Cooler than Freddy Jackson sipping on a milkshake

I only get a fuzzy feeling for newer stuff when it's done right.. and this is SO right.

Hope everyone is enjoying the holidays. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all from Sweet Oblivion!

Snapshot:

I love this shot that just surfaced on Flow.Down. Jord really is good with the snapper! Dug up from the depths of his hard drive, it was taken earlier this year at the awesome JDM Allstars Wembley event.

Everything is better lower

Just look at this pair of 7s and tell me different.

High revs and good company

As if a 7AG Starlet wasn't enough fun.. In the first half of this video the driver is having a full-on dog fight with a KPGC10 only to catch up with the rest of the pack on track, made up of some of the tastiest bits of metal and rubber to come out of Japan, and then proceed to manfoot his way through them all. Blows my mind. Love it.

Skip to 2:50 and play.

Psssscht

Graff'd engine bays are HOT!


Found at Rojasblog.

"Just when I thought I was out...

..they pull me back in."

I was thinking of selling the secret seven until this gangster looking E32 appeared on iputinwork.com.

The LS406's look great and with the sleeker lines of the E32, and with mine being harder slammed than that one, it would look amazing. I gotta go see uncle Joey bout some Works..

Hellaflush III

I wanna get to one of these meets. It would be a right mission traveling from the UK but, a chilled day with all those hot cars and hot girls in the hot California sun looks hellafun yo!




Great video as always from iPhilms.

Snapshot:

Yeah, everyone has been posting pics from Hellaflush III. but, it wasn't until I checked out a new site, deathmachines.net, that I saw a single picture of this awesome Datsun 510.

Come back fighting

The zombie is reborn again! Mike Burroughs of Stanceworks, has re-worked the e28 once more. This time with a WWII American fighter look. Rollin on work equips, with savage rear tuck, it's looking better than ever.

This car's journey with Mike began as mint e28 with clean black paint slammed on nice rims.


A small accident and lack of funds prompted it's first amazing make-over..


Since then the car has had a few tweaks to it's look but, this is by far my favourite incarnation.

The full build thread can be found on Stanceworks. Go check it out!

Snapshot:

Just to torture me that little bit more..

Tasty skiddy X bodies pop up everywhere. Cock it.

Linky.

Jack's redemption

I'm the first to admit I've given Jack a lot of, often well deserved, shit over the years about the state of the cars he's owned and "built" but he's really pulled it out of the bag with his new S13 daily drifter.

And he's not done yet with plans for a 326 power spoiler and some baller dishy wheels under way. We cant wait to see it done here at SO.

So I take my hat off to you Jack, you've done yourself and Demon Road proud!

S.O. Life: 365 days

On Saturday my girlfriend, Stacey and I had our first anniversary and to celebrate she had booked us in to a restaurant but wouldn't tell me where. It turned out to be a new place right near my house called, Moon sha. Its a Japanese restaurant that does Sushi, has a karaoke bar upstairs and most importantly does Teppanyaki!!

Teppanyaki is basically you sitting on your butt around the grill while the chef cooks everything fresh in front of you and makes it a bit of a show at the same time.

First off the chef flambés the grill.

Then he cooks your egg fried rice, bean shoots and all your meat. I had steak, swordfish, scallops and BBQ chicken and Stace had king prawns, salmon and chicken. We both got an awesome mi-so soup to!

Oh, and I love Asahi beer!


Eating with chop sticks, I got it nailed son!

Here's a video of the chef juggling eggs, I love the way he cracks them into the bowl!



And one of the flameau!



After the meal we headed out for some cocktails. Teppanyaki followed by White Russians: The perfect night!

I think the SO Christmas party has to be at the Teppanyaki grill followed by karaoke!

The next night we headed into town for a ride on the Derby wheel.


At 100ft it's high enough to see the whole of the city.


The view of the town hall from the very top.

The reflection of the wheel in the windows of the new Quad building (an art gallery and cinema in Derby) was amazing.

Where's wally?



Roll on the next anniversary.. I can't wait!

Sweet sweet music

Every muso has their favourite tunes, every fat kid has their favourite cakes and every petrol-head has their favourite engines.

These are my favourites and favourite examples. I think I'll start with the biggest and finish with the smallest.


Hemi V8: This is Jimmy White's Hemi coupe. The idle alone is enough to make you tingle but when he puts the hammer down it sounds like Satan's angry mother is under his right foot.




1JZ turbo straight 6: Bonbon's old JZX81. 500bhp of home built drift championship winning weaponry driven with some good ol' UK manfoot.




S20I6 N/A straight 6: Hakosuka Skyline GTR. This will forever sit in my list of dream cars to drive. The most I've managed so far is sitting in a parked one, giggling like a school girl. One day though..




SR20DET: It's no revelation to say that a good sounding SR is a rare thing but, this SR, freshly built and tuned by by garage BOSO for Patrick Mordaunt sounds the fucking tits!




