We have to take the occasion to give our blog-readers our most heart-warming and sincere wishes; that you will have an awesome and cozy christmas holiday!
We were blessed with a really nice official christmas card for this year, as Martin BILBILDER.SE Perssons snapshot of the Skyline DR30 we imported just before the season was over- got some ”photoshop-pimping” done by Norwegian wizz-kid Daniel Hovdahl (many thanks for the last minute help!)
(Click to get in full resolution!)
We might as well throw in last years card as well, which had an entirely different theme. A bit more aggression to it, pic taken by ”Chucky” and edit by ”Golicphoto”:
We can take the occasion to reveal that to end this year and start the next one, we will keep the blog busy by letting all regular SUPERIOR SELECTED photographers pic their favorite shots from the season.
Some have also taken the chance to express a little bit personal opinions on the year that passed, and Iam sure the Superior-blog will be in full form thanks to their contributions. I will make a closer statement on how this will go down tomorrow evening.
Hope everyone are really full of delicious christmas food at the moment, and that you are chilling with your favorite sort of tasty alcohol (might open myself something sweet too now that I think of it…)
Thanks for all the support so far, we are blessed to have so many loyal readers each day even though work on next years big upgrades is priority #1 at the moment!
Today is the release of the sure viral blockbuster for christmas, our danish friend Stefaan ”Neffi” Kristensen or aka NEFFI PHOTOGRAPHYas he is known for the most- gives us his epic project titled ”The Gatebil Experience”!
It was a few months ago, that our SUPERIOR SELECTEDphotographer Ronny aka JAMedia brought us together the first time- and now many months later his masterpiece is complete; and he was even kind enough to mention us in it- although we can take no credit at all from it to be honest.
But hopefully this will also be one of the many bridges we are building right now to passionate and skilfull media-contributors around Scandinavia. All we can say is, ”thank you Neffi” for this sublime christmas-entertainment. It sure puts the pressure up on ourselves to try and at least create something different and in the same class of quality video…
VIMEO:
My favourite shot is the one where Norwegian Superstar Frederic Aasbo blows the tire of his Supra. Can you spot it? Hope you like it, and be sure to visit his partner site EGARAGE.COM to see what they have to offer as well!
We are very proud to only be releasing content we have a link to, or that we feel genuinely strong about. So do what you can to share this video with all your friends as well!
I guess the ball now is on our court to bring out the ”Gatebil is ALL IN” movie Superior Media is working on. Hmm…!
I do hate to repeat myself over how much we have going on, and that is oddly enough mirroring in how sleepy the blog might be. Lets just say the invested energy right now will generate a lot for 2012.
You can always visit OUR FACEBOOK if you want the odd rumor here and there, but ultimately its here you will read about it all once we start making things official…
Anyway, as we mentioned recently in Swedish- the site has quitly been updated and posting blogs is much easier for me now.
This comes just a week or so before the holidays, so tried to mash in all important meets I felt were necessary to go through with before the year changes- and also managed to sneak away on a mini-vacation to Warsaw, Poland at the moment.
But one thing I can tell you is that we are meeting some hardcore drifters today in the PUZ VALVOLINE DRIFT TEAM.
They are the #1 team in Poland in a sport where reckless courage and genuine workmanship has made their product quite the talk around europe. The below film from a ”mountain drift” event clearly shows what I mean:
We will tell you more about these guys after the meet, we intend to get the best inside info on the Polish drifting-scene and possibly lay the first foundations of building a bridge across Sweden & Poland for not just the sport of drifting…
We’ll try and do shorter updates more frequently now, but also feel its not worth telling about stuff that are semi-finished. But the clear things… No problem, you got our word you will read about it here first and foremost! 🙂
Lets try mobile coupon for cialis blogging some more,Soitting on a train to southern Sweden to visit good friends- got a meeting with a polish drifting team so leave tomorrow for Warsaw. Meeting this guy today though besides http://cialisfromindia-onlinerx.com/ all of the bro’s, next season his Mustang gets joined by a Nissan Silvia with 500HP 2JZ-GTE. Short but sweet pharmacy canada blogging, still getting used to new interface and using the iPhone 20mg cialis reviews as tool…
After hitting near rock-bottom in motivation to use the blog because the ”back-end” technical side has aged ungraciously- a big ray of light came upon me yesterday!
