So just picture yourself in the following situation: Your Dad owns and runs one of the most reputable suspension businesses in the country and specialises in making cars corner faster and smoother. How would you rebel against him and the family business?
Well it would seem that the best way would be to purchase a 1985 Toyota Corona and then taking full advantage of your Dad’s knowledge and his generous parts catalogue to slam it to the ground!!
Jokes aside though, Chris (the owner of this fine piece of machinery) actually works along side his Dad, Brett, for Shockworks. They are a local company pushing the boundaries of what shock absorbers can do in terms of both comfort and performance!
This Corona is just a way for Chris to have some fun.
 


Chris’ Corona started out life as one of 500 bog standard SR models, aside from some funky stickers, a front lip, boot lip and special steering wheel it was still just a another Corona. (Before Chris started tinkering of course!)
Fortunately it was however, lucky enough to be equipped with a 2.4 litre engine which was also found in the same age Hilux. While this is certainly not the pinnacle of performance as far as engines go, it is a step up from the original Corona powerhouse offered in the other models and makes for a good starting point for anyone thinking of modifying this car for performance purposes.

Since taking ownership of the Corona, Chris has kept modifications on the conservative side. Simple additions such as a pair of TE71 fender mirrors, genuine Bride seat and a Nardi steering wheel have helped inject a bit of excitement into the 1980’s Toyota economy box.

Chris’ real pride and joy is his set of SSR Starsharks. There was a point in time where he nearly considered selling the wheels and believe it or not, it was actually Chris’ girlfriend who convinced him otherwise and he ended up keeping them. Phew!
The impressive wheels measure in at 14×8″ -15 for the front and 14×9″ -25 for the rear.

Behind the wheels the braking performance has been upgraded with twin pot brakes and slotted rotors. In the very near future Chris plans on doing something some will see as sacrilege and others will simply see it as a cheap way to put a massive grin on your face.
Chris currently has a complete SR20DE+T engine setup sitting in his shed, he plans on putting it in over the next six months.
Once the conversion is complete he will be trying his luck at a few drift events and depending on how the setup performs and if there is enough grip, he will also be putting the Corona through a few sprint days too!

During our shoot with Chris’s car we found this very chilled out dog and so we decided to get a few shots of the little guy enjoying all the attention in his own driveway.

This dog wasn’t shy at all and very, very photogenic!
He took us through a few casual poses, working the camera like a pro, before we decided to move on…

The owner of the dog said that he gets a little excited by cars driving off and would try to stop us from leaving by any means necessary and he wasn’t kidding!!
The stand-off lasted for what can only be described as the longest three minutes of my life. After a few meters of crawling up the road, the dog eventually returned home safely.


Now back to Chris and his love affair of all things 1980’s, Toyota and classic Japanese styling!
The road to this Corona has been a long and windy one, a chat with Chris revealed he has owned over 10 pre-1990’s cars including 2 AE86 builds and a MA61 Supra!!
All the parts on this Corona have been in Chris’ possession for long time and seem to follow him from car to car, Chris’ philosophy is simple – “Suspension, seat and wheels. The rest doesn’t really matter.”

Over the years Chris has learned a lot about the physics and some of the myths behind suspension tuning from his old man. Now he can modify and build his very own shock absorbers to perfectly match his car/requirements from scratch! How cool is that?!

Shockworks is still a relatively young company. Founded by Brett (Chris’ Dad) the company was built off his reputation as one of the best suspension and damper specialists in the country, with over 20 years experience!
His career has seen him tune suspension for many companies and cars, from the humble Suzuki Swift to models from the HSV and FPV line up.

All tuning and valving is done in-house using the highest quality shock bodies that the boys can find. As the months go on, the range on offer has grown massively with replacement dampers and coil overs for many models including BA to FG Falcon, Skyline, Silvia, AE86, Evo, MX5 and even the new Toyota 86!!
But the good news doesn’t stop there! With many more parts to come, including something for all the Honda owners out there!

