Shinka This, Shinka That At the Chicago Auto Show, Mazda displayed this special-edition "Shinka" model of the RX-8. Now on sale, the Shinka brings with it a specifically tuned and upgraded suspension with a foam-urethane-filled front suspension crossmember and retuned dampers.
There's also additional reinforcement to the top-front portion of the A-pillars for better structural rigidity and improved stability of the rear damper mounting points. The engine and other drivetrain components are unaltered. Both automatic and manual transmission versions are offered.
The Shinka comes only in black cherry paint with a parchment tan leather interior. Outside there are semi-gloss bezels for the headlamps and rear combination lamps and dark-silver gloss aluminum wheels. The inside gets a 300-watt Bose sound system with an in-dash six-disc CD changer and a standard one-year subscription to Sirius satellite radio.
"Shinka," says Mazda, "means evolution or transformation in Japanese." We'll take its word for that. But whether this is a worthwhile evolution or transformation, we'll decide after we drive it.
A Very, Very Special Mazda3? Alongside the RX-8 Shinka, Mazda put its new Mazda3 SP23 special edition up for display at the Chicago Auto Show. Is it just us, or does it seem like Mazda issues a new special edition every week?
Anyhow, this special-edition Mazda3 is a package of 17-inch wheels, extended side sills, rain-sensing windshield wipers, a leather-lined interior, a special black instrument panel and a Bose sound system with a six-disc in-dash CD changer that will crack open a beer bottle at half volume.
The SP23 is available on both three- and five-door Mazda3s and is only painted in carbon gray mica. Take away the carbon and the mica parts and you're simply left with gray.
Back In The Acura Again Sport Compact Car is once again an associate sponsor of Peter Cunningham's efforts in the Touring Car division of the Speed World Challenge. But this year, Cunningham leaves his TeamRTR Nissan Sentra SE-R parked and returns to RealTime Racing and Acura.
In fact, RealTime Racing is roaring back with a total of five Acuras in Touring Car. Three of those Acuras are TSXs for Cunningham, Pierre Kleinubing and Denver University freshman Brandon Davis.
The remaining two are RSXs for Eric Curran and Nick Esayian. All five cars will be painted in a new updated scheme that retains the team's traditional neon orange and white colors, but adds a streak of silver and looks better finished than before.
The 11-race World Challenge Series started its 2005 season in March at Sebring and includes street-based races for the first time this year.
2005 World Challenge Series May 20-22 Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course Lexington, Ohio
July 1-4 Lime Rock Park Lakeville, Conn.
July 15-17 Infineon Raceway Sonoma, Calif.
July 29-31 Portland International Raceway Portland, Ore.
August 12-14 CENTRIX Financial Grand Prix of Denver Denver, Colo.
August 19-21 Road America Elkhart Lake, Wis.
September 2-4 Mosport International Raceway Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada
October 14-16 Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca Monterey, Calif.
O·Z Factory Changes In The Land Of O·Z New Wheels, New Approach, But The Same Hot Factory In Northern Italy As a factory, it doesn't look like much from the outside. It looks like a seriously boring, gray place that could've been a home for those bullies of the Blockheads of "Gumby" fame. Then we saw the tuned 400-hp WRX STi in the president's parking spot with its golden Prodrive-pack wheels and we knew we had the right place.
Cranking out one million of the world's most desirable wheels per year-monoblock, two-piece and three-piece; aluminum alloy and magnesium-O·Z has built quite a reputation from its humble location in the tiny burg of San Martino di Lupari, north of Venice, Italy. Aside from the core aftermarket business for regular performance pigs like us, O·Z has become famous for supplying indestructible wheels to leading teams in most open-wheel series, including Formula One and the IRL, the WRC and most European touring car championships.
The trend in many factories in northern Italy has been to clean up, practically inviting you to eat off of the spotless floors. It's an unavoidable trend as business goes global, but the still locally owned O·Z remains a hard-working haven for the grease monkey in us all. There's grime and fire and hissing and shavings and piles of heavy things everywhere. This is a perfect little factory.
O·Z is a couple of years along getting the operation to run according to the kaizen philosophy made popular by Toyota of Japan. This ensures the seamless movement, arrival and shipment of all products and supplies as needed and prevents any stock sitting which would cause the company to lose money. It's sort of a feng shui of industrial choreography. Beats us, but with 1,800 low-pressure cast and 1,000 gravity cast wheels completed and shipped daily, we believe it. Add the forged two- and three-piece wheels pumped out in the competition department of the factory and the numbers go even higher.
We watched as a guy with a forklift raced back and forth picking up huge ingots of 99.7-percent pure aluminum, carried them individually to one of several forges and pushed them in. Before pushing each all the way in, he raced over and grabbed a pinch of some alloy and placed it on top of the aluminum, finally shoving the whole recipe in to be liquefied by the 1,800-degree F sauna. This was industry at its finest.
From there we followed wheels through their castings right through to the electrostatically applied powder coating, three-phase painting and polishing. All O·Z monoblock wheels 17 inches and up are low-pressure cast, water-cooled, heat treated, lighter and less prone to being rejected at quality control for imperfections.
Lower-cost gravity cast wheels do not get heat treated, are air-cooled and generally require more metal to fill out any air pockets, thus coming out slightly heavier. Gravity cast O·Z wheels are 13 to 16 inches. Multipiece high-end wheels made from forged parts range from 17 inches up to 24-inch customs. Currently, all forged materials come to O·Z from Japan and Russia, so it may take awhile for all this kaizen-ation to kick in.
At last year's SEMA show, O·Z announced a new company scheme. Up until now there have been three brands under the O·Z umbrella-MSW, O·Z and O·Z Forged-and four core ranges of O·Z aftermarket wheels-Racing, Prestige, Classic and All-Terrain. The company's push to establish street cred for the MSW brand of lower-cost aftermarket wheels has been coming up short.
For one thing, the three main company brands get some renaming: O·Z Easy Line (was MSW), O·Z and O·Z Tuner System (was O·Z Forged). Product line-wise, both Easy Line and Tuner System stand alone, while the all-powerful O·Z has its four types tweaked: Racing, Prestige, Street-Style and All-Terrain. Six of the 21 current styles get retired.
The remaining 15 go through minor reshuffles and are joined by five fresh styles that kicked our butts when we saw them at the factory. A sixth for the Street Style line debuted at the Italian equivalent of SEMA called My Special Car in April 2005.
Re-focused While Ford's original Focus continues to soldier on here in America, fresh variations of the second-generation Focus seem to appear in Europe every 20 minutes. And the latest twist is an interesting one.