Let me explain. The blog uses wordpress as its ”engine”, and was at the time we built the site a very simple tool where we had to use lots of custom features.
Eventually, this led to problems with using newer versions of browsers- with a *insert worst combo of cursing you can think of* headache to write text with simple flow as linebreaks for example.
Doing stuff mobile has also been impossible, so with a new (huge) site coming in 2012; its been a pain and frustration to blog. And fixing this presented a classic ”catch 22” moment:
Who would you entrust your entire database since back-ups are necessary if the site self-ignites as its common to do after having many custom solutions…?
Anyway, after months of finding the right guy; we are now seeing the first huge steps of his work. An update of WP has been done and this post is a test to see if changes are even bigger then expected (confirmed yesterday that my desktop mac now works to blog from).
So without much more noise, and kind of pathetic indeed- we bring you the first mobile blog-post in our history! 😀
(Dont clap, this is nothing to be proud of- but still awesome to encourage bot just me to write here more often…)
Our little engineer behind the camera and editing, David Johansson wanted to thank everyone for sharing our recently re-released trailer of the ”Gatebil Mantorp is ALL IN” movie coming soon.
Here you will see most of the cars & teams that participated in this 20min carnage that occured when we got Mantorp Park circuit for ourselves during 20 sweet minutes.
Keep sharing this material and encourage people to take a look at OUR FACEBOOK as well, you get plenty of news and other fun stuff daily there- although here at the blog is where all the action happens! And yes, that goes for the real trailer for this movie as well; all you need to do is copy this link and paste it to your Facebook or post it anywhere you like!
After a long and much needed break after an intense summer, the movie production team is back; and the next project we will work with full dedication with is the Gatebil Mantorp is ”all in” movie!
This will be a truly insane journey as we had among the best Gatebil Circus drivers (Driftmonkey, Team Raidopower, Alm brothers, Limmet DrifTeam & more!) on the track alone- with plenty of our cameras to catch the action!
You can read a lot more about our extensive coverage of GATEBIL MANTORP 2011 HERE. You get all the videos and SUPERIOR SELECTED GALLERIES gathered there, for the ultimate media outlet when it comes to Gatebil in Sweden…
Remember we are still novices in this, and are extremely thankful for all the support & opinions we’ve gotten so far. Hope you will continue to motivate us, you can do that by joining all of us at OUR FACEBOOK (CLICK!).
Please share the Vimeo-link (http://vimeo.com/33357982) of this movie in all your social circles, we promise its the ultimate racingfuel so we can do a GREAT finished production!
The very present and a highly likely a view of the future in Japanese automotive; is on display right now at the big Tokyo Motor Show- we got all good news from it!
Thanks to our efforts on the similar but more international FRANKFURT IAA EXPO, we are now officially and most flattering enough; part of a press network where we can take part of some official photos from all Motor shows from around the world. So we would like to share for our readers whats brewing on the JDM market!
Right away I can tell you that as a single year its been a really good one if you are an ”enthusiast”, who loungues for performance cars and such.
But as a whole, we have to face the truth that harsh economics and most importantly enviromental changes in the world means = less of that and more compact or fuel efficent cars (most often both!).
But we still picked up our favourite 20 and most relevant pics from this awesome network, and hope you will enjoy this mix although none of our staff was there, and fair enough we havent really studied up on all of them. Lets take a look anyway!
(As stated, compact cars is the firm reality of what all carmakers put as a priority. And face it, we need those type of cars too! Whats comforting about that is that the Japanese brands are in my opinion the leaders of this segment. This Honda was something I could very well imagine to use as a ”city car” in the future. Clean!)
(But lets raise the temperature a little now shall we? The Lexus LFA was here in its more raw ”Nürburgring edition” which gives the pretty lady (read our feature of when it was in Sweden HERE) some extra long claws. Changes are still subtle, but very important- in not just aero but in performance and well. Will it be a record breaker in 2012?)
(Name one (two actually) model that have gotten more press coverage then the Toyota FT86 and Subaru BRZ? I doubt anyone will come up with one… so lets just skip the chit-chat and say ”Yay” or ”Nay” for the finished product…?)
(… and if you did not like the above one, Subaru were kind enough to develop their Super GT version for you which is impossible to dislike. Like all the JDM racers just an institution in pure rawness. ”Proud of Boxer” indeed, and I think this car will replace the Legacy which it turns out was a short-lived competitor for Subaru.)
