Its rarely a dull day in Japan. Onto the Shinkansen and further west to Okayama to see
Sunline Racing. We had 1st met them at TAS and before we had left Ireland, I had been in contact regarding a visit. Now its time!! I met Piers from the
GTR register and he was kind enough to give us a lift there aswell as acting as translator. The 1st thing you see when arriving is their new R35 GTR parked alongside 1 of several Fairlady (350)z's.
Which allows a comparison between the 2, the Z looks tiny beside it.
The latest evolution of their S15, now with a sequential gearbox among other things
The Suzuki Swift GTi from TAS. I really like this car, Sunline make a lot of both styling and performance parts for them. I may consider buying 1 some day and tune it a bit like this, maybe using all of Sunlines parts also
Apparantley its rare for Sato San, the owner of Sunline to speak to or even acknowledge visitors, being the workoholic that he is but he took 20 mins of his time to talk with myself and Chris about the new R35 GTR and the tuning scene in general. He has a good philosophy,and an amazing attention to detail - always offer the best available and dont cut corners as failures will occur aswell as creating a bad image. If it means paying for a good quality part so be it. Whats the point of saving €200 when it will cost €2000 to fix what your cost cutting caused....
Quality is important too, take the 350Z to the left, the TAS demo car...
The front bumper is a prototype, made to Sunlines design by
C-West. The fit was amazing, like a glove, almost a factory fit, but Sato san was not happy with it and wanted it better again. I was amazed and he was too , maybe if he saw Irish roads he might know why!
Regarding the R35 GTR, he feels that Nissan have deliberatley made it harder to modify compared to the R32/33/34 GTR's or 350Z, but given time most tuners will highly modify them. His main job for the day we visited on was to create a titanium exhaust system for the R35, his handmade design will be used as a master copy for the production versions
Piers own car - a R34 GTR with a full carbon widebody conversion! Amazing. This is probably the best known of Sunlines cars outside of Japan. It was also used as a CWest demo car as the bodykit was made by them, again designed by Sunline
It is currently fitted with a N1 version of the RB26 engine with a big Trust T88 turbo, along with a Hollinger sequential gearbox, good for around 750bhp, aswell as many of Sunlines own custom parts, far too many to mention. It is primarily a trackcar but Piers does take it out on the road from time to time
Even their Hino double deck transporter is kept in immaculate condition. 31 is Satos lucky number, as nearly all his cars and the transporter have '31' in their reg somewhere
Thanks to Taiyo Sato and Piers Dowding for their help and hospitality
Santa Pod was the venue for Round 4 of the European Drift Championship, where Phil Morrison in the Driftworks 2JZ powered S15 Silvia was definatley smoking things up!
This was the second of 2 rounds that Team Orange from Japan attended with their RWD converted Imprezas. After a strong competition it was Nobushige Kumakubo (on the right of the photo) that came 1st, and his friend and team mate, Katzuhiro Tanaka (left) that placed 2nd
But it was not all plain sailing from Team Orange, when Tanaka spun during the final, then again Kumakubo spun on the previous run, it took 6 runs for Kumakubo to win
Not so much luck for Chris 'Paz' Parry in his S2000 powered AE86, suffering this bad crash during qualifying, but the damage is not as bad as it looks and the car will return
Mark 'Sidewaysbuff' Luney takes the Santa Pod R32 GTS-T out for a few demo runs, and gave me a passenger run in 1 of them, Cheers Buff!!
The next day there was a team comp, Team Orange took a well fought victory, practicing with the other drivers, above and below but even though they are regarded as the best in the world they still faced good opposition
Team Green will be more impressive next time round after making a big improvement
Team Driftworks fielded the only 3 car team
