When people are in love, they do crazy things. We know a guy that actually serenaded his estranged girlfriend with an off-key, staccato-acoustic rendition of "Dream Weaver." Yeah, pathetic. To this very day, it hurts us to be his friend.
Alex Velando, of Houston, hasn't gone that far, but Velando is surely in love. His love isn't for a woman, but for his black 2001 MR2 Spyder. No, he doesn't sing to it, but he does work two jobs, averaging 70 hours a week, to be able to modify and maintain it. Now it's one of maybe 10 turbocharged Spyders on American soil.
"I originally planned to keep the car stock, but after seeing what was available on the Japanese market, I started buying anything I could find," Velando says. "My major problem with building the car was 90 percent of the parts were special ordered from Japan, and since I'm an impatient person, most everything was three-day aired."
Shipping via airplane isn't the most cost-effective method available, but it's the fastest. Even so, it took about a year to get everything shipped and installed to Velando's liking.
The first area to receive attention was the car's exterior. A set of Racing Hart D6000 alloys, sized 17x7 inches, were bolted to the hubs after being strung with Yokohama Parada rubber, sized 215/40R-17.
With fender gaps whittled to a more palatable margin, Velando, who works as general manager for an import/export company, secured an authentic J-spec MR2 Spyder body kit. Woodlands Auto Body in Houston installed the components and color matched everything to the stock black paint. A SARD front bumper and side skirts now wrap around the car to meet with a SARD rear lip, which hugs the bottom of the factory rear bumper. The rear bonnet has been replaced with a unit from Varis, while the side intakes have also been modified with Varis inserts.
The 1ZZ-FE powerplant suspended behind the cockpit has been beefed up with a Top Secret turbo kit, also imported from Japan. Hardware includes a GReddy TDO6 25G-based turbocharger, tubular exhaust manifold feeding into a Top Secret Pro Sport exhaust, custom piping and an air-to-air intercooler based on a GReddy core. SGP Racing in Deer Park, Texas, the same shop responsible for installing the turbo and intercooler, modified the fuel system to work with the new forced-induction system. The factory fuel rail now incorporates a fuel return line, with a Walboro 255 lph in-tank pump and Aeromotive regulator maintaining adequate pressure.
According to Velando, the factory ECU is yet unhacked. Instead of tinkering with the car's computer, air-fuel mapping was achieved using a pair of control units from A'pexi, the S-AFC piggyback fuel computer and AVC-R boost controller.
As we write this, however, Velando tells us the Toyota is back at SGP for a full engine overhaul: rebuilt bottom end, an enlarged intake and throttle body, larger injectors, and a ball-bearing turbo upgrade. Velando also plans on switching engine management to a stand-alone computer from Haltech or AEM.
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