Every once in a while we are approached to feature a car that wasn’t built for one particular person but instead was created to showcase a company and shops talents through a high profile project car. The latest of these project cars and first Honda Fit that we’ve ever featured on here on Tunerzine.com is the Tjin Edition – ID-Tuning/Tuesday Afternoon Honda Fit. This project is a collaboration between Honda North America and these two up and coming brands, this Honda Fit debuted at the 2006 SEMA Show in Las Vegas. ID-Tuning and Tuesday Afternoon joined forces with Neil Tjin and the Tjin Edition crew and this one of a kind Fit is currently touring the Country along side the Tjin Edition Turtle Wax Skyline R34 sedan and Pontiac Solstice.
The first step in the process of turning this from your mom’s daily driver to something a little sportier and aggressive was to drop the car off to Adam Carpenter from Unique Fabrication in Irvine, CA to give the interior a dramatic makeover. Starting off by removing everything found inside, the team’s next move was to get everything in order to incorporate one of their signature roll cages and air jack set-ups. Once the roll cage fabrication was complete, Unique also added a custom bottle mount just inside the rear hatch to hold the bottle, which feeds the air jack lines. Lastly, Unique fabricated a set of custom seat brackets used to mount the carbon fiber Status Racing seats to the body.
The next step was to work on the exterior appearance of the Fit. As you may have noticed the car may look a little more aggressive compared to a stock Fit. Thanks to one of the first authentic Kenstyle kits to be imported into the United States (thanks to Bulletproof Automotive,) the body lines on the ID-Tuning/Tuesday Afternoon Fit are slightly more exaggerated. Whether or not you’re aware of it, the Fit that’s available in Japan may look very similar but once you try to bolt on aero enhancements you’ll quickly notice that’s not the case. Since the stateside model is a bit wider in both the front and the rear, the Kenstyle bumpers had to be heavily modified to fit onto the factory spec bumpers that came on the car. While that was being worked on the rest of the car was dropped off for paint where the team decided to incorporate a street rod influenced, two-tone paint theme along with a pin stripe that follows the body lines.
After the front and rear bumpers were finished, the rest of the Kenstyle aero parts including the side skirts and rear wing were bolted down, the factory mirrors were shaved and then the entire body was prepped for paint. The main portion of the body was covered in a lighter copper tone while the upper portion including the hood, roof and rear hatch were sprayed in a darker tone. After the car was reassembled, a set of C-West carbon fiber side mirrors were added and then the pinstripe work was added by one of Southern California’s finest stripers, Jeff Styles.
Once the car was out of the paint shop, it was dropped off once again at Unique Fabrication to finish up some more of the work. While the car was at the paint shop, ABG Motoring was in charge of rewrapping the entire Fit interior and carbon fiber Status Racing seats in a custom two-tone copper and black suede. The custom two-tone carbon fiber Status Racing seats were finally installed along with a set of four-point red and black Team Tech harnesses. A Personal steering wheel was also mounted to a Bee’s Racing tilt hub while a handful of Ignited Performance goodies were also added to the mix. To upgrade the sounds, Realm Audio components make their way into the front and rear doors while the factory head unit is in place. The exterior lighting was also touched on thanks to a set of Ignited 8000K HID lights that are found in the freshly black painted headlights and factory fog lights that were fitted back into the Kenstyle bumper.
Since the Fit is known for being slightly underpowered, a few performance parts were added to give it that little extra “go.” A custom MagnaFlow Performance Exhaust can be found in the rear of the car while a prototype ID-Tuning intake and header are found underneath the hood.
The last pieces of the puzzle came from the braking, suspension and wheel/tire aspect; in the front and rear, SSBC big brakes sit mounted to the hubs and keep the car in check. Ditching the factory hardware, the SSBC kit includes new bigger brake rotors as well as four-piston calipers. Giving the Fit its lowered, more aggressive stance is a set of B&G fully adjustable coilovers, which not only bring the Honda’s center of gravity down but also improve the ride quality since the factory rubber was also swapped out in favor of something else. The something else mentioned is a set of custom set of 18×9″ HRE C20 Competition wheels that featured black centers, color matched bronze inner and outer barrels, and limited edition black aluminum center caps. 215/35-19 Falken’s FK-452 rubber was used to wrap the HRE’s and to keep the Fit planted firmly to the ground.
Although this build was kept somewhat simple and not overly aggressive, you can’t help but appreciate the craftsmanship, time and money that was invested into this car. In just two short months this project went from your every day Honda Fit to something that’s surely gets a ton of attention wherever it goes. It doesn’t matter if the Tjin Edition – ID-Tuning/Tuesday Afternoon Honda Fit is rolling around on the streets of Southern California or if it is parked on the show floor in the Tjin Edition booth, no matter where it is people stop and stare.
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