WORKS Motorsports
When Mitsubishi finally brought the Lancer Evolution over to North America, it was already 2003 and the “Evo”, as it was lovingly known around the world, had already been through seven previous iterations. Understandably, Americans were itching to finally get their hands on one. Like the launch of the Mustang or Miata, the Evo’s arrival in the United States was a seminal event that sent a huge ripple through the tuning industry.
One of these ripples can still be seen going strong today. WORKS Motorsports, located right up the hill from the karting track at Sonoma Raceway in Sonoma, California, was originally founded because of the news that Mitsubishi was finally bringing its rally-bred monster to our shores.
There are hundreds of “tuner shops” in this country. Most of them are simply resellers who also perform maintenance on cars, but there are some that have their own line of products. That’s where it starts to get questionable. Where do the designs for these parts even come from?
Well, unfortunately most of the time you can’t really answer that question. And even when the product was created in-house, who designed it? It’s one thing to weld up a few tubes for an intake or exhaust, but how do you know if it actually does anything?
That’s where WORKS provides a compelling service. They have technicians like any other shop, but crucially, they also have engineers. Everything they make and sell is completely designed in-house to be at least OEM quality, and tested on the dyno to make measurable gains.
Take their line of exhausts, for example; this is where their philosophy really shines through. Each piece of their exhaust system bolts right up to the OEM flanges, which means you can swap out any or all of the components as you like. Their exhausts are much lighter than the OEM pieces, plus they’re tuned to sound great and even make a couple extra ponies per piece.
As an FR-S owner, however, there is one big piece of in-house engineering that really excited me: their very own CARB-exempt turbo kit for the Subaru BRZ and Scion FR-S.
This is their shop demo car, and I’ll be taking a look at it in another post. But for now let’s take a look around the shop.
Inside the waiting room is a product showcase and a collection of toys…hey, is that a Playstation in the corner?
If you were raised in the ’90s (like me), these are some important pieces of software.
The shop itself is quite large, offering a nice bit of elbow room and no feeling of crammed in cars or parts.
When I was there, this BRZ was getting a few choice WORKS upgrades.
Namely the WORKS blue brake pads and stainless steel brake lines, which should really improve the braking feel and performance over stock. The OEM pads are great on the street but experience pretty severe fade after only two or three big stops, which is why one of the first mods to my FR-S was Hawk HP Plus brake pads.
In addition to normal customer cars getting bolt-on upgrades, WORKS also preps and maintains full race cars. What is that behind the alignment rack..?
Yep, that’s a real UK-spec, right-hand-drive EP3 Honda Civic Type R. Wow!
Check out all the crazy race-spec bits, like the full carbon fiber doors.
Around the corner on the side of the shop is the fabrication area. That’s where you’ll find the exhaust jig you see up the page, as well as this row of engines in various states of build and re-build.
Tags: useful way before the internet.
When I walked around to the back of the shop, I was in for a surprise. No, not because of the DynaPack dynamometers–you would expect a serious AWD tuner like WORKS to have hub dynos. No, it was because of what was sitting right in the middle…
As a North American car enthusiast, this would certainly be classified as a unicorn. Any Japanese car newer than 25 years old is a sight to behold in the USA (particularly extra-strict California), but a LHD special edition of a car that’s already rare? This is one of those cars that I’ve always dreamed about seeing, but never thought I would. Anyway, look for a separate article on that car (as well as the race-spec Evo X behind it).
Are those old Porsche seats? And those seem to be the old doors and fender(s) from their racing Evo X.
I love looking at all the old stuff lying around shops, and imagining the story of what they are or how they got there. Rain tires with one more session? Is that a Honda intake manifold? And was that ramp re-purposed into a sliding stool?
What about this fuel can? When was the last time fuel was dumped in anger, and into what?
A lot of stuff gets forgotten, but it’s not gone. Take this “Magic Mountain” golf cart, for example.
It might not have a seat, and I doubt it runs anymore, but the potential is there. This would be a fantastic pit vehicle, with its spacious cargo area and already generous patina.
Wise words!
Back up front, I caught a technician in the act. He laughed right after I took this shot—yep, demonstrating the high skill level of WORKS technicians; just look at him hand-thread those lugnuts!
Are you interested in tires? Consider yourself a true tire geek if you can name every tire model in this photo.
After collecting what I needed from the inside of WORKS, it was time for the bread and butter: the cars. First, my gracious host pulled the Evo 6.5 out of the dyno room and we got to work…
Ending on a teaser? Of course! Coming up next: car features.
Family Seating
You want safe, and you want sporty?