(One of my personal favourites, albeit a pretty useless ”car”. For the truly artistic person willing to barely use his car so it wont get dirty, we found this Toyota concept which has a unique glass structure with a screen (?) in it. Just check the picture in the gallery and compare. Impressive stuff!)
(Something you might have read about that was going to be premiered here, was the Nissan Juke Nismo concept. It might look like any ”performance upgraded” base model, but the key here is the engine and drivetrain. Oh yes, it is the full monty from the Nissan GT-R! Good news is that right now they are considering it for a official release depending on what people on the expo said. Lets keep our fingers crossed!)
(And to finish things of, we have the latest Impreza (although that name is scrapped on this generation) that earns a S-series package. Shortly explained, ever since the GC8 generation; Subaru always saved the ”best for last” and in the JDM-market released a fully loaded with STi-options model of the Impreza to buy from the factory. This one is a worthy follower of that bloodline, and I hope one day to have the pleasure of providing someone in Sweden with one since they will probably be available in the Japanese Domestic Market only (there, I just explained what JDM is shortering for). 😉
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Hope you enjoyed it, seems like among the myriad of small compacts and odd ”hybrid/electrical” sort of cars & concepts- there is a thin red line of hope in sportscars as well. We all know Honda is looking to release a new NSX, and Mazda have been toying with us creating monster concepts like the Furai. So lets hope this trend continues…
Feels great that our hard work which puzzled some and might have seemed out of place in the blog has given us some really positive results.
Its impossible to please you all, but we have very high longterm ambitions; so hope you will continue to support us as things progress! 🙂
Idag publicerar vi en intervju med Erik Jonasson vars groteskt feta Datsun 240Z S30 vi nyligen gjorde en ENORM SUPERIOR SELECTED FEATURE på i bloggen. Hoppas ingen missat det reportaget!
Vi träffade Erik tidigt på säsongen under WANGAN MEET III, och kunde redan där se att detta var ett bombnedlag på ”JDM-kartan” detta år.
Han tog hem första plats på TEN OF THE BEST på det eventet, och det känns roligt att mycket som nämns i VÅR FEATURE även diskuterades under denna intervju. Vi får ge SIR_PIERREmannen som har huvudrollen i denna intervju och ger den ännu en dimension. Enjoy!
Erik är en riktigt trevlig och jordnära kille, med stort hjärta för JDM; och har byggt upp ett grymt kunnande inom OLD SCHOOL JDM sedan han köpte bilen i augusti 2010. Vill därför inte bara hylla hans bil, utan även ge han en välriktad klapp på axeln för att vara den sortens entusiast hobbyn behöver fler av. Skippa besserwisser-mentaliteten ni unga grabbar!
Ni hittar Eriks egna Facebook-grupp om gammaldags Japanare HÄR, och glöm inte gilla VÅR FACEBOOK också om du inte redan gjort det- av bara farten kan ni även studsa in på BILBILDER.SE som står för samtliga foton!
Stance. Old School JDM. Hellaflush. Shakotan. Retro-trackday. And it goes on and on…
The hyping of car-trends has never been bigger, and it seems every year a derivate from stuff done in Japan for years; suddenly falls on the lips of the hungry mainstream-blogs who in turn feed young readers whats ”cool” now or not.
Who said this needs to be ”evil empire” bad?
Here is a story of a paradox gone full circle, how a heavily influenced ”beginner” got his hands on a real gem- and then accomplished what the Japanese for ages spent zero thought on doing- perfecting the understated cool!
Meet Erik Jonasson and his Datsun 240Z S30 which we will call ”JDM-build of the year” in Sweden ; just to set the bar right away on what your about to read.
Coupled with some really sexy pics which were previously exclusive to Banzai Magazine– we thank the photographer Martin ”BILBILDER.SE” (CLICK!) Persson for getting first scoop on their online arrival!
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Its a cold and uncertain morning in southern swedish city of Helsingborg. We are at WANGAN MEET III (READ MORE HERE) as main-sponsors and to contribute with everything we got to make this the years best Japcar-meet in our small but JDM-rich country.
After a long long winter we’ve gotten past the opening even of the year (ELMIA EXPO 2011) and people are for the first time treated to showing their cars in a good ol’ outside meet.
OUR OWN SUPERIOR MEDIA VIDEO:
We struggle at the beginning, trying to find an ounce of order in all the arriving cars and an inexperienced crew doing their best. After some initial calamity, its time to get to work.
