Today we’re back with more of our Sunday School coverage, and since the long and wordy intro was taken care of in Part 1 (as you do) today we can get right into the photos!

2018 car show? New CTRs were of course there. Calgary car show? They were on TE37s. I will never buy a black car – unless it’s one that’s getting repainted to a different colour – but comparing Josh’s FK8 (as seen in Part 1) to the others that I’ve seen, I think it may just be the best factory colour for these…

I see this ITR out regularly at events but don’t know who owns it. It’s wicked to see preserved examples like this and the classic white/white/red scheme will always look good. I’d go Phoenix Yellow for an ITR but it’s hard to argue with this!

FK8s are of course the rage these days but we’re fortunate enough to get to see some older CTRs here and there as well; this one’s been seen on the site before but of course I wasn’t going to walk by without a photo. The meaty fitment was perfect and the classic Spoon/Advan decals dotted around were a nice touch. I also spy a Flying Penguin…

Sitting next to its RHD counterpart was Arif’s EK, following a full heart transplant! Arif updated to a K series and had it more or less up and running in time for the show; the hood is of course down here but I made sure to grab some photos later on when it was popped to show off the new powerplant.

Alright fellow Honda fans, try to pick just one.

We jump a bit further down the row now (don’t worry Brad, I have a photo of your Beetle coming!) to a car that I wasn’t expecting to see at the show, that’s for sure – Terence’s EK! You may recall that a few years ago Terence picked up a black EK, to finally build one for himself. After receiving a number of parts and being a great little car to cruise around in and show off, it was torn down a little while ago for a full build and at this year’s iMSS we got to see the “finished” product (a project is never truly finished, so I use that word in the sense that it’s back together following the makeover). Because the colour he’d opted for didn’t look this blue in the picture I’d seen on IG I didn’t even recognize this as his car at first glance. When I walked closer and saw the wheels I got suspicious though and a quick read of the judging sheet on the dashboard confirmed it as his.

There’s plenty more to come of this as I made sure to go back for another round of photos and studying. It was a super nice build, but that’s not surprising given how long Terence had been working towards this. Everything was thought out very well and the colour (Mercedes’ Chinablau) was perfect.

I didn’t intend for this post to start off on a Honda streak, I swear! The last H-badged car before we move on for a bit is one that you’ve surely all seen or heard of by now. A quick snapshot of it was in Part 1 but of course we were curious to track it down for a closer look, and so we did. It’s rare in this day and age for a build to just appear out of nowhere but this one did just that! The flares reminded me very much of the old Feel’s widebody but I have no idea what they actually were.

And now for something completely different…this was insane. It looked to be roughly the same age as our Suburban (’93) based on the pre-facelift interior, and that’s all I can really offer on this one.

Another headline at this year’s show was the debut of Binh’s 240Z; also a very long term project, it spent many weeks at Stampede Collision (shoutout because they do all of the paintwork on my cars as well!) earlier this year getting resprayed inside and out, before Binh then thrashed to get it all reassembled in time for iMSS. Like with Terence’s EK I have more coming of this, so don’t worry; I made sure to also go back to this one for a closer look later on in the day. Sorry if I drooled on it Binh.

They were not the exact same shade, but it was amazing to see how similar the Datsun’s hue (its original colour, Datsun 112) and that of the Performante were. It made for quite a pair!

Mike’s “FD3RS” was also on display as part of the Since Day One group, naturally. I’m sure I’ll get a complaint or two for claiming this but I’d say that they have what is likely the strongest team in town in terms of builds; their standards of detail and quality can’t be ignored.

I liked this angle of the FD with the hood popped, and fender cutouts clearly visible, and as it happened Mike himself was standing in the background. Haha. Anyway, we’ll move on from their group for a bit now but return later on in the post; these photos are going up in more or less chronological order and I did jump around a little bit while I was shooting.

Can Varis make a kit that isn’t amazing? I think not.

Birdy’s Bunny/Backer/Varis FR-S. It’s interesting to see Lambo doors starting to reappear on modern builds; on the right cars, these look at home and can really complement the other work.

As I wasn’t shooting with my ultrawide (come to think of it, I’m not sure if I used it at all at iMSS) I had to stand back a bit from vehicles to get them entirely in frame; hence the slightly odd angle here which results in the wheels being almost completely hidden.

I can’t tell you the exact year or model, but I can tell you this thing oozed presence and style. Dare I leave the Suburban to just age naturally, and in 20 years’ time throw it on bags? How can you argue with this?

I don’t know the full details of this so I’m unsure if it’s a rebadged CSX or converted Civic; either way it looked amazing. You can’t ignore the Spoon mirrors, and the colour was spot-on too – blue/grey. So hot right now.