Volvo sports seats. Hard to beat.
Cool as Air
It almost feels weird praising an air-cooled 911. It’s like raving about The Beatles; most of the time you’ll be preaching to the choir, but from time to time you’ll meet people who get annoyed when you start prattling on about the world’s most overrated boy band.
Now that the 911 market has gone positively bonkers, it can be hard to separate the real impressions from the hype. It’s so easy to jump on the bandwagon because, realistically, these cars are currently one of the hot tickets in the car world. There has to be a point where values will level off, but as of this writing that’s not something that seems probable any time soon (check back on this post in the future for laughs).
In any case, that is exactly why right now you won’t be reading any prosaic meanderings about thin pillars, funky smelling heaters, or light front ends. I have no plans to gush about “the way things used to be”, nor am I interested in spending any time analyzing the current market for these cars or pondering the existence of three separate gauges relating to different facets of the oil.
Right now, in this moment, it’s all about the “squashed jellybean”. Introduced at the 1993 Frankfurt Motor Show, the Porsche 993 is polarizingly beautiful. Some have hailed it as the most gorgeous evolution of the original 911, while some air-cooled diehards have backhandedly remarked that at least its fried-egg-faced successor looked worse.
It was still based on the classic 911, even thirty-some years after it was originally designed, but they still sought to modernize it. The narrow body car (seen here) was wider than ever, with sumptuous, straight-outta-the-90s curves. The 968-ish aerodynamic headlights, sloped tail lights, and smooth bumpers rounded out the package–quite literally–yet on the whole it was, and still is, unmistakably 911.
Inside as well, it’s unmistakably 911, little having changed since the ’60s. Gotta love the huge tachometer right in the center. The window switches migrated to the center console for the 996, but I like how they went back to the high forward door position with the 997. Predictably, they’re the industry-standard door handle type in the 991–another example of how they keep engineering the funkiness out of 911’s.
Something that is not unique to 911’s in particular are crappy rear jump seats. They’re mostly useful just for emergencies, but I have actually seen families of three or four rolling around in modern 911’s. If you’re a kid or just a shorty, I suppose you could make do back there.
When we embarked on this shoot the intention was to capture the nuances of the paint in sunlight. However, as soon as we arrived at our location, the clouds came over and killed that plan. As you can see, it looks quite navy blue in the shade. Normally I like shooting under San Francisco’s naturally diffused light, but it just wasn’t what I was after on this particular day. At this point you have to do the only thing you can do when you’re right there: Plan B.
This location was right in the center of the city: Twin Peaks. We thought that no one would bother us down this dead end, but sure enough, as soon as we moved into this position someone needed to get past us into their driveway.
Longer focal lengths are great. This was ‘only’ at 105mm but the car just looks so short.
Short focal lengths are great too–I love how funky and exaggerated cars look when shot up close with wide lenses.
One of the major challenges with shooting cloudy lighting conditions is maintaining a consistent white balance. As sunlight is diffused through clouds, it takes on a different hue.
This color, Ocean Blue Metallic, was offered for narrow 993’s in 1997 only and wasn’t particularly popular at the time. The above shot is sort-of-almost what we initially set out to capture (more or less), but the sun didn’t play for long; it actually started raining when we were at this location, unfortunately putting an early end to this shoot. Bummer, because this paint has some lovely bright teal shades hidden in there.
Setting you down gently here, I present a not-unusual San Francisco scene. His ‘n’ Hers hybrids, perhaps?
I don’t think this 993 is going anywhere for a while. Which means you’ll see more of it here in the future…hopefully with certain modifications… (don’t want to give away too much!)
People Who Drive Cars Drinking Coffee
I am not an early bird. I’m the type of person who sleeps in on Christmas morning and isn’t very familiar with the concept of “the sunrise”. Honestly, I wish it wasn’t like that–I love the cool, crisp air in the morning as well as the lovely crepuscular rays peeking over the horizon. But, quite clearly, I don’t love that stuff enough to drag my corpse out of bed in the early dark hours to experience them first hand.
And that is why, believe it or not, I had NEVER been to a Cars & Coffee meet before 2015. Part of it is because I don’t have much interest in static car shows, but mostly because I just didn’t want to wake up so early.
But on February 1st, I awoke in darkness and headed to San Francisco to meet my buddy Art and his newly acquired oil-cooled Porsche. After a few snags getting out the door, we managed to be on the road around 7:40. The meet, held at the Blackhawk Museum in Danville, was supposed to start at 7:30 AM, but people always show up much earlier than that in order to get a good spot in one of the main parking areas.