The Superior-Blog is here to select its TEN OF THE BEST (SEE THE LIST HERE), and already we’ve had our first ”jaw-dropping moments” seeing some 100% Mazda/Eunos Miatas with full hellaflush stance.
Laughable for some, this was still something that had not quite reached us in Sweden despite a few brave souls who ”know their stance”, such as Marcus Eisenhut and his part famous part infamous (”haters gonna hate”) Honda Integra.
At the same time, all the general public currently knows about; and crave for old school JDM cars is still at kindergarten level. But things are about to change, as we stumble upon someone parked like any other car- but with the glaring charisma that singles it out instantly:
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Go back to August 2010, around 10 months before Wangan Meet.
Erik Jonasson got this car in a scarce battle among many when the original owner since many years decided to sell his (1985-1992 build time!) epic project. Describing the process as a quite lucky circumstance of events, he got to see the car in person one day ahead of around 10 other speculating customers (among them someone from the US of A).
”I had scouted it for a while as it was available a few weeks, the owner had owned the car since 1985 and put a lot of effort into it- he was in no rush to sell. You could say he was looking for the perfect buyer. Plus he was working a lot in the aeromotive industry. Then one day he just called and told me I could come check it out; as 10 others were in line if I passed…” – Erik.
He had originally set out to find himself a newer BMW that never seemed to be available and in proper enough condition for him to buy. His daily driver for a while had also been a Z33 Nissan 350Z, and naturally he was well aware of what that modern Japanese muscle had in its heritage- the almighty Fairlady Z!
So when the opportunity came, and the car was not only in pristine condition- but loaded with plenty of aftermarket parts in both an extremely well built stroked 3.1l engine and chassis… there was no stopping him.
”The previous owner had kept an insane amount of receipts, workshop manuals and even some old Nismo-catalogues. I knew right away this was perfect for me as I had no need for a lifetime project restoring some junk, it was an easy decision to pass up on the expensive end *insurance!* of owning the 350Z for this- but to put a summary on it… everything felt like I slipped into all this on a banana-peel!” -Erik
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Back to Wangan Meet and what had been going on with the car between the purchase —> and where we are right now standing, interviewing a calm, humble and slightly shy Erik (video of this interview by Superior-TV is coming!).
Long story short: First thing he did was to clean things up, toss the rear bumper and drop the car so it had the proper ”stance” which in Sweden was about to explode.
He then added the older style front fender mirrors and imposed his ambitions to possibly making it a track day racer, with a much more modern kind of carbon diffuser/splitter in the front.
We had certainly noticed the car, but are still shocked. This kind of build caught even some very diehard and experienced JDM-enthusiasts as ourselves totally of guard? I mean, genuine workmanship, creative/fearless touches and even a proper engine on that?!
”I had no problem to put the sledgehammer in use to widen the rear body even more, and getting modified coil-overs from a VW Golf was no problem either. I had already broken all sacred grounds by definition when I kept the Centerline USDM-wheels on, right?” -Erik.
Going by the theme of blogs he had put a lot of hours into reading after his buy, and becoming a huge fan of the ”Hellaflush/Stance-scene”; a whole lot of stickers found their way on the car as well.
Thats where it becomes interesting. How easy isn’t it to destroy something by adding too much? All the diverse opinions in taste apart, by just reading the text you might have gotten a messy image in your head.
But it was going to get a lot messier indeed, just as the meet itself (but thats a whole other story)…
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Whats important is that we found ourselves helplessly in love with the car, and with stiff competition still made it our Superior choice and highest ranked on the TEN OF THE BESTlist easily. In hindsight, there was no need to convince others that our opinions usually count (*throw me those black Hipster-glasses*).
Because Erik got the credit he well deserved without us fueling the fire. And in combination with another awesome build (Christoffer Geiros Audi A4) we had early picked as the winner of the all important Elmia Expo (*still having those glasses on*)… it instantly made Stance and Hellaflush the words on everyones lips!
”I was not expecting anything like the response afterwords. You could say I had done a severe crash-course in the whole ”JDM-automotive lifestyle” industry and gotten this car without being a maniac that actively pursued it. My only experience of Jap before was a Nissan 200SX which first blew its turbine; and then the engine. After that I promised to never buy anything other then naturally aspirated again!” -Erik.