During the shoot Chris chucked me the keys to the car and said “Your turn”!
So it was now time for me to squeeze into the kidney destroying Bride bucket seat and after moving several of my internal organs I managed to get the seat belt clipped in and the key into the ignition barrel.

My ignorant knowledge of older Japanese cars had me expecting the Corona to awkwardly cough and splutter into life, I was instead greeted by the smooth growl of the 22RE engine kicking over instantly! It was like music to my ears.

Once I had the car traveling over 20kph it became immediately apparent as to how low it actually was. The smallest dips in the road would catch me off guard and would result in that all too familiar sound of the rear tyres screaming as they caught on the fenders.

The ride was pretty stiff  at first and I felt a lot of the cars’ true 1980’s character coming through in each corner. I also felt a bit reluctant to drive with a bit of ‘spirit’ and but had to keep thinking to myself  ‘Chris knows what he is doing so surely this is not all this quirky little Japanese sedan has to offer.’

A hesitant push on the accelerator had me approaching the next corner at the full ‘legal’ speed limit and all the way through without touching the brakes. The term ‘handles like it’s on rails’ immediately sprang to mind.
Turning the car anywhere but the ideal line through the corner had me feeling like death was imminent, exactly like a roller coaster fighting to break free from it’s tracks. Whereas when I allowed the car to follow the line I found myself rewarded with a very fast and smooth run through each and every corner, even on the bumpiest of surfaces!!
The only flaw in the cars’ abilities was actually my own driving style!
(Since the shoot Chris has been messing with the shocks some more and says that low speed comfort has been increased dramatically! I can’t wait to give it another go!!)

So while this simple and clean sedan doesn’t scream for attention from the outside it still manages to break plenty of necks for anyone game enough to sit inside during a ‘fun’ drive!
We thoroughly enjoyed our time with Chris, his car and a strange dog.
We’ll keep this post updated once the new engine setup is installed and we’ll be sure to let you guys know about anything exciting happening at Shockworks HQ!
Chris would like to thank the following people…
“A big thanks to Brett at Shockworks for teaching me what I know and letting me raid the stocks when I needed something for this, Leigh at Inverse Tyres for always looking after me, the team at GSS for putting me on and my girlfriend Laura, for not just putting up with me spending every spare cent I have but convincing me to keep the Starsharks when I was considering selling them last year”
Thanks for reading,
– Gwyn.
Images from Brendan aka Blacktopimags and Gwyn.
 

Just a few days ago with the help of the team at Import Monster here in Melbourne, Gripshiftslide and Co hosted our first event, ever!!
Not really knowing what to expect and also relying on our less than desirable organisational skills, we weren’t holding our breath.
Here is the day through 5 different photographers lenses…


With a few months of planning and casual chats with Aaron from Import Monster he happily (read – stupidly) allowed us to host our little event at the ‘IM’ Factory in Melbournes eastern suburbs.
The idea was simple; invite people, cook sausages, sell clothing from stalls and race some RC cars…  We could never have prepared for the actual turnout the event received!

The event kicked off at 12pm with most of the team arriving at around 10:30am to start setting up. We invited a few friends to come along to be part of our very first event including : Saint Side, Ilovedrift, De Croft, Driven Threads, WOT Hobbies and Immaculate Reflections.
By around 11:30am a few cars started rolling into the once empty street, by 12pm it was next to impossible to park on the main street and soon cars were pouring into side streets and factory carparks.
By this point we knew one thing… We needed more sausages!

One of the perks of hosting an event at Import Monster was that there was tonnes of cool wheels and Jap parts for sale on the day. This was just the outside wheel collection for all the stuff that wouldn’t fit in the shop!!

It wasn’t long before there were literally hundreds of people filling the tiny Import Monster driveway and we knew we had a hit on our hands.

Helping keep the cool vibe and fun we had Luke taking care of the tunes for over 4 straight hours!! Massive thank you goes out to this guy, word on the street is he forgot to ‘slip, slop, slap’ and looked like a lobster the next day.
Thanks Luke!

Across from the DJ we had WOT Hobbies with a makeshift drift track and heaps of cool RC shells.