I always wonder how many people would mistake a Boss S14 for something American and from the ’70’s instead, at first glance? The ‘murican V8 under the hood would surely only serve to further confuse…

Ha.

Take your SUVs/CUVs/whatever acronym it is these days and keep them. Wagons are best, as Jimmy shows with his F31. Even better though, would be a full M3 conversion (hint hint).

I was glad to have a second chance to look over this STI, knowing this time around that it was wrapped and not painted. Brian and I purposely spent our time trying to find any indications that would give it away, and after rounding the entire vehicle the only clues were a super small wrinkle in a bumper/fender seam, and one more on the edge of a quarter panel. You’d have to really know what you were looking at, and looking for, to be able to tell that this wasn’t paint.

Not too far away from the STI sat this very nicely Spoon themed DC2; so nice apparently that I forgot to get a photo of the full car, after being distracted by all of the Spoon details under the hood. At Driven I derped with the Varis GT-R, here with the Spoon DC2. Slow, sarcastic clap…

Partway through the day I wandered back up the +15 staircase for a few more shots, of the now full lot. In the photo directly above I see Terence checking out the 240 (I only noticed him during the editing); with the size of the event we never actually ran into each other all day! There were a few others that I never got the chance to say hi to as well, despite all of us spending several hours there. Haha

Eric’s S15; if ill.motion did categorized awards like “Best Stance”, this would be a sure contender. The stock S15 body looks so good when dropped on some aggressive wheels.

By this point Josh had the hood popped on his restomodded EG, revealing its K swap and tucked/shaved bay. Josh definitely spent a lot of time here tidying things up but didn’t go overboard with the whole removing/hiding-components part of the equation. It’s clean and tidy but practical.

Next to Trunger’s AP2 anything would look tame, but Aldo’s AP1 still displayed a fair bit of aggression with his aero choices. I’ve always liked its white-on-blue combo, too.

Jason’s FR-S looking like the black hole as it so often does in photos…

I kid of course. Maybe I spent too much time for that lame joke; it seemed funny at 1 in the morning when I was editing…

With Punit’s GS for sale, I suppose this will leave JC’s CT as the sole survivor of the Mean Girls.

Adrian’s EJ ended the day with an Honour Roll award which was awesome to see. I’m still super happy every time I see this thing out and about, following its rear-ender last season. This car surely beat out most others at the show in terms of the amount of work put into it in the last year, though in this case most of the work was to “restore” it rather than modify it further.

And speaking of cars with insane amounts of work into them…we go back to Since Day One now with this Levin coupe. It was absolutely one of the more involved builds as it, at one point, was a shell on a rotisserie! There is not a square inch on this car – literally – that has not seen at least some attention. I actually had the chance on a few occasions to see it while it was on said rotisserie, though I don’t believe I ever got a photo of it at that stage. I may need to dig back through my phone’s pictures and check on that.

“Let’s double the amount of cylinders and throw a turbo on top!”; this S14 must be a handful. I didn’t grab a shot of the interior – in hindsight I probably should have – but I was quite impressed at the cleanliness of it. It’d been stripped for the cage of course, but instead of the work ending there, it had also been fully refinished and the paint looked to be comparable in quality to that of the exterior!

The black-on-tan MkIV was also showing with them again, and still has the largest-diameter charge piping I’ve ever seen in person. My turbo could fit inside that with room to spare…which either says a lot about the piping, or that I need to upgrade. You decide.

Here’s one for you RX-7 fans, but perhaps not the purists. There were no Doritos here, but a 2JZ instead!

Another Honour Roll winner this year was Tommy’s V-Cam RB30-swapped, GT-R-faced R34 sedan. It’s always awesome to see ER34s built up, and with the ever-rising prices of R34 GT-Rs it certainly makes sense too. For the same money as a stock GT-R you could have one serious four-door.

Will there ever be a day when Ryan’s EP3 is not still participating in local events? I hope not. I should really go back and find that old issue of Honda Tuning (I know for a fact I still have it) in which this thing was featured; it’s crazy to think about how long ago that was, and that the car still looks right at home at today’s shows.

Aldrich’s Element with its bright red shoes…almost as bright as those on the guy in the background! I’ve yet to capture it with my proper camera but he recently picked up an IS300 which has already seen a fair bit of attention; but the Rubbermaid tub was taken to iMSS this year instead. Something about having to haul DJ equipment?

Rob and Kanji with their wrapped Subarus; but one’s static and one’s bagged.

And last but not least…as good a way as any to wrap up Part 2 today would be to return to Since Day One with a few shots of Ryan’s F355 right? I understand that we should be seeing this thing on Speedhunters at some point, following a photoshoot during the roadtrip (that apparently everyone and their dog took) to Wekfest Seattle earlier this summer. I can’t wait to see that!

As always thank you all for reading, and be sure to check back soon for Part 3!

-Bill