NZ Performance Car No 289 April - May 2021

Ah, what a feeling; thousands of dollars spent, weeks of hard nights slangin’ spanners in the garage, days off work, leave approved, and bam, smoke screen on the second session out at the track day you’ve been waiting for, for ages. Yep, last month, I was a victim of a fate that plenty of you have experienced — engine failure. I had just fitted my new trumpets, had a retune, fitted new plugs, prepped the engine with brand new oil and a racing filter, only for it to fail miserably with smoke billowing out the rear end, thanks to oil getting pushed out of my breather and onto the exhaust. Initially, I thought it was the gearbox oil getting pushed out somehow, until I remembered that we routed a breather from…

WARREN SARE Hi, me again — only this time you can’t hear me; you are just reading my words. If you are trying to place me, yep, I’m that annoying voice you sometimes hear on the PA at car events. The Ed. asked me to spin a yarn about the 2021 Nationals, and, to be honest, it’s not that hard to do. As a family, Anna, Jordy, Sarah, and I live the event for the full four days — including pack-in — and that makes it quite a simple process for me to transfer what I see, feel, and hear onto paper. My view is a bit inside out, and what I hope to convey is what the event looks like through my eyes. I truly believe that we are working on…

For years now, Mad Mike Whiddett has been based out of a workshop at Hampton Downs Raceway. Not open to the public in any way, it has been a private workshop in which Mike and the team have been able to piece together some of the raddest projects we’ve seen in New Zealand. However, there has been a need for expansion for some time, and Mike has established himself just around the corner in the same building. Now though, the workshop is much larger, able to be viewed from the café at Hampton Downs, and there’s finally a shop front, where enthusiasts can purchase official Mad Mike merchandise on site. We’ll be taking a workshop tour through there for the next issue, so keep an eye out!…

King Kong, Iain Clegg’s Nissan GT-R R35 tubeframe machine, has been pounding at the ground recently, hoping to best their current quarter-mile PB of 7.4-seconds and dive into the six-second club. With the current GTX55 maxed out completely, King Kong makes an already impressive 1447kW at the wheels, and at a recent test day mid-February, King Kong came out swinging right off the trailer with a 7.7-second pass at 182mph with a misfire. After countless tech-related issues throughout the day, the most impressive feat was a 8.7-second run at 190mph — absolutely top-ending the car in the other lane and proving that a six-second pass on the maxed out GTX55 is possible. “We are learning so much as a team on stuff that only the Americans have mastered with million…

People all around the world took to the latest A90 Supra. Its curvy, almost JZA80 lines reminded us of years gone by, and Toyota opted for an inline-six with a turbocharger, just like the good old days — albeit from a BMW. It was no surprise then that tuners, enthusiasts, and Youtubers took to the new platform, with one in the USA running an 8.78-second quarter mile. Interestingly, the B58 engine runs an internal collector-style manifold design, with only two exhaust ports exiting the head. Toyota has revised this for the 2021 A90 car, running with a more traditional-style cylinder head that features six exhaust ports. With this change, and a few other tweaks, the A91 Supra will now have 285kW at the engine, over the 250kW in the previous…

DC Shoes owner and all around gymkhana-sliding, burnout-slangin’ mad dog Ken Block is now a free agent, after an exclusive 10-year partnership with Ford has ended. Ken Block is now a free man, open to deals with whomever he pleases. “Working with Ford over the past decade has been awesome,” Block said in a statement published on his Hoonigan Racing Division website. “I’m super appreciative to Ford for the support over the years, but I am also looking forward to what an unrestricted 2021 holds, and the ability to spread my wings a bit and play with a lot of other toys.” Block has graced our screens with countless hours of Gymkhana content in Ford-powered equipment — with our favourite being the Ford Mustang Hoonicorn RTR V2, a 1400hp 6.7-litre…