The car is sporting a few changes, including a new wing, wheels and a quad-tip exhaust.

Tokyo Auto Salon is officially over, but there’s still tons of coverage pouring in, as everyone empties out their SD cards.

Photos courtesy of Car Watch.

Despite this, HKS Kansai Service has been involved with Imprezas since the beginning and they’ve not stopped with the latest iteration.

I’ve been hunting this car down for ages. It first came to my attention at Hyper Meeting a couple years ago.

All the usual areas have been upgraded with the latest and greatest from HKS. Kansai Service also produces their own original parts, including my all time favorite rear diffuser and the carbon intake box above.

As with all the HKS demo cars, Yokohama has taken care of the wheels and tires: 19×8.5 Advan RZ-DF’s and Neova AD08′s.

You may have noticed, I’ve avoided a rather obvious problem from the first photo. It’s a problem that has been plaguing all HKS Kansai Service demo cars, in recent years.

The global economy is still bad, I’m preaching to the choir. It’s had a major effect on the Japanese aftermarket industry, I’m still preaching. This has caused a lot of companies to cut costs on manufacturing, including moving production to places like mainland China. Some say despite being made in China, the quality hasn’t changed. Others would disagree. You may be wondering where I’m going with this and what it has to do with the HKS Kansai Service GVB.

The bad economy and cheaper manufacturing processes, have opened the floodgates for a slew of knockoff brands. Many of which are slowly eating away at the Japanese aftermarket industry, forcing shops to close their doors. The ones that are still weathering the storm, have had to reduce their line up of products. This could be another reason why we see so few GVB Impreza demo cars. It’s just too expensive to create new parts for every make and model that are released. Brands like Seibon have flourished in this climate, made their way to Japan and hopped into bed with companies like Rays Engineering. If you know anything about Rays, then you know they basically run the industry. This is a big reason why we’ve been seeing Seibon products, on HKS Kansai Service demo cars. It’s certainly not because Seibon has ever created something original and of quality. Money talks and you may be reminded of a certain Seibon Edition of the Volk TE37, from a few years ago.

Of course, I don’t know the entire story and that’s why I can’t really go any further with it. The most important thing to note is, where else are you going to get this kind of in depth coverage? Only on A Class can a car feature turn into a rant about the industry.

Photos courtesy of Yokohama.

A$AP Rocky for p4k

Regisseur Alexei Fedortschenko

Russisch 2010

Silent Souls ist ein stiller Film,- melancholisch und mit langsamen Tempo und Kamera Einstellungen. Es spielt irgendwo an einem scheinbar vergessenen Ort , Neya, oder ist es ein Ort wie jeder Ort? Suspendiert im Weltall, im Nichts?

Eine Frau stirbt. Ihr Mann, auch ein Angehöriger eines finno-ungrischen Volksstammes will sie nicht ins Leichenschauhaus bringen sondern nach merjaischer Art am Wasser verbrennen und dem Wasser übergeben.

Die Reise des Mannes mit einem Arbeitskollegen und der toten Frau an diesen Ort als Erinnerungsarbeit.

Das Leben und Sterben als Mnemosyne.  

Volkstümliches und Volksbräuchliches wird erinnert, persönliches, intimes. Die Erinnerung an der Stelle der Entsstehungsgeschichte, die Liebe an der Stelle Gottes: „ Wir Merjaner glauben nicht an Gott, sondern nur an die Nächstenliebe“. Sätze die Fallen wie das braune Laub am Waldrand. Es sind müde Sätze, jedoch voller Empathie und zurückhaltender Beobachtungsgabe.

Der Kollege, ein Fabrikphotograph, ist das Auge des Films. Die Bilder wie Stillleben. Melancholische Stillleben. Was wären wir ohne Erinnerung?

