what I actually do as a freelance photographer and bring you guys along on a new gig I recently got for Meguiar’s “Portrait of an Icon” series!!
If you’ve been waiting for updates on Ryan Der’s Civic build, this episode is perfect for you! He’s been putting in a lot of work on the car lately while paying particular attention to finally finishing up the interior. He’s got all kinds of cool little details in the interior as he’s been collecting parts over the past few months. It’s crazy to see the interior all wrapped-up because all we’ve been doing since he got the car is talk about all he has planned for it. While all that was going on, our friend Ly came by with some friends to hang out for the day so that I could shoot some photos of the brand new Exceed by Mode Parfume front lip on his Integra. The 94-97 Integra front lip is brand new and barely arrived in the U.S. recently so we wanted to get some good photos of it and Ly’s car seemed like the perfect choice!!
Well this one is gonna be interesting!! We stop by Stanceworks in Costa Mesa to meet up with my friend Mike Burroughs so he can finally introduce us to one of his wildest ideas yet….a Honda K24-swapped FERRARI 308 GTB! Some of you are probably wondering why, many of you Honda guys will know EXACTLY why, and the rest of you have most likely already been following this time attack build through his channel (@StanceWorks ).
After we let Mike educate us for a few hours on his reasonings behind this wild build, we head back to the shop so Der can continue working on his Civic while Yuta and I go through some parts from Japan that we finally received after our shipping container was released. I can finally say that I have all my parts for my IS300 build! I’m pretty excited…now if only I can get my car back soon from the body shop….
After getting some photos of Jose Mejia’s FK8 CTR on the track, I noticed we had some sunlight left which allowed us to bring one more car onto the scenic Chuckwalla Valley Raceway. There were some pretty nice builds at the Club Racer Reunion event so I had plenty of cars to choose from, but I wanted a car that really ‘popped’ against the orange glow of the setting sun. I had already shot a white car with Jose’s FK8 so it seemed only fitting to add some color to this photo set. Throughout the day, one of the cars that immediately caught my eye was John Tran’s S2000. Like Jose’s Civic, it had also once been white but he recently had the entire car wrapped in a very vibrant red/orange vinyl. I normally am not a huge fan of vinyl-wrappped cars but I do appreciate them a great deal when they are done right. Sometimes the wrap can just look a little flat where you can tell its obviously not paint but John Tran’s S2000 looked fantastic. At a glance you couldn’t even really tell. Add to that a good collection of aero and a wheel/tire combo that helped the car sit just right. John pointed-out that his front splitter had been damaged from racing throughout the day which caused it to sag a bit. I told him it was okay because it is a race car after all and nobody expects it to be perfect. Some battle damage would actually add to the aesthetic of the car anyway and people wouldn’t be credible to say that it was just a ‘show car’ on the track merely for photos…
Originally I had planned to just include this in the Club Racer Reunion Weekend coverage being that it was all shot on the same day at the same time but the more I thought about it, the more I felt that these photos should get their own separate post. I know many of you who have followed me through the years may be a bit surprised to see Jose’s FK8 CTR on my site because of his association, but I already let bygones be bygones so long ago that its hardly even an issue. For those who know what I’m talking about—it’s old news. I’m just here to enjoy cars. Even if there were an issue, it wouldn’t really be Jose’s fault because he wasn’t necessarily involved in any perceived ‘drama’ that had happened in the past…
Y’all wanna hear some gossip??? Boy do I got some info for you… Lol. I’m kidding of course but you’ll certainly find some of this interesting if you’re not familiar with what “Club Racer” is and have heard of the “VTEC Club” series before. Most Honda enthusiasts will have heard of the racing series either through friends or through various media online but Club Racer, or Club Racer Events, may be new to many of you. VTEC Club USA was originally an all-Honda time trial series operated within a larger racing event host, Extreme Speed Track Events. The Honda-dedicated racing series worked in unison with Extreme Speed over the years and grew to great success until 2020, when the managing party responsible for VTEC Club USA’s continued growth decided it was time to forge a new path. I don’t want to get into all the little nuanced details of it all but let’s just say that it was a relationship where one partner had outgrown the other and someone wanted to spread their wings, if you know what I mean. I’m just on the outside looking in so it isn’t my story to tell in detail but all you really need to know is that VTEC Club USA is operating on its own and under the umbrella of a new entity known as—you guessed it, Club Racer Events…