4AGE: I can't even remember how I found this little video. It's one half in-car, one half outside and just a really good example of a AE86 being driven like it should.




A12: This little thing blows my mind. Tomei must have some kind of black magic going on with this engine because if the figures in the video are to be believed this little carbed 1.3 from the 70s is kicking out a whopping 170ps. It seems so responsive and yeah.. sounds fucking awesome.

Starlet Grand Cup

I can't stop watching this. It's 7 minutes of screaming K-series, on the ragged edge old school goodness. The footage is great with loads of in-car shots making for some properly exciting racing. Enjoy.

Ghetto vent-low

I see this car everyday when I walk into uni and it makes me smile every time! It belongs to long time friend of SO, Bryce. The car has the Cali look nailed and seeing it clean and rollin through derby in the winter is awesome when everything else is drab and dirty.

It started out as a real shitter..

..but with a lot of hard work and some sensible mods, like good looking steels and coilovers, Bryce has transformed the car in to a real attention grabber that's easy on the student pocket.

An E30 is next for the Bryce Cali treatment if one can be found for the right price. Cant wait to see it when it's done!

What the..?

I don't know what this is, how I found it, or how the hell I'd get my mits on a copy of it? From what I can gather.. it's a documentary following a 4AGE'd KE10 on it's adventures through Thailand. Looks great fun.

Snapshot:

This S30 just smashed it's belly into my all time top five cars with ease.

There's a great collection of photos and a much better feature than I could ever write over on Motormavens. My favourite quote from their feature..

"It’s awesome how something so simply done can ooze so much amazing style!" Andy Sapp

And this is the builder and driver's fantastic blog, that we've been a fan of for some time here.. Oh, you speak English?

I LOVE IT.

Out of the dark and into the light

I've missed you guys!

After being without the internet for weeks now I've finally got the connection sorted in my new house.

To cure my withdrawal symptoms I've been watching some of my favourite videos and thought I'd share them. You've probably seen them all before but they are all awesome and need watching again.

First up some Sekia hills.. just to remind us all how it should be done.



Next up is some cool streeto from the hills of Japan. To remind me I need to get back out onto the Buxton touge, although the Secret Seven might be a bit to big for it.



And finally..




Right I'm off for a drive!

Backwards entry you say!?

Entry at a seemingly unrecoverable angle and then carries that angle AND speed through.. Amazing.

S.O. Life: The silly things we do..

..when we're not spannering. Matt likes a bit of Urban ex and BMX.
I like to have a friend etch ink into my skin.


Over five hours of Wink working in and around the ditch of my arm..


..followed by a well earned drink.. or ten!


A truly awesome day. I'll take some more pictures when it's finished.

Club Outrun: MeZ Productions

I love the vibe of this video. Some of Mez's work appeared on the SO blog a while back. I thought perhaps things had gone quiet on the production front but, from what I can gather that's not the case at all and he's just been busy filming in Japan.

"I basically made this video to show the boys at Club Outrun, that yes I did film!!

I am slowly in the process of trying to make a DVD from the trip which will be made available to the public. I knew that would take ages so instead of making the boys wait I made this quick and basic edit for them to watch."

I love the quick and basic edit and can't wait to get my hands on a copy of the full DVD when it is released. We'll be sure do a full SO review when it is.

There's a lot of tasty AE86s in this video and a light dusting of X body's too, which is always good to see. Enjoy!




MeZ Productions on Vimeo

BDC Round 4 Norfolk Arena: Driftcast Teaser

Told you there'd be a good video coming. And this is just the teaser..

Snapshot:

So many S-body owners seem to get it wrong. So here's a lesson in stance from C's Garage.

Plenty of low, perfect fitment, clean paint, a rare as hell Hot Road bumper and more than a hint of Koguchi make up this tasty combo. Perfect.

That 510 isn't escaping my eye either.

All aboard! ..the drift train!

I've been baking this tasty drift train cake for a while. Today I found the cherry for the top.

We'll start with 1 pint of UK style..

EDC


JDM Allstars



Stir in a table spoon of US style..

All Star Bash (skip to 1:54)



..and then throw a FUCK TON of Japanese style into the mix.



MSC (skip to 2:44)






Team Magician (skip to 2:21)


Team A Bo Moon (skip to 1:44)


Team Mouse (skip to 1:00)


Finally, place on top the fresh cherry discovered today..
(thank you Steve!)

BDC Round 4 Norfolk Arena: Part 2

So I'm gonna pick up where Billy left off.. Norfolk Arena on the Sunday morning. The weather was holding and the sun even came out, a rare thing in Norfolk!

First up was a walk around the pits to catch up with friends of S.O. Morning practice had caused a few machine failures. Every Superslide car (Sid's team) had something minor wrong with it but they were soon out on track.