Spielt im Arthouse Cinema in Zürich

Bad Boys

Some Thoughts on Crime Series

Remember inspector Colombo? Slightly forward slouching shoulders, dragging his feet, the cigar, the crinkled face, the ever so slow repeated returns at the door, the absent mindedness? Long gone this extension and duration of time on TV. Today crime stories on tele are fast paced, who has not over-indulged on CSI, the protagonists always with perfect hair and manicured nails, perfect posture and speech, political correctness,in contrast: remember SHAFT, Black Power on the tele in the seventies?

More recently crime series have swamped the screens, living rooms and imaginations of viewers. Unlike in the days of Colombo today’s series often don’t offer closed stories within one night. Just think of Prison Break, the escapees and the viewer caught in an endless maze and labyrinth of permanent sameness within seeming change: exchanging one prison or fortress for another, always with a new riddle to solve, a new lock to pick. There is no overview, no distance, no sight from a far, caught in an endless interiority of a story without beginning or end. The structure of the stories, the segments, like the hero’s body tattoo, it covers from head to toe. A very Post Modern condition: we are fed snippets, small morsels, details in a relentless relativistic sea or see saw, like in commercial breaks between the movie segments. snippets of news, who still reads a full-blown news article? Lost in oceanic detail. Adolf Loos would turn in his grave: Ornament as a Crime!

Then there are The Profilers, delving into the deep dark subconscious of the villains. They know more than the villain, know him more than he knows himself. Here we have a kind of all-seeing eye, however caught in the thicket of the mind and psyche of the criminal.

What is this obsession with death and the dying on our television screens anyway? Is it a ‘Hoppla’ effect of: I am alive! A sublimation of our own transience? The kick of a ‘real’ singular death, where something is happening, whilst most of us hope to live long lives and to die in our sleep? Not noticing the passing of this threshold?

While millions are dying cruel deaths in Africa Western leisure classes bide their time and miss their own perishability by watching crime stories with a singular death at stake. Is this obscene?

Urban Reflections

On the movie SHAME

by Steve McQueen

Yesterday evening the film SHAME was shown at the Zürich Film Festival in the Corso Theatre near Bellevue. Perhaps it is not surprising that the first contribution to Zürich Cultural Reflections should be a film taking place in the city of cities, the metropolis New York.
At the same time this film could take place in many cities, perhaps also in Zürich. The city and the characters have a universal quality.

The story: a young business man is a sex addict. The film shows the main protagonist, superbly acted, in his incessant engagement with sex.: masturbating at every opportunity he gets, may this be the shower, the toilet of his sterile work place, in front of his computer-Endless scenes of copulation with women, he undresses them with his eyes in the subway, with his hands and words at the bar and the dance floor with his looks at the work place. Many naked scenes, it is difficult to find a dressed person too long in this study of an obsession with sex. The obligatory hot one night stand and quick fix under a bridge pillar in the dark gushing streets of New York. The naked sister visiting, the visits to rough and tough bordellos and homosexual tough guy places.
 
Scenes of shame everywhere. The viewer is put on the spot, too much information? The stacks of pornos in the closet, scenes of shame with close to incestual scenes with the sister, the crack or ecstasy ridden prostitutes in the bordellos, the promiscuity of the dungy side room cabins in gay copulation joint. Scenes of shame when he can’t get it up with a woman, when he is beaten up by a tough guy who’s turf the protagonist treads on fingering the girlfriend at a bar.

The pace of the film is relentless. Naked copulating bodies everywhere. No sign of emotion. The buildings are cold glass cages, the human encounters wordless and without emotion, save for his sister the singer and a young black woman admits this world of expensive white urban trash? The sister sings the Song New York New York like a children’s lullaby. He weeps. One tear running down his cheek. The sister attempts to take her life and he nearly collapses in the wet streets outside of the hospital. He howls for all of humanity!

