Author Archives: Maxime Lacroix

REV9 Taipei Meet at biggest Mazda Dealership in Asia

Right now, I’m doing a business & fun travel, aka Workation. I choose Taipei because of relatively low cost of living, safety and because I have many customers from Taiwan.

Even though this was not supposed to happen, I decided to organize a small Roadster meeting!

There was not so many people who showed up (heavy rain, last minute event), but I am glad that the biggest Mazda dealership in South East Asia decided to let us use their location. Check the photos, it’s worth it.

The Meet

Meetings in Taiwan are much different than the ones in America. Most people don’t just come to hang out and show their cars, they prefer to do activities (driving, dinners, etc.). So, many people didn’t show up because it was mostly a picture session that I was hosting (note to myself : next time, do an activity).

This is the first car that showed up. It was a ND with Rays 57Transcend 17×8.5 +40 Wheels. I loved the look of the color combo!

Then, we started posing. Nice way to show the color palette of the ND!

This was Andy’s car. One of the only Manual Transmission ND in Taiwan (read below for the reason). He’s also rocking the RK Design Rear Spoiler!

There were also 2 people who showed but it wasn’t for the meeting, just for maintenance… haha!

A beautiful white ND with Zeromotive Muffler Cutters:

And this VERY rare piece. It’s a ND “Gran Turismo” Edition. To get this very car, you need to order Gran Turismo (collector’s edition) and the car comes as a bonus. It’s probably the most expensive Gran Turismo Game EVER.

And a few more showed up!

Lastly, a few more people showed and this ND owner wanted a picture for the blog, so here we go:

Here are some pictures of where we hosted the event, it’s worth showing it off:

The reception looks like the one from a high end hotel :

As you can see, it’s just HUGE. All made of beautiful black marble as well as wood. It’s 2 stories high.

The showroom is SUPER neat.

They have a nice collection of old school Mazda magazines :

They even have a Skyactiv Engine on display

So, why is the Mazda dealership SO big and SO beautiful, you may ask?

Let’s do basic economics here.

A loft in downtown Taipei can cost you ~$500 USD per month (which is really low, in my opinion).

Cars are taxed HEAVILY. We’re talking 60% + tax.

A ND Miata (Soft Top) in Taipei cost you a small NT$1,320,000 ; that’s about USD$45,000

The RF cost NT$1,500,000 so about USD$51,000

Fun fact, ALL Mazda cars here have the Automatic Transmission (AT). People with Manual Transmission (MT) vehicles MT actually need to import their cars from overseas (the manual ones I saw came from Germany).

I still didn’t answer the question, though. Let’s just put it this way. Since the price of the vehicle is up to par with what a BMW or Mercedes-Benz would cost in USA, the dealership reflects the high price of the price people will pay for a car.

Here’s the waiting area, so you can work or just relax while your car is serviced:

You can see your car being worked on, if you don’t trust the mechanics:

When I did the photo shoot, they were doing a demo of camping gear for the new CX-5. I learned that you can actually camp on your car… neat.

They even offer you free coffee, and it’s not coming from a K-Cup machine!

It’s fair to say that this dealership is nicer than any of those I ever visited during my many times in Japan. I hope you enjoyed this read and understood a bit more about the scene in Taiwan! By the way, it was not a ND-only meeting. It just happens that there never were NA in Taiwan, they sold NB for a few years and it was not popular enough. They skipped the NC and when the ND was revealed, they started selling it back again!

 

The Road(Ster) Trip – Miami in a gold fashion

I’ve been many times to Florida in my life, but never to organize Miata meetings. I’m glad I’ve been able to do so, it’s been over 10 years I deal with awesome customers from this state and it was the time to give back.

Funny enough, many of the people who attended both events met me during Miatas At The Gap. During the first part of my Road(Ster) Trip, I’ve had A LOT of driving and it was time for me to relax just a little. I decided to stay 4 weeks in Florida to catch up with emails, orders and take a bit of (me) time.