Team Green's Matt Carter was driving a car made from borrowed parts, the shell, the body kit, the wheels, the engine and running gear. The whole car was made from Team Green spares as his own car wasn't ready in time for the competition. An awesome example of a team pulling together in times of need and also great to see the love it or hate it "Yoshio Factory" make another appearance, perhaps before it's broken once and for all.


As the comp the day before was held way into the dark of the night, a lot of drivers fitted some normally hated neons. Its okay for a night drift I guess but duck taping a pound shop neon strip light to your sun strip is pikey as fuck! LOL Either do it right or don't Danny.

Sunday's team comp was won by Team Green who were miles ahead of anyone else. It was defo a comp of two halves, Team Green and everyone else. The divide was that big!

The other teams were struggling to get as close as the Team Green guys, either through lack of practice, bravery or other issues like, they didn't go in the right order or hadn't planned how each corner was to be taken. For example, the first two cars of team green flicked into the first corner where Polo at the back didn't. He held back and caught up right at the start of the first corner by using more entry speed. Another noticeable point was their overall speed. They went fast and built up speed, where a lot of the other teams first drivers went full bore and left the other team mates lagging behind.

All those quibbles aside, the team event was great and with every team getting stronger throughout the day the next one should prove to be even better.

These are some fantastic action shots of the Team Green guys borrowed from Ross at DORISTARS.COM.

Alan Green, Matt Carter and Paul "Polo" Cheshire.

Over all the weekend was another BDC success. What the track at Norfolk Arena lacks in speed and size, it makes it up for with close driving, good facilities and a great atmosphere and environment for spectators, proven I feel, by the numbers that attended Saturday night.

Roll on the final round of BDC!

BDC Round 4 Norfolk Arena: Part 1

Sweet Oblivion were out in full force this weekend as both Matt and I got out butts down to Norfolk Arena in Kings Lynn for Round 4 of the BDC. With a full two days of drifting ahead of us it was looking to be a cool weekend with Semi-Pro and Pro competitions on the Saturday and a Team drift competition on Sunday. All fingers and toes were crossed that the weather would hold out as we rolled down in Matt's gangsta low and stupidly comfy 7 series.


Norfolk Arena normally plays host to muddier pursuits like stock car and speedway racing. It seems like an unusual place for drifting but for such a small venue it has good basic facilities, coupled with the fact it's far out in the middle of nowhere away from any fuds who would complain about the noise, which makes this a very drift friendly venue. A small basic track is set out on the tarmac inside the oval dirt track, very different to the other tracks in the series as it is a tight, dusty and relatively low speed course.


By no means is that a bad thing though as it gets the drivers to pull some different skills out of the bag. This track is all about momentum and avoiding understeer on the dusty surface. Too much wand will have you grinding to a halt and there's no time or space to rely on power-over alone to get you out of trouble. Frankly it's perfect for a smaller, lighter, underpowered car like an AE86 and I was gutted that none were competing this weekend.

However! There were two cars.. small, old school and relatively underpowered and very much my cup of tea! They came in the shape of a Mark 2 Ford Escort and a KP Toyota Starlet. The Starlet had a 2.0 ltr Vauxhall XE under the bonnet and was putting in some super clean runs during qualifying.


This Escort was my favourite car there. It looked cool and understated as fuck.. had a decent amount of grunt from the YB under the bonnet and the driver was giving it the beans out on track. Loved it.


The atmosphere in the arena is pretty cool as the sun goes down and the flood lights come on.





I'm not sure how Matt managed to look so wasted in this picture..? He was doing the driving so hadn't touched a drop! LOL (spotted! elusive Moose sat to his his right)


Stacy was along for her second dose of drifting after her first with Matt at Prodrift in Ireland.



So the sun went down, bumpers were smashed, battles were won and the all dominating Japspeed cleaned up all the trophies. My action shots were a bit sketchy as I was shooting from the grandstand and our man Daniel didn't make it down so no hot shots from him I'm afraid. But I'm banking on a cool BDC video of the event from Brooksie being released in the next few days so we'll skip my sketchy photos and wait for that instead.

In the meantime.. Roll on Sunday!

With Moose off home to get back to the spanners and fixing his S13 we swapped him for Sweet Oblivion's oldest friend Mark Trotter. We'd not seen him in ages and I'd heard rumours of a mint 180sx he was rolling around in. So we set off in the morning to the agreed meet up point. As we approach we see not a 180 but a rather tidy looking S15 parked up. Mark is waiting with a bunch of friends.. must be one of theirs we figure.. So some quick hellos later we jump back in the cars and head off for the track.. still wondering where Mark's 180 is hidden.. but wait a minute.. what the.. he has the keys to the S15!? and he's bloody getting in it?! WTF!?!? Turns out only a few days previous he had found and wangled it for a frankly bargainous price. So we introduce to you, Mark "freshly flash git" Trotter..


The morning was fun, catching up with friends Mark, Sid and Chunk and with our arses parked back in the grandstand we were ready for another day of skids.


Enough from me I think! I'm gonna let Matt take it from here..