These guys didn’t stop all day long and were the last to leave! A few people even brought their own RC cars along for a few friendly competitions with the crew.

Holden VE UTES are even finding their way into the RC drift scene now too!
We wish someone would actually build one to look exactly like this RC version.

We had plenty of cars make the trip from Geelong, Ballarat and even Bendigo!

Walking out onto the street everywhere you looked there were cars, people and more cars!
There were a few huffy sliders enjoying the wide industrial estate roads too.

Some cars managed to make their own parking spots on the grassy banks across the road. Here Todd’s Skoda wagon was looking great but will soon be looking even better after winning a $600 detailing package in our raffle/giveaway thanks to Immaculate Reflections.

After walking around for 30 minutes we found a few groups creating their own mini meets, we spotted this awesome group of Honda S2000’s.

We have to admit this one stole most of our attention. If the owner sees this, you sir, are doing it right!

Perfect and simple additions like classic bronze TE37 wheels make this S2K a massive neck breaker!

Further up one of the side streets this group of white cars decided it was a perfect opportunity for an impromptu photo shoot…

Obviously we were keen to hang around and see the result!
Somehow this sneaky black civic managed to squeeze in but we still enjoyed the lineup.

This is one of our favorite 370Z’s in Melbourne and we were lucky enough to have it attend our meet!

Even though the parking was scattered we couldn’t believe how social this meet was, everyone was mingling and hanging out.

One thing that surprised us given our strong Japanese car following was the amount of Euro’s that came along as well.

There was so much on offer and in the days after the event we have been seeing photos all over the web of cars we didn’t event see at the event! There was just way too much to take it all in!

One of the standouts was this Audi convertible, something you really don’t see a lot of here but it was certainly living up to the stance works sticker on the windshield with this perfect set of BBS RM wheels.

Fresh on the scene, Michael’s E30 wagon has only just recently acquired these new wheels and is already becoming a local internet sensation!

Now it seems Michael’s 2nd attempt at a daily isn’t exactly going to plan!

Hidden in a driveway nearby was the polar opposite of Michael’s E30 BMW. Now both cars are white and have some decent wheels, but the similarity’s stop there!
This one has a full roll cage, more suspension mods then you can poke a stick at and oh yeah, a Nissan RB30 motor!

Denis’s E30 is built for drift and only days after the engine was in and running the car was off to Winton for the Vicdrift summer matsuri!!

To make this humble little event catchy we decided to name it “Summerdays and Enginebays” so it wouldn’t have been complete without a few popped bonnets!

We spotted everyone chatting and checking out each others cars and setups. With the relaxed nature of the meet more people were taking the time to walk around and actually enjoy the cars on show rather than be ready with keys in hand in case the police paid a visit.

Some of the cars had a few surprises up their sleeves and the level of finish and fab work that some of these street cars had was astounding, Melbourne definitely had us very impressed!

Proving that it is still cool to be late at around 3Pm Thien brought down his unfinished Honda ‘K’ powered Mini, once unloaded of the trailer it was impossible to take a photo with out a bunch of heads peering into this little blue car.
This is shaping up to be one of the most exciting builds and we hope we can convince Thein into showing us a little more once it is close to completion.

We still can’t believe the amount of people that were there!

Back to car spotting we found Nick’s 86 now sporting a tofu inspired two tone colour scheme paying homage to the classic older brother.

The area isn’t exactly friendly when it comes to low cars and driveways so there was plenty of angled exits and shrieks of pain from on lookers when the all too familiar SCRAAAPPPEE!!! came from underneath the cars.

So this Corolla wagon is about as tough as they get, we can’t decide if it needs the red ‘A Team’ strip more or just a sticker that says “free candy”.

Dale’s rig when he is not drifting his Tuffcore purple 180SX.

Soon the afternoon was coming to an end and some of the crowd began to shrink.

So a last minute dash was in order to get as many photos before the day was done and dusted.

Aside from 50 million Toyota Supra’s and a few Skyline’s we found a heap of Honda’s made it out despite ClubITR having their end of year cruise on the same day.

Some more of that driveway carnage!!

