As I’ve mentioned before, many of the initial shoots I did when I first started at Modified Magazine involved cars that weren’t street legal, which meant they couldn’t drive anywhere for the shoot. Most of the time, that meant pushing them out to the parking lot outside whatever shop they were at, or doing what I could from inside the shop. So when I made the trek to Falken Tire on March 8, 2005 to shoot Yoshinori Koguchi’s HPI S15, I expected much of the same. The car had competed at the D1 Grand Prix round at Irwindale just nine days earlier, its first time running in the U.S., and chances were I was going to shoot it somewhere inside Falken’s warehouse and do the best I could with the conditions.
This is also where I need to correct myself. In the Nick Fousekis MR2 feature, I wrote that my first trip to Falken was in June 2005 to shoot the RX-7 drift twins, and that the visit is where I first met Nick. It wasn’t. This shoot, three months earlier, was my first time at Falken and the day I met Nick, and I didn’t realize I had the two mixed up until I dug into the archives for this car. It’s been a long time, and the two visits had blurred together in my head.
So imagine my surprise when I showed up and, after meeting Nick, asked, “So, where’s the car?” He pointed to the trailer and said it was loaded up and ready to go wherever I wanted to take it. Yes, one of the huge Falken rigs the team hauled to drift events was the one shuttling this car to a spot for photos. Unfortunately, I was unfamiliar with the area and hadn’t bothered to do any scouting, since I just assumed the car wasn’t going anywhere. So off we went to find a place where we could safely unload the car and snap some shots of it out in the wild.
We eventually landed on a dirt canyon road, with nothing but a cut rock face and scrub behind the car, and it really put the HPI S15 in unfamiliar territory. The D1 Grand Prix banner was still on the windshield and the Autobacs decals were still on the fenders from Irwindale, and here it was sitting in the dirt, far, far away from the tracks of Japan. It provided a real contrast to where people would typically see this car. I wasn’t entirely pleased with the photos, since time of day was an issue as well, but I was particularly happy that we were able to take this car way out of its element for the shoot. Afterwards, we took it back to the Falken warehouse, where I couldn’t help myself and took a few more photos there too. The feature ran in the August 2005 issue of Modified Magazine.
The car itself was HPI’s (High Power Improvement) showcase for the 2005 season, and the spec sheet reads like a catalog of what a Japanese tuning house could throw at an SR20DET at the time. HPI R&D handled the cylinder head work, boring and stroking, a custom camshaft, titanium double valve springs, and custom retainers, along with a 2.75-inch throttle body, a custom cold air intake with a dry cotton filter, a 1.6-inch exhaust manifold, a tube type intercooler with 2.75-inch aluminum piping, a 3-inch titanium exhaust and muffler, a custom fuel rail, an oil cooler, and an aluminum radiator. Tomei supplied the 2.2L stroker kit with forged pistons and a forged crankshaft, a 1.1mm metal head gasket, and an N2 steel oil pan. A Mitsubishi TD06 20G turbocharger did the boosting, with an HKS GT II external wastegate, a SARD fuel pressure regulator, Nismo 740cc injectors and fuel pump, a Nismo catalytic converter, an ATL aluminum fuel cell, a B&M New Volt CDI, and NGK #10 spark plugs rounding it out. An HPI custom ROM reflash tied it all together, and the result was 400 whp at 7,100 rpm and 383 lb-ft at 5,100 rpm on just 11 psi.
Power went through an HPI 6-speed manual, a Nismo Copper Mix single plate clutch with an SCM flywheel, and a Nismo GT Pro 1.5-way LSD. Suspension was a custom A’PEXi and HPI setup built around A’PEXi N1 Pro dampers and Swift springs, with a Nismo aluminum strut bar up front. The car rolled on 18-inch WORK Meister S1 three-piece wheels wrapped in Falken Azenis RT-615 tires, 225/40R18 in front and 245/35R18 in the rear, and stopped with Brembo BCNR33 brakes and Nismo pads. HPI R&D built the seven-point SCM roll cage along with an original carbon fiber rear wing and a prototype carbon fiber hood, while C-WEST’s DRFT body kit covered the front and rear bumpers, side skirts, and fenders. Inside, it was all business, with Bride carbon Kevlar bucket seats supplied through Tee’s, HPI FIA-approved six-point harnesses, a MOMO Race steering wheel, Tilton pedals, and a DEFi Link system reading boost, EGT, air/fuel, oil pressure, and oil temp.
Since this shoot took place just months after I moved, Falken gave me the belief that some of the other cars I would be tasked with shooting would be just as accommodating. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them weren’t, so I owe many of my unrealistic expectations to this shoot. It was very rare back then for a person, shop, or company to offer to load their car on a trailer and take it somewhere for a photo shoot. I’m sure it would have happened if I had demanded it, or if things were better organized, but it was a very different world. I mean, the iPhone didn’t even exist yet when I shot this.
GalleryPhotos by Jason Siu
