Two brothers grow up in the same house, in the same neighborhood with the same parents, and go to the same school. They play with the same toys and eat the same things for dinner. But ask any guy with a brother and you'll find that the two of them almost always end up being radically different.
This phenomenon happens regularly in the world of modified cars as well. These two Nissan 350Zs rolled off the showroom floor looking almost exactly the same, posting identical performance figures. But, like brothers, they couldn't have turned out more different. And while no parents that call themselves responsible or loving can pick favorites between siblings, when it comes to modified cars, we can-with impunity.
We do it all the time as a matter of fact, and we do it at the track. In this case, we are doing it to test a few of the twelve bold claims we made in the cover story. We subjected the two real-world Nissan 350Zs to a rigorous flogging around the Streets of Willow Springs and when the dust settled, we picked our favorite.
A quick look at Brett Coca's $75,000 VeilSide widebody-equipped 350Z will have the most daring street racer thinking twice. Although liberally slathered in arrest-me orange, it still manages to look mean on its VeilSide Pro Sport coil-over suspension. Credit the rare VeilSide widebody kit (four inches wider than stock in the front, six inches wider at the back) and giant 20x11-inch VeilSide Bacarrot metal stuffed into the bulging wheelwells.
Pop the hood and a giant chrome Vortech centrifugal supercharger dangles lewdly from the front of the engine. 15-inch brakes sit at all four corners, suggesting that the car has every bit as much bite as it does bark. It certainly has the measurements; Coca's Z33 has an astounding 6 inches more wheel width and a 90hp advantage over its competitor.
As the more introverted brother, Mike Cronin's 350Z appears paler, scrawnier, barely noticeable as it sulks behind the beefcake fiberglass musculature of the VeilSide car. Under the hood, Cronin's Z33 does nothing to convince you it's not the bullied younger sibling. It retains a stock VQ35 engine benefiting from only a few breathing modifications; a Jim Wolf POP Charger intake complements the lower intake plenum of a 2005 track model 350Z, while high-flow cats send spent gases through a Nismo R-Tune exhaust.
Only digging into the drivetrain department reveals that this weakling has the heart of a lion. Cronin's Z33 uses a Tilton twin-plate clutch and 8-lb. aluminum flywheel in conjunction with a Cusco 2-way LSD. The biggest power multiplier this particular Z sports is the 3.971:1 final drive, which allows the relatively long stock gear ratios to make better use of the torquey engine's powerband.
Modestly sized 18x8.5 and 9.5-inch wheels do little to hide Stop Tech's 14-inch brakes up front and 12.9-inch setup out back, a combination that was deemed just right for daily purposes and track weekends alike. Being something of a track rat, Cronin invested a lot of time optimizing his suspension calibration. Custom-wound race springs straddle Koni dampers that have been specially valved for weekends at the track. Nismo swaybars have been modified to be adjustable, and the control arms by Performance Nissan extract the last degree of precision from the setup. Turns out this little guy has strong legs.
By James Tate
Enjoyed this Post? Subscribe to our RSS Feed, or use your favorite social media to recommend us to friends and colleagues!