A touch of the ”Old school JDM is cool y0” virus had sneaked into the picture as well, which we more then happily welcomed. Been warming the people up to the trends for a few years now, but nobody is quite ready to shell out the same money for a 30-40 year old Japanese car when you could get a really nice Mazda RX-7, Toyota Supra or even a pretty new Skyline GT-R for roughly the same money.
But we are deeming Eriks 240Z as the possible ice breaker for this too (Insert free marketing plug: W E can get you any proper JDM-car directly out of Japan, just CONTACT US and we’ll give you the straight answers you need.)
For the sake of this article, we could have stopped there- but give us a few more minutes of your quality reading time yet still. Because Erik was not done yet, and here is where it gets really interesting…
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Like we’ve already stated, following trends is not hard; but its way easier to go too far and just be ignored & almost spat at for ruining in this case a classic. I was worried when Eriks next move to place an oil-cooler on the exterior of the car. *BAM* Right on the front-bumper, and like a big black spot on that dashing red ladies beautiful silhouette.
”What the hell are you thinking” was my first blunt judgement of the idea, and you could smell some tension; albeit as smelly as it gets from a couple of polite online comments exchanged…
I was worried this car might go the path of some of the laughable projects often seen in the US, or maybe even as far as that we could have put another ”trendy” JDM-enthusiast word into play in Bosozoku = mad almost ”clowned” cars with extreme spoilers and screeching paint themes?!
”I like doing things which Iam kind of alone with. It bugs me when young car enthusiasts today find a car they like, and start ordering parts based on it. I can’t deny it also gives a sort of satisfaction to get split opinions, even if I have the utmost respect for everyone and cherish their input. In the end I follow my own path, and thats how it went with the exterior oil-cooler as well; as a tribute to the old school racecars of that era…” -Erik
But I should have stayed calm. Like ”Dalarna-region of Sweden” calm where Erik usually resides. The part of the country the rest of us usually think of taking a long skiing sessions through the forest.
Where a friday evening might be best spent at the local pizza place grabbing a few beers, possibly going nuts and gathering in an apartment to share some hard distilled liquor with your closest buddies. Simply put a very down to earth place, with plenty of people with personalities to mirror that…
—
Because indeed, today with the season passed and with this sweet car getting published in not only those trendy blogs; but in highly esteemed JDM-auto magazine Banzai thanks to photographer Supremo and SUPERIOR SELECTEDlynchpin Martin ”Bilbilder.se” Persson (SEE HIS FB-PAGE HERE)- the car not only had the balls, muscle and brains to be our JDM build of the year…
It also now had the merits more then worthy of it.
***MARTINS PHOTO-COMMENTS:Shooting this car was a bit of a practical nightmare. We met during a large meet for Stanced cars that was organized in a beautiful natural reservation. The problem was that it was high season, and after a few failed attempts to do shots like the above due to passers by- we moved over to Koeningseggs airstrip. After meeting and greeting a few Agera R’s, we got a few good snaps before the rain came down. Not the best of days, and there is a lot more potential, as this car is breaking some serious necks; just cruising past people low n’ slow…” ***
So thats it, for 2012 we know Erik has made a pledge to the JDM-gods to venture even further on the path of being truly old school in the strict far eastern sense of it. We know he has a nothing less described then s i c k set of old 15″ Speed Star wheels which he intends to spend a fortune on making like new; and ready to ”just stance” with another twist to it!
”2012… Well, all I can say is that I will clean things up even more. The stickers will go away and the treasures I got directly from Japan that will carry the car will define the whole build itself. And of course, I expect it to be even lower- perfect fit to finally make use of those trackdays ambitions I originally had buying it…” -Erik.
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You can read the cars FULL SPECIFICATION HERE on his GARAGET.ORG page. We appreciate when someone follows his own mind, even if there are clear inspirations to draw from. We truly salute Erik for both refining this car and breaking new ground by using the biggest force of them all: U N D E R S T A T E D and effortlessly…
Please ”Like” and ”Share” them all and we promise to continue to publish quality media and writing for all you true enthusiasts out there- who want more then a short quote and single compressed picture on Facebook day in and day out…
Anyway, as we mentioned recently in Swedish- the site has quitly been updated and posting blogs is much easier for me now.
Meeting this guy today though besides 
After hitting near rock-bottom in motivation to use the blog because the ”back-end” technical side has aged ungraciously- a big ray of light came upon me yesterday!