This film sheds light on darkness, it is a silent witness. The movie is devoid of dialog. Images and Bach’s English or Italian Concertos played by Glenn Gould intercept an interiority the surface of the images hold a counterpoint to. Is Steve McQueen looking like Goya in his Les Desastres? LIke Hockney in his Swimming Pool paintings, simply showing the void, the ice the coldness and utter alienation of a human being frozen in a deep dark stupor of not feeling himself and others? The hardness of what we are seeing is painful, unbearable. And yet there is the gentility of the piano, the tear running down his cheek, the velvet soft voice of the sister the sea of tears in the streets outside the hospital. This film is weeping and so should we. A deeply moving disturbing and at the same time curiously uplifting film because it throws the light on something where we usually like to look away, it looks at our inside while documenting the outside. A big BRAVO for the film SHAME.

GvB

October 3rd 2011

In the past ten years we have lost several from the Southern Gospel field. It saddens me to think that we are losing so many from that field. This is music that I was listening to while staying with my Grandparents in Southern Indiana.

People like the Happy Goodman family. Vestal and Howard were wonderful together. Vestal had a voice that rivaled Kate Smith and Ethel Merman. When she opened her mouth not only could you hear her love of the Lord. You could feel it.

I loved J.D Sumner with his bass voice. The Cathedrals were the best on the old camp meeting songs.
Mom and Pop Speers, Hovie Lister and Jake Hess. All of who will be greatly missed.

Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with the young people that are carrying on the southern gospel Tradition. The Isaac’s, Jeff and Sherri Easter, all of the Gaither Vocal Band.( Old and new). Jason Crabb, Charlotte Church, Candy Christmas and so many wonderful singers.

But there was just something magical when the older Southern Gospel singers took the stage. They opened their mouths and you felt God in the room with you tapping his feet. The sound drifted through the walls and you realized that you had been touched by God.

Thank you Jessy and all of the Southern Gospel performers that have gone on a head to perform in the Heavenly Choir.

That’s one Choir I hope to see one day.

Blessings all

Gwyn Weyant

This is more like it. It may be hard to tell from the picture, but this GVB is running a set of matte black Advan RG-D’s with 265′s. A very nice combination because the fitment is on point. The STi V-Limited front lip also adds a bit of flavor. The GVB really is a great looking car and shouldn’t be ignored.

Photo courtesy of scotheocelot.

Everyone meet the imaginatively named Green Vegetable Bug. GVB, this is everyone.

This little guy is a Green Vegetable Bug (Nazara viridula) and is a common pest of pulses. This includes beans, peas, lentils, soybeans and pretty much everything vaguely related to beans except for Chickpeas (Cicer arietinum). These guys are actual bugs, which if you were an entomologist would mean something useful in describing their life cycle. Let’s just say for now, all bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs. GVBs hatch from yellowish egg clusters, and grow in stages, called instars, until they are full sized adults. The young look more or less the same as the grown-ups, except for the colouration.

The thing that really sucks about these guys is they really do suck. They use their piercing mouthparts to poke into almost developed beans in their pods, and suck all the goodness out. That means less for us to eat, or at the very least, sad looking, mis-shapen beans or peas. In really bad infestations, there may be up to 20 bugs per square metre, which means a lot of damaged beans. They can also attack flowers and early pods, too, reducing yields even further, and may suck sap from other plants including corn, sunflowers and tomatoes. They are also becoming a problem in commercial cotton crops, and with the the amount of pesticides already used on that crop, they may be developing resistance to chemical sprays.  They don’t like being disturbed, and will actually spray a stinky substance that can stain your skin or clothing. Little skunks.

They can be controlled with chemical sprays, though they can be pretty toxic. They are relatively easy to catch and kill by hand, if you can see them first, but wear gloves to avoid being stinkified. There are two parasitic wasps that will help keep their numbers down, one which destroys their eggs (Trissolcus basalis) and another which attacks the adult bugs (Trichopoda giacomellii). You can search for suppliers on the internet, and most companies will mail the appropriate predator along with instructions. The thing to remember is to avoid other pesticides that could harm the good guys once they are released.

I am sure you will see them around once you start looking, but possibly not so much in the colder months. I think mine was looking for somewhere warm to hide.