This Chaser gets more and more track orientated every time we see it, now rocking a air intake, bucket seat and unpainted front bar… We are liking where this is going!!!

There was some of impressive R31’s parked together, these older Skylines are falling into the shadows as the years go by and newer models get cheaper and cheaper. Thankfully there is a dedicated bunch that are holding onto these older Nissan’s and for that we salute you!

I wondered if this 180SX will be at any future drift meets, we’re excited to see what it can do after it’s engine rebuild.

Even THE STU made it down for the afternoon, unfortunately after a few too many heroes the inevitable happened and the boys in blue came along.
They didn’t seem to approve of Stu’s ride height 🙁

We counted about 10 Supra’s so we were pretty happy with that!

Rolling in late in the arvo was this VIP Aristo, black and chrome is always going to work on big Japanese sedans!

This is why we can’t have nice things!!!
Up until this point, this was one of the best behaved car meets of the year but of course with huge numbers there is bound to be some idiots.
The downside is once the smoke has cleared only the real enthusiasts and business owners are left to be seen by all the law enforcement called to the scene after reports of burnouts and the dreaded word… ‘Hooning’.
With over 200 cars, only 3-4 idiots is a sign that Melbourne is heading in the right direction.
So we will endevour to host many more events just like this in the near future, so thank you to each and every one of you who made this day one to remember!!
– Team GSS
Photos by :
Grant
Gwyn
Brendan | Blacktop Images
Andrew | AN Photography
Victor | MX Photography

Classic Japan 2012… What an event!!
This year it was held at Como Park using two full sports ovals, allowing for more than twice the amount of entries than that of last years show. The turnout was absolutely fantastic and the crowd was perfect!!


The event was hosted by the Toyota Car Club of Australia and entries were open to all Japanese makes/models manufactured before 1987.
All the proceeds from the event went to Beyond Blue so the event was raising money for an extremely good cause.

On the top oval we spotted a heap of Suzuki Mighty Boys, Nissan 240Z’s and this perfect red AW11 MR2.

Looks like this little Mighty Boy could deliver a lot more tofu than the original delivery car from the famous anime series.

One of the most iconic classic Japanese cars to receive the modifiers touch, the Datsun 1600 has been a favourite with enthusiasts both young and old.

This tidy blue example was sporting an SR20DET engine swap. So with a few extra ponies under the hood, this little sedan would put a massive smile on the face of just about anyone that got behind the wheel.

In a long line up of Corolla’s, this AE82 was looking great thanks to a little lowering and a set of period appropriate ROH wheels.

Further down the line we found ‘We Heart Cars’ competition winner Justin and his track attack Corolla, one of a few cars wearing one of our stickers on the day!
Get yours here > http://store.gripshiftslide.com/

After a quick walk around the event I think I can safely say that I am now infatuated with Datsun utes!
This rat rod inspired 1000 ute was a crowd favourite thanks to the matte paint and side exit exhaust.

Directly opposite there was this shiny green Datsun that won me over, it almost looked like a standard affair at the front.
Business at the front…

… Party at the back!
While the pipes might not work for everyon,e it does pay homage to the crazy place all these wonderful cars come from and here at GSS we welcome more influence from some of the wilder trends in Japan.

We have never seen so many 240Z’s at a single event before, with numbers close to the double digits it was an impressive sight.
Some absolutely stood out from the crowd though, like this immaculate red zed!

There was a touch of VIP on the bottom oval thanks to this Toyota Cressida.

Chrome low rider wheels worked a treat for the four door cruiser.

Brown is not a colour that comes rushing to mind when thinking of Japanese cars for me, here on this Corolla wagon however it actually works very well.
Also worth a mention was the showroom condition RX7 sitting by its’ side. I had a full walk around the car and it was perfect!

This two tone DR30 Skyline had me sucked in for awhile, like a moth to a light bulb there was no escape!!

Inside it was full of 80’s charm wherever you looked: ribbed gear boot, hard lines/angles and champagne gold/silver colour coding.
This is my kind of cockpit!!