***I’D LIKE TO APPOLOGIZE FOR HOW LATE I’M CREATING THIS BLOG POST, BUT I’M CATCHING UP WITH LIFE***

 

Wynwood (Miami)

And here is the last time someone saw my car in its grey form. I decided to do a photoshoot in one of my favorite spot in Miami : Wynwood District.

 

The biggest highlight of this trip was the fact that I decided to change the color of my car without really telling anyone. I wanted something that would be unique, yet keep some of the classiness of the car. I went with Autoflex (made by Plastidip) which is a liquid vinyl with a clear coat that you spay on the vehicle to change the color, but most importantly, to protect the paint underneath. I knew I had a very long way to go on my trip, so if I could keep my Machine Grey color intact underneath, it would be awesome.

 

The result was pretty awesome, I was ready for a disaster, but it ended up looking pretty sweet.

 

Miami

This was just weeks before the Hurricane Irma happened. The weather really was AGAINST us, it was raining for a few days, but we still managed to do the meeting. I took pictures of pretty much all of those who came to the event! As usual, we went to a craft beer spot : The Tank Brewing Co. Here are some pictures of the event~

Neat NB with 15” Enkei RPF1-RS Wheels :

NC with some extra power~

Matt (Captain Slow)’s NC

Nice NC rocking Nissan R32 Wheels & the Garage Vary Eyelids

My friend Erik I met at Miatas At The Gap

And then, a whole bunch of people came up, it really was an awesome event!

Oh and a non-Roadster came, too!

 

At one point, the brewery staff offered us to bring the ND Demo Car inside of their bar for a location, that was pretty great!

 

After the event, we went for a little drive in Miami and ended up doing an awesome photo with the city landscape (which ended up on Mazda USA’s Instagram and landed 5.8k likes, really proud of this one)! It really shows the beauty of the 17” Advan RZ Wheels as well as the Rallybacker ND Low Ducktail Spoiler.

MazdaUSA’ post : click here. (https://www.instagram.com/p/Bbuft6XjHnj/?taken-by=mazdausa)

 

I hope you enjoyed this post about the Miami event! More to come in the next weeks~

 

 

 

The Road(Ster) Trip – Visit at R-Speed & drive South with new mods

I usually only do blog posts about cities & meets I organize, this one is a little different. I found out I kind of forgot to post some very nice upgrades that I did on my demo car (and some of them were temporary, you’ll read about it in the next blog posts…)!

***I’D LIKE TO APPOLOGIZE FOR HOW LATE I’M CREATING THIS BLOG POST, BUT I’M CATCHING UP WITH LIFE***

After I organized the Atlanta Meet, I went at my friend Joe’s shop (R-Speed) to have some work done on my car.

 

R-Speed

It’s one of the pioneer in the Miata tuning community. Everyone who works there knows a lot about Miatas and are very friendly (talk to Hector, you’ll see what I mean). They will solve ANY problem in term of mechanical work on all years Miatas, I couldn’t recommend them more. I went up there to install some small parts, but the main piece we had to do were the Odula ND Side Skirts! You can also see the very nice Rallybacker ND Low Ducktail Spoiler and Odula ND Rear Diffuser. Due to the reduction of clearance, we also raised the car height by about 5-10mm as otherwise the side steps were way too low.

 

For those who don’t know much about R-Speed, it’s a very cool shop specialized in Miatas, down the road near Atlanta.

 

You’ll always be able to find the spare part you’re looking for…

 

… or the spare car!

 

Another thing we did was to install some fresh Advan Center Caps onto my Advan RZ 17×8 Wheels. We also swapped my lug nuts for some very nice Project Kics Leggdura RL53 Lug Nuts.

As it had been one (very) long week, I decided to cool it off at my favorite spot in Atlanta : Monday Night Brewing and meet some Roadster Friends (unfortunately, camera died before I could take pictures of their cars).

