How Japanese Minivans Influence U.S. Street Style
An exciting Honda-swapped Nissan that always turns heads, plus F1 trickery and more fun from the world of car culture and motorsports.
A weekly newsletter by Ryan K. ZumMallen | @zoomy575m
Happy Race Day, especially to these videos of Safari Porsche 911s and Broncos tackling off-road terrain at high speed. Bless these beautifully dirty cars.
Short newsletter for you due to a busy week, but there are many plans in the works that I’m excited to share with you soon.
The goal is to keep bringing people together to celebrate, learn and welcome new enthusiasts who will eventually turn into ambassadors for the culture. It’s a great way to bring the things I learned while writing Slow Car Fast into the real world, and I get to meet cool people like Oscar Rivera, who I met a our signing and is the subject for this week’s Ask A Millennial!, further down this post:
For now, please feel free to send anything that’s cool and car-related my way, and pass this newsletter on to friends, family and coworkers that might like to sign up! Always looking for more folks to join our weekly little car party.
And if you haven’t picked up a copy of Slow Car Fast yet you can learn more about it right here. Books are in stock and ready to ship, or available for your e-reader at a moment’s notice.
Culture
A nice story in the New York Times last week about Jackie Heinricher and her efforts to field an all-female race team. Heinricher had a lot of successes and a lot of challenges, real or perceived, that are a little discouraging to read about in the year 2020. Racing may still have a long way to go before we can say women have full equal opportunity.
Video Reel
A Mercedes jumping two McLarens and hopping a curb to do it is basically catnip to 13-year old me:
What if you took a slow car and made it… fast? I loved the insane Mini Coopers of Gildred Racing on the Netflix show Fastest Car. Now, The Smoking Tire gets their hands on it and goes bonkers. Good fun ensues.
As mentioned last week, Aston Martin pulled out of the upcoming Hypercar class in global Le Mans racing. Luckily, Toyota is still in and a plucky little team from the U.S. is posting teaser clips that sound incredible.
Race Results
The Formula One season is here! Here’s a highlight clip of our first look at all the cars during the test session in Barcelona. Which one is your favorite? (The answer is Renault.)
F1 juggernaut Mercedes raised everyone’s eyebrows when during testing it appeared that Lewis Hamilton could actually adjust the angle of the front wheels on the fly by pulling back on the steering wheel. It’s a pretty neat setup and one of the rule-bending innovations F1 has long been famous for. Naturally, it was quickly banned. Road & Track has the full story but do watch the video below to see it in action:
What happens when you bring European endurance racing to Texas? You get awesome WEC racing in the Lone Star Le Mans 2020. Damn, do those Aston racecars look great or what.
A new electric championship called Pure ECTR will hold a few events this year and launch fully in 2021. See the event schedule and participating manufacturers here.
Ask A Millennial! Oscar Rivera, 25
I met Oscar when he brought his stunning blue Nissan S13 to our book signing in Burbank. Even in a sea of eye-catching cars, that thing rolled up and you couldn’t help but be transfixed. The following week, Oscar and his car took home second place for best early model Nissan at the Slammedenuff Socal Car Show. The moral of the story, obviously, is that coming to our book events will bring you good luck. I’m so glad we could get Oscar to share his perspective on car culture today — please enjoy. Here is an edited version of our conversation:
Recently, the whole switch to K24 Honda power has become the new swap a lot of people are doing. It’s interesting how much power they can make with some simple upgrades.
The look for my car started when some of my friends were in Japan on vacation. They saw Honda Odysseys with these headlights and from there we decided to do something different. I feel like everyone does the same thing, and there isn't really any originality. I saw the Odyvia kit and loved it. It wasn't the typical S13 kit. I bought the kit with Mastermind North America and haven't regretted it since.
Building a car is always fun. Making things work and seeing what works and what doesn't is great. But being able to drive the car after all those hours of labor is always satisfying.
When it comes to car-related news, I’m using a split between Instagram and friends. On Instagram there's all the car accounts . I also have friends that work at dealerships and they usually have news about cars that are getting refreshed or when new cars are being made.
And Finally…
Radwood Austin is this weekend and the comic they made to promote it is tubular.
Drive hard and be safe.
Want your event included? Shoot me a note with subject line “Race Day” at ryan@carrarabooks.com.
Don’t forget to follow Carrara Media on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and visit our store to order your copy of Slow Car Fast in paperback or eBook.