CAMautoMag

RallySport Direct Eat, Greet and Meet… Meet

Words and photos by Michael Chandler

What started as a humble swap meet, hosted by a humble online retailer, has grown into a sizable meet at the physical home of a porperly big online retailer.  Thankfully, RallySport Direct maintains the feel of a shop run by a bunch of your friends and they have dropped the whole swap thing from their annual meet.

And thankfully their neighbors are ok with having the meet attendees borrow their parking lots.  I wound up in one of these parking lots, and after receiving some puzzled looks from some mark 4 Supra owners (I’ll have some thoughts on that in a later column), I grabbed my friends Bobby and Brad and we wandered through the meet.

One of the first cars we came across was Alex Prasop’s Honda Del Sol.  He’s had this car forever, and he’s put hours and hours of work into this.  Some people may look down their nose at a humble little Honda, but a lot of those people are the kind of folk who will create a scenario to show off their friends’ high dollar cars and act offended when people call them a WASPy a**hole.

While most people are content with bolting on overfenders or flares, Alex was not.  He made his own fenders, along with doing his own engine swap and shaving and wire tucking his engine bay.  If I were given the choice between this, a well worn Honda built by an owner who is very passionate about his car or a new AMG Merc built by someone with more money than taste, who only cares that his car is cost prohibitive to most enthusiasts, I’d take the Honda.

That said, I wouldn’t say no to a 911 or a Gallardo.  A classic 911 or a loud, brash Lamborghini are always head turners, and seeing them come out to a meet and them being driven by cool people (especially the 911, thanks for holding up for some pictures!) makes them even better.

RallySport made their name slinging Subaru parts, and if you’re in need of some I recommend pointing your internet their way.  That being said, most people lower their Subarus and do their best to keep them clean.  Not these guys.  They’ve lifted them, put on massive offroad tires, added offroad lights, and the Legacy even added a snorkel.  These cars aren’t parking lot queens, or track day terrors.  They’re ready to get dirty, and stay dirty.

The Subarus weren’t the only ones in the dirt game.  They were accompanied by this 4WD Civic Wagovan!  Underneath all that glorious mud was some red paint, but it didn’t look bad covered in Earth tones.

In the same lot as the dirt crew was this bagged Mustang GT.  Not something you see everyday, especially around here, but a lot of the new muscle cars look great when they’re on the ground.  Bagging these big pony cars is something that needs to be done more, and this guy needs to drop us a line because I want to know more.

Over in the feature lot, or at least the lot closest to RallySport Direct itself, was this 4 door R32 Skyline sitting on a staggered set of Super Advans.  If you look closely, you’ll see that there isn’t an RB under the hood.  Nope! It’s an SR20!  Too many doors, not enough cylinders, and all sorts of awesome!  Sign me up, I’ll take two.

Next to my new favorite Skyline (sorry Brody), was another SR20 powered oddity: JR Crosby’s Lotus Super7.  I’ve seen theis car a few times over the years, and I still can’t get over the looks of the Ur-kit car.

As long as I’ve been aware of the car it’s always been orange, and it’s always had that SR.  The Shelby wheels are new, as are the Nankang tires (which is obvious just looking at them).  Despite being insanely easy to look into the cockpit, I’ve never done so.  So, I did.  The well worn Start button tells you that this car has seen its fair share of road time.  The gauges are laid out in a very sensible fashion, the tachometer and speedometer are right above the steering column, with oil pressure and temperature, water temperature in a row to the right of them.  Below that trio is the wideband and the boost gauge.  It’s sparse, but utilitarian, probably something Colin Chapman would approve of.

Lyfe Motorsports brought out pretty much everything except the GTR they’re prepping for World Time Attack; which, if you follow them on Instagram or Facebook, is a bare shell that doesn’t have a roof.

They did bring out their other GTR, the one that has been dominating Global Time Attack and will be racing to the clouds at Pike’s Peak later this month.  This 1000+ horsepower beast is all business, and, as you can clearly see, they associate with only the best of companies.

And then there’s this yahoo…

The Brett King Design livery looks good on his still full interior TT1 car.  Yeah, full interior.  Headliner and all.  He drives this thing to work in Wyoming, because why not?

While people were fawning over the turbocharged V6 in the Lyfe GTR, the old guard of turbo V6s rolled through.  A pair of Buick Grand Nationals came through and turned all the heads.  Seeing one at an event like this (something import heavy) is awesome, a pair is mind blowing.

This is always a great event, it’s well run and they bring out a lot of representatives of the part manufacturers they sell, and they give away a lot of awesome stuff too.  We’re looking forward to next year, as we always are.

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