"Overboost" is the latest in the series and it starts with an epicaly dorky spy movie spoof, but it gets better. There's a look at import drag racing in Australia, some drifting back in Auckland, a comparison test between the RX-8 and 350Z done in Japan, some stupid transitional comedy involving lousy Mexican accents and dumb stereotyping, more drifting, more dumb alleged humor, a "Pit Stop" modifying guide following the buildup of a CRX (pretty cool), even more stupid jokes, a cool test where they keep pouring nitrous into an old Skyline until it blows, and more bad jokes. It's all rather slickly produced and we'll forgive them for calling nitrous "naws" because we're forgiving.
Sure, the accents are sometimes impenetrable and humor would have to get a lot better to qualify as lame, but there's a lot to like in this DVD. Live Sockets has it up for sale on its site, www.livesockets.com, for $19.95. Not cheap. Not bad.
TokyoPopsFor many readers of this magazine, each October's Tokyo Motor Show is arguably the most important one of the year. That's because it's the show where the manufacturers with which we're obsessed tend to display their mightiest and most attractive new sheet-metal. The 2005 show at least lived up to expectations, even if car makers themselves remained agonizingly coy about some of their most delectable wares.
Nissan GT-R ProtoNissan finally unveiled the near-production version of its replacement for the Skyline GT-R and it's even more radical than we'd ever dared hope. Rather than simply swelling the flanks of the car we know here as the Infiniti G35 coupe, the GT-R gets its own distinctive body with an angular roof, wickedly muscular fenders and a hind-end that incorporates the traditional round taillights and the best ass-curve this side of Carmen Electra.
What Nissan hasn't done, however, is give us more details about the car's running gear. We now know it has a twin-turbocharged version of the company's great VQ-series V6 under the hood making somewhere near 500 hp, but the company's not telling us the figure for displacement. Nor is it offering many details when it comes to suspension design, all-wheel-drive system innovations or anything much else.
We still suspect the car will rewrite history when it shows up here early next year as an Infiniti. But we're still not sure what chapters of history will have to be most heavily revised.
We Are The ChampionsThe moment RealTime Racing finished applying the Sport Compact Car stickers to the front bumpers of their Acura TSXs, it was inevitable that one of the team members would win the 2005 SCCA World Challenge Touring Car Series championship. Yup, the inevitable happened and Peter Cunningham, the 43-year-old owner and amber guiding light of RealTime, is the champ, following an impressive performance during the final round of the season at California's Laguna Seca Raceway. It's Cunningham's fourth Touring Car title.
What was most impressive about Cunningham's final race was that, despite rewards weight that amounted to having an NFL lineman bolted to the passenger side of his TSX, he managed to qualify on the pole on the hilly and high-speed Laguna course.
He then finished third in the race while driving cautiously enough to ensure his Driver's championship, yet aggressively enough to win the Manufacturer's championship for Acura. In the process, he secured SCC the informal, but still highly coveted, magazine sponsor championship. Though we do admit that we don't know of any other magazines that were sponsoring cars in the series, we still won!