 

And here are some different angles of the Odula ND Side Steps :

 

You can see it flows pretty well with the TK Style ND Front Lip :

 

Drive to the South

As I left Atlanta, I decided to take some pictures on the road as I believe the scenery was really nice and it was just another reason to take photos of my car. At one point, I drove by an abandoned Gulf gas station and couldn’t believe how beautiful it was… the sky and everything, so dark.

 

And then it was time to hit the road again…

 

I hope you enjoyed this picture-heavy blog post about some small changes on my car… will continue updating the Road(Ster) Trip posts as much as I can in the next weeks!

The Mazda Demo Cars & Race Cars from TAS 2018

Mazda always show some concept and new models of ND that they’ll introduce in the upcoming year at Tokyo Auto Salon. We had a glance at all of the new models!

Check this out!

Mazda :

The ND Red Top is a new special edition ND that comes with brown leather interior and a red (burgundy) soft top!

They also brought their ND Custom Style that comes with all possible Mazdaspeed accessories from the catalog!

 

And there were also many race cars from different racing teams/brands, here they are:

MZ Racing :

They came with their race-winning ND Global Cup Car!

 

Murakami :

They brought their ND Demo Car with ND Hardtop (that we’ll start accepting pre-orders soon… send us an email to be notified when available!) on 15” Rays TE37 Wheels and rocking their ND GT Wing.

 

Long Drive Racing :

Another vehicle in same class as Murakami’s (Super Taikyu) that also has the Murakami ND Hardtop, 16” Rays CE28N Wheels and Garage Vary GT Wing (the most effective GT Wing for ND that we know of).

Cabana

Cabana is one of the top 5 in Japan’s MX-5 ND Racing Class! It’s the same standard MX5 Global Cup Car with their touch of cool graphics.

 

Hope you enjoyed our last part of the coverage of Tokyo Auto Salon 2018! Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Newsletter to receive blog updates and new products releases related to your vehicle!

 

 

The ND Soft Top & 124 Demo Cars at TAS2018

The Soft Top ND are not the new thing at Tokyo Auto Salon 2018, this year was more popular with RF Demo Cars, however, we now start to see Fiat 124 Demo Cars!

Let’s start with some Soft Top ND MX5s~

R-Spec :

The vehicle didn’t change much from what was shown last year! The car still has the ND Half Front Bumper (and it seems they added LED lights into it). It’s also rocking some cool 17” Work Meister S1 Wheels.

The rear of the vehicle has their very cool ND Rear Spoiler With Camera that has a nice European look and double as a rear view camera!

They also released for this year a ND Blind Corner Camera that installs on the front fender to help with blind spots of the vehicle.

 

Exedy :

Exedy came up with a very nice Fiat 124 Abarth Demo Car that’s rocking some awesome graphics on it! The wheels are 16” Rays CE28N Wheels in special ND fitment.

The car had INGS+1 GT Wing and a few other interior bits that we were unfortunately not able to take picture of…

 

Bride :

Bride has completely changed the look of their ND compared to last year’s look. It’s still rocking 17” Work T5R Wheels and their new ND-specific Racing Seats, the Bride Mu-Len Seats.

The red interior trims are also a nice touch to match with the seats!

While being at Bride booth, we took time to take some photos of seats that will fit into the ND. The Bride Zieg-III Type-R and Bride A.I.R are both great fits. You can also see a glimpse at the Bride Histrix that’s awesome for NA or NB applications!

Bride also told us that the Bride Vios-III is a good choice for ND Roadster vehicles!

Those seats are such beauties, no wonder the high price tag, but totally worth it!

And here are some more shots about the Bride Mu-Len Special Edition Seats! These seats include the rails that are made for the ND!

 

Car Making RevYou

This is a shop we never heard of. They showed up at Tokyo Auto Salon with a nice ND Demo Car rocking the popular 17” Rays 57Transcend Wheels, but most importantly a very awesome ND Turbocharger Kit!