That’s how I envision Varis testing their latest designs. Their workshop has been described as a mystical place, high in the mountains for Japan. It’s out of reach, close to the roads with which their cars were born. Their pieces not only represent the highest levels of quality and functionality, but have contributed heavily to the fashions and styling trends of exterior tuning in the industry.

It’s always very exciting to see new aero for any car. It’s particularly exciting when that aero is made by Varis and it’s for an Impreza.

I’ve been closely following the progress of this design on Varis’ blog for the last couple of months. They’re one of the first manufacturers to design any substantial aero pieces for the GVB Impreza and the results speak for themselves.

What started as a cooling bonnet, quickly evolved into a full kit for every side of the car.

I consider this the Stage 1 kit because the design has retained the car’s factory front and rear bumpers. Over the next year or so I’ll be expecting to see Stage 2, a more heavily developed areo kit, designed for circuit driving. That should have new bumpers and more serious downforce. In years past the street kit has been a good indicator of where the company is heading with their designs. Varis never disappoints and this is currently the best look for the GVB Impreza.

Something else to look out for may be another possible collaboration with Original Runduce. For the GRB, Varis developed a unique areo kit for Runduce’s demo car. I’m excited to see that things are moving in the right direction. A lot of shops are struggling right now and we’ve seen many close their doors. Happily, Varis doesn’t seem to be one of them.

Photos courtesy of Varis.

Unless Voltex releases their own design for the GVB, I’d say this will be the one to own.

The design sticks close to Varis’s previous pieces. Why mess with a good thing? It will no doubt be a functional addition to the car and it fills out the GVB’s rear end very nicely. Expect the cost to be around $1400, when it comes out later this year.

Photos courtesy of Varis.

As I found out today – it’s not necessarily because the information isn’t there, more I hadn’t found it yet! Today I came across the Amsterdam Public transport website, with ferry & bus timetable – the English version…handy!.

Click here to access the Amsterdam journey planner.

Click here to access the Public Transport website – GVB.

Sadly less and less people are going for the cool exhausts and opting for something a bit more subdued, that fits with the design of the rear bumper. Manufacturers beginning to recognize this, are catering to this market and producing less of the “ricer” stuff we all grew up with. I ask a lot of people (especially S2000 owners) why they don’t go with a single exit exhaust. The most common answer is that it won’t look clean because of the molding for a dual exit setup on the rear bumper. For Subaru and Mitsubishi owners, it’s a similar story.

Originally I was going to make this a short post about a new product for the GVB Impreza. That spawned into a whole separate rant, but I think it’s relevant. Fujitsubo supposedly has your back and they’ve noticed that people don’t want to run a single exit exhaust with a dual exit rear bumper. So they’ve come up with sort of a solution.

It’s simply called a bumper cover and it’s designed to clean up the look of running a single exit exhaust on the GVB Impreza. I’m not sure it’s the best solution. You can clearly see that someone has put a piece of plastic where an exhaust tip used to reside, but at least they’re trying.

The kit comes with a cover, some bolts and is probably easy to install. I just don’t know if it’s worth $110.22. That seems like a shit ton of money for something that’s not even painted to match.

I hope this will at least inspire more manufacturers to come up with solutions for the dual to single exit exhaust dilemma. I wish Subaru would respond by producing a replacement bumper, but you know that’s never going to happen. I also hope that people keep rocking N1-style exhausts and potential owners aren’t scared to. My first exhaust on the Subaru was made by a company called Strömung. It was a dual tip that looked very similar to the car’s factory exhaust. It sounded great, but the only reason I got it was because I was afraid of getting pulled over. About a year later I sold the Strömung and picked up my HKS Carbon TI, which I still have now.

I’ve never let fear or the law dictate anything else that has gone on my car. Life’s short and the amount of time we actually get to enjoy these cars is small. I really hope the trend of crazy exhausts sticks around. It’s one of the few styling features that no other car community has on us. It makes Japanese tuning truly unique.