The classic Japanese town car… The RT40 Toyota Corona!
This white beauty was covered in lashings of chrome and white walls, everything you could ever want in a 1960’s sedan.

Warning: This photo may cause increased heart rate and blood pressure in many of our readers, this is perfection at it’s finest!
This Datsun Fairlady 2000 roadster would be one of my ultimate choices for driving the famous Californian coastline…

… Manufactured from 1967-1970 it was ahead of it’s time as far as Japanese automobiles were concerned – reaching speeds of nearly 200Kph and a red line of 7,000RPM! Thanks to a lack of emission restrictions here in Australia at the time, all models delivered here came standard with the ‘competition’ upgrade which included duel carburetors and a performance camshaft.
This stunning beauty was matched with ridiculous performance for it’s price tag, at the time it was the cheapest in it’s class and continually won races against it’s more expensive rivals!

This is one of my ‘hero’ cars from the picnic at Hanging Rock event earlier this year! This club racer inspired Datsun 1600 really got me excited by all of these older chassis and made me appreciate the milestones they achieved in terms of affordability, performance in their time when compared with more expensive European and American cars.

KE70 friends!!!
One clean and one not so clean. The one on the right is the kind of car you wouldn’t let your daughter go out to the movies with.
Running a 4AGE 20v engine in RWD configuration mated to a Supra gearbox with a turbo for good measure, this small sedan runs rings around newer cars thanks to a healthy 147kw at the wheels.

Brandon and Dave’s Cressida’s were stars of the show with many older enthusiasts taking the time to see what the younger generations take on what an older Toyota should be.

Steve’s Sunny ute was looking great with all the other classic pieces of metal scattered around the oval.  There were so many cars using the ‘rising sun’ to add a bit of character to their cars but none quite as large as Steve’s cover for his tray.

Hamish’s 240Z was definitely the shiniest car at the show thanks to a fresh paint job. only days earlier courtesy of DT Panels.  With the paint now sorted, Hamish has a few more things to tick off his list before really showing it off.
With any luck in six months time we will be showing you a lot more of this car.

Heath’s 260 wagon came back for its’ second year at the Classic Japan show, now with new wheels and a lower ride height the wagon was looking better than ever!

Nothing comes close to wood grain interiors in terms of classiness.

The rear facing seats are still such a unique feature, this is our car of choice for the drive in movies next time.

Now for something on the rarer side, a Mazda Capella looking great on some dished out wheels!

Spotted a clean white AE86 with some Shockworks coil overs. These guys are quickly becoming  a very popular choice for suspension amongst Toyota enthusiasts.

Nicks’ RX7 with massive fender flares, running a 12a turbo motor making this Mazda a little two-door rocket!

It seems classic car fans come in all shapes and sizes and even species!!

Now this is something we all enjoy… The mighty Nissan Skyline, the original circle taillights we love so much!

As a bonus this year there was a massive motorbike display in the middle of the oval, the same rules applied to the bikes.
Japanese makes and pre 1987 production only.

The Honda S800, Honda’s final roadster for thirty years until the recent S2000.

Automatic is for chumps… This is Hondamatic, the transmission of the future!
Well at the time it was very impressive stuff as it still maintained engine braking thanks to a unique design.

This was one of the most impressive cars on show all day, this KE20 had it all including a rebuilt motor, turbo, tough wheels and fender flares, you name it!

A name fit for a king!
The Toyota Crown received all the extra’s and was the pride of Toyota’s production line.

This little guy believe it or not is Toyota’s first ever sports car!
The Sports 800 was equipped from factory with a monstrous 34kw and could reach 160kph on a racetrack!!

One of the ‘S’ chassis underdogs, the Nissan S12. Sold locally as a Nissan Gazelle, we’ve never seen one as clean or as modified as this one!
This really is one of the shows not to miss so please keep your calendars clear for next years Classic Japan Show, with wonderful cars and a good cause there is no excuse to miss it a third time around.
We would like to thank all the organisers for inviting us to come down and take photos and sell some merchandise at the show, we had a blast and will see you all next year!
Thanks for reading,
– Gwyn.