And here’s a closer look at their turbo kit! Everything is so beautiful when it’s new!

 

Hope you enjoyed our fourth part of the coverage of Tokyo Auto Salon 2018! More to come in the following days~ Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Newsletter to receive blog updates and new products releases related to your vehicle!

 

The MX-5 ND RF from TAS 2018

Here’s another post about Tokyo Auto Salon 2018! This one showcases the ND RF demo cars from Autoexe, Leg Sports & Odula!

The ND RF is the only available 2.0L engine MX-5 available in Japan. It was released almost 1 year after the soft top version, so it’s not as popular due to having most of the early adopters and purist buying the soft top version. Some manufacturers, though, saw a great opportunity to release parts for the worldwide 2.0L engine community! Let’s see…

Autoexe

Autoexe brought their very cool RF Demo Car. It shows their ND Original Front Bumper, beautiful Rays Gram Lights 57Xtreme 17” Wheels, their ND RF Rear Wing and their combo of ND Rear Diffuser & ND Dual-Center Muffler. Note that you can also notice their new ND 2-Piece Brake Discs.

As for their interior, it’s pretty simple, featuring their ND Steering Wheel and ND Round Shift Knob.

 

Odula

Odula brought a very cool & classy looking ND to the show! This ND features the new Rays Volk Racing  TE37 Saga 17” Wheels and their original ND Carbon Fiber Front Lip as well as ND Carbon Fiber Side Skirts. Let’s not forget their ND License Plate Intake!

For the interior, you can notice their original ND Steering Wheel and a preview of their new ND Carbon Look Scuff Plate Cover.

The shop owner insisted that we took a picture of the engine bay. Even though we can’t see much on the picture, it’s showing their new ND 2.0L Header, their ND High Flow Intake Elbow and their ND Coilovers. Hidden, under the valve cover, there are some aggressive ND 2.0L Camshafts that they are currently testing.

For the back of the vehicle, they showed a one-off (custom) ND Rear Wing with Carbon Fiber top piece! You can also look at their ND Rear Diffuser and ND Titanium-Tip Muffler System.

Here’s the last car in our list of ND RF at Japan’s most popular aftermarket parts show;

 

Leg Sports

Leg Sports showed up with a very clarry ND RF that’s equipped with their ND Front Lip, ND Side Steps, ND RF Rear Spoiler as well as the very new ND Rear Diffuser! You can also see their very awesome ND Titanium Exhaust System. If you look closely, you’ll also notice their ND Carbon Fiber Front Grille.

The interior shows their ND Original Floor Mats, their ND Armrest Cover as well as some Recaro Racing Seats.

The wheels on the shop car are Weds SA72R 17” Wheel! Looks awesome in there.

We hope you enjoyed our third part of the coverage of Tokyo Auto Salon 2018! More to come in the following days~ Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Newsletter to receive blog updates and new products releases related to your vehicle!

The Sano Design ND Conversion from TAS 2018

This is probably one of the most seen car of Tokyo Auto Salon 2018!

Sano Design is a firm doing prototyping of composite and they wanted to show their skills in FRP and Carbon Fiber. The car displayed at Tokyo Auto Salon was meant to show how they can prototype aerodynamics and change the shape of a car.

It took me some time to figure out that the car was actually a ND Roadster (I saw the car from the front):

When doing such prototypes, the goals are mainly to show that it’s possible to change the front end of the vehicle and give it a totally different look. This one looks fairly close to TVR (UK) vehicles! Proportions are actually really nice for such a design.

The car is rocking a modified Murakami ND Hardtop (OK, scoop here, we heard it will finally be able to order from the public) with no back window. It’s also running a very unique side canard right after the door. The rear spoiler is molded into the rear fender giving it a super cool look. The rear bumper is also SUPER aggressive. The wheels ate 17×8.5 Rays TE37 Saga.

They did a very cool hood design showing the Skyactiv engine:

While it’s not for everyone, we have to say that there’s a lot of work involved in making such a conversion. I believe that they achieved a nice car that could become “kit car” status and it would definitely turn heads.

Hope you enjoyed our second part of the coverage of Tokyo Auto Salon 2018! More to come in the following days~ Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Newsletter to receive blog updates and new products releases related to your vehicle!

 

The MX5-Specific Wheels of Tokyo Auto Salon 2018

Tokyo Auto Salon (TAS) was very big last year with TONS of ND Miatas. This year is no different, but the hype is not as big as last year’s. In this blog post, I’ll show all wheels available in 4×100 which could fit NA, NB & ND Roadsters (sorry NC, but the choice of 5×114.3 is just too vast, you guys are lucky)!

 

Advan Racing

No new wheels planned for the Roadster this year. The 2 new models are the Advan RZ-F2 and Advan TC-4 which are only available in 18”. There is a possibility that small size is added later, but it may not happen.

 

Aimgain

Aimgain has some pretty awesome wheels available for widebody cars (SUPER wide 2 pieces wheels). Some of them are available in 16”, most of them in 17”. Oh, and yes, NC owners, those are also available in 5×114.3! Width & offset can be chosen from a huge variety of sizes.

 

BBS

No new wheels are released for 2018. The BBS RP and BBS RF are their most popular choices for ND Roadster owners.

(Sorry no pictures)

 

Enkei

There is 2 special edition colors for their Enkei PMF1 17” model (limited) and the release will be in May. The new colors are Misty Blue and Gold (gold is shown on the PF01 as color example). Only available in 17×7 +43.

 

RAYS (Volk Racing)

A 2018 Special Edition of the TE37V is being released. It’s called the Rays Volk Racing TE37v MC and the Rays Volk Racing TE37v KCR! The pre-orders will start this month, probably. You can contact us by email for more details! The production volume is limited and usually sells out before March.

 

Work Wheels

Work Wheels is releasing a new wheel in the Emotion line. It’s called the Work Emotion T5R. The only fitment possible for Roadster is 17×7 +43. There is also another model which is called the Work Emotion CR2P that is available in 17×7, but the offset can be chosen between +15 and +46.

Bonus

Mazda released some toy cars of most Roadster models! Cute!

Hope you enjoyed our first part of the coverage of Tokyo Auto Salon 2018! More to come in the following days~ Don’t forget to Subscribe to our Newsletter to receive blog updates and new products releases related to your vehicle!

 

The Road(Ster) Trip – Miatas At The Gap (MATG)

Miatas At The Gap is an event I’ve been attending for the past 2 years (and also been there about 8 years ago). I always look forward meeting new friends and driving a little too fast! Here’s the only picture I got from 8 years ago with my NA Demo Car :

***I’D LIKE TO APPOLOGIZE FOR HOW LATE I’M CREATING THOSE BLOG POSTS, BUT I’M CATCHING UP WITH LIFE***

It all started at the small cabin I rented, the morning I arrived, I met with some long time customer (Jaime, with Garage Vary Tail Lights & Nakamae Type-R Seats (plus lots of interior goodies) as well as a forum legend (username was Doppelganger, now running a Mazdaspeed NB with 17” TE37)… for those who know about him!

This year was no different than before, lots of driving, meeting new friends, trying craft beers and discovering new roads (beers were after driving, of course).

 

I started by having my new REV9 Door Decals (available soon) done in Carbon Fiber to give it a “phantom look”, made by my friend Scotty:

We did organize a meeting and there was a bit of misinformation about it… we ended up being only 2 people for the first hour. Then, a bunch of people arrived!

There was this cool NC rocking the Garage Vary Front Lip and Garage Vary Front Grille Insert:

That red car parked next to him drove all the way from Texas (we actually met last year) and he was really slow… (actually, he was the fastest out