In our modern ‘connected’ world, we are spoiled with a constant flow of information and entertainment at our fingertips. and the ability to interact with friends both near and far. What was once a great distance, is now just a stone throw away.
Here at Gripshiftslide the team is over the moon to share with you our very first international feature car!! Thanks to the power of the internet, we have crossed nearly 6,000 kilometers and landed in Thailand, This is where we meet a young man named Som and one of the most aggressively styled and street driven Toyota 86′s getting around.
These Toyota’s have been selling like hot cakes since 2011. Many have been left untouched, while others have had complete transformations. We don’t know of any other car that has had so many examples that have gone ‘under the knife’ hot off the dealership floor.
So what has changed for Toyota and what has the 86 done to inject that little bit of excitement back into driving a car? Read more
One of the first items on my bucket list is a simple one, own an E46 M3 BMW.
Even after all these years, that lovely looking, highly enhanced body looks fantastic from all angles.
The bolstered chunky arches hinting at the performance hidden beneath the bulging bonnet and the four exhausts tips menacingly poking out from under the rear bar…
Oh sorry, I seem to have gotten a bit carried away there….
Before my love affair with the modern E46 BMW, I had a brief fling with the now classic 318i E30.
Granted it wasn’t a manual (although it was a convertible) the car felt correct. It felt taught, well constructed and just made me feel happy in general.
As I have grown older, cars have come and gone from my life but the little E30 has always held a special place in my heart.
So when the team from GSS contacted me with a bunch of photos and I just had to be involved and this is where Denis and his more than standard E3o BMW come in.
Well it was the end of the working year for the lucky-some (my self included) and I was coaxed into attending only my second Downshift meet for the year, I think even the first one I didn’t even take my own car to. But none the less, it’s quite stunning to see the exponential growth of this event. You see threads and photo’s scattered over the forums post-event, but it’s just not the same, you have to be here to really appreciate how far this has come.
Myself and a few friends arrived relatively early, which is quite rare, but since I haven’t used my a camera since my last post on GSS back in 2011 I really did require a bit of warm-up work. So I started the day down from the main entry gate, turned out to be quite a nice spot! Read more
Building a car for your own taste is hard these days, trying to build it to someone else’s taste is probably even harder.
Considering the majority of the import scene at the moment has gone down the path of ‘stance’ and ‘road-presence’, makes the task of standing-out that little bit harder too.
Having said this, JDMST meets and the like are attracting cars on such a huge scale now that the law of odds clearly states you are going to see something that catches your eye.
I guess in this instance from my own personal taste, this little NX had 100% of my attention.
In less than just 48 hours 2011 will be over, bringing with it a whole new year of race days and feature cars that will be gracing these pages for your viewing pleasure.
In just five short months we have grown from the very humble idea between Grant and I in our seedy motel room in the suburbs of Sydney last August, to seemingly overnight having a blog covering local events and cars with over 1100 followers on Facebook and 1000′s of visitors each week. Read more
Well back for another day! “Thank-you baby jesus” I uttered as I approached the entry gates for the sunshine bestowed on us. Already you can probably sympathise with the stupidity in that statement once we all left the track after 4pm with a tan line for life. I decided to kick my morning off in the pits, mainly because it was the least distance to walk (come on who wasn’t hung over?) Read more
Well it’s been quite a long time between drinks for me I must admit. But when Gwyn from Gripshiftslide asked me to go out and have a look at the new competition in Australian professional drifting, well that’s as good excuse as any to come out of retirement. Although mother-nature decided she would throw a few curve balls my way with ominous rain and intermittent cloud cover just to make it that little bit harder. Read more