I was a bit deflated after we got there, it has to be said. Despite the fact that we were turned away from entering any one of the “show” lots in the 993 because there were so many cars there (some said it was the largest Blackhawk C&C they’d ever seen), there were these sort of “quality” vehicles and their equal amount of respect toward parking.
It’s very easy to pick nits and notice the things you don’t like, especially at Cars & Coffee, which has an “everybody’s a winner” attitude. If you show up early enough, you can park literally anything in the show lot. One day I’ll test this by bringing my mom’s 2004 Volvo out there…but I digress. You have to really look to find your personal stars in a place that has everything, so the point here is simple: Challenge Accepted.
I was actually pretty intrigued by this thing, and not just because of the fender mirrors. Sure, it looked like a high school student had gotten ahold of it, but at least they were comprehensive.
Functionality? Surely reduced. But when the rest of your high school parking lot is filled with ten-year-old Camrys and Accords, you can imagine how much of a splash this makes.
Ah, to be young again. This thing is impractical, unsafe, and ridiculous–but isn’t that the point? The owner was even friendly enough to invite me to open the doors and look inside, which was unsurprising. After all, he probably built it for attention, and that’s what it was getting.
For better or for worse, that was the only homegrown contraption I saw. There were quite a few cars that looked like they’d only been driven on Sundays, like these Trans-Am’s for example. Now that’s something you don’t see every day.
As always, it’s the little details in this hobby that really create the immersive effect; the more you look, the more you see.
This was another standout for me, and entirely for personal reasons: my dad had a 1965 Chevelle hardtop when I was growing up.
Save the best for last? Eff that. On the heels of the last paternal vehicle comes another one: this 1936 Ford Pickup that I’ve seen many times before. Over on Ellis Street in San Francisco between Larkin and Polk is a shop called “Allied Engine” and this truck is usually sitting outside, as well as other cool vintage cars. Anyway, I actually own a ’36 Ford pickup, a “barn find” of sorts; my dad bought it in 1972 and after his stroke in 1999, it has never been driven. My truck, however, is a bit sacrilegious: back in the 80s it was hot rodded with…a small block Chevy engine. Swapping SBC’s into the “wrong” chassis is definitely nothing new, that’s for sure.
No worries about any of that here! Quite clearly, that is a supercharged Ford V8. Hell yeah!
Sidestepping in time, there was a lovely Cord.
Just another nicely modded 911.
Strangely, for how many E30 M3’s were made and how their popularity has exploded in recent times, there was only one in attendance.
After all this, you may be wondering why I decided to wake up at 5 AM on a Sunday to see these things. Well, part of the catalyst was to see my friend Brendan and his BMW. He had recently done a few things and I was anxious to see. Plus, it’s always nice to catch up and get some face time with friends.
Speaking of E9’s, there was one in attendance that could be legitimately considered famous. This Atlantik Blue (NOT Atlantic Blue, which is a very different BMW color) 2800CS was the sixteenth E9 ever made! Even more remarkable, it was driven over 400,000 miles by the original owner, Murray Fowler. He passed away recently, but the new owner is an older lady who definitely loves and appreciates it. (If you’re interested in this car, get on Google and type in “Blu Max BMW”)
What an incredibly clean interior for any car from 1969, let alone one that has 425,000 miles on it!
Finally, spots started clearing up, and Art moved his 993 into the actual “show” lot. By then, most of the attendees had left, even though it was only 9 o’clock. Where does everyone need to go on Sunday mornings?
After things cleared up even more, he parked his Carrera next to this Carrera S so we could do a bit of comparison.
Do you prefer the narrow body with no accoutrements, or the wide body with some aero?
As we were getting ready to leave, Brendan mentioned that he had two free tickets to the museum for us, since he wasn’t planning on going again anytime soon. Unfortunately, the second floor was closed for repairs, but who cares? It was free! Pictured above is NOT a Ford GT40, believe it or not. It’s actually a Mirage M1, which was based on a Mk1 GT40, at least.
Other highlights included this Jaguar XKSS…
…and these crazy Bertone-designed Alfa Romeo “BAT” concepts from the 50’s. (and no, that’s not “Bring a Trailer”, it’s “Berlinetta Aerodinamica Tecnica”)
Judging by the amount of time I spent taking in its majesty, my favorite thing in the museum had to be this 1933 Packard Sport Phaeton. Only two were built that year; not surprising for such a ridiculous car built in the depths of the Great Depression. Not sure I’d want to be exposed to the elements in such an ostentatious beast.
Next on the Star Road menu is that 993 in a bit more detail. Watch this space.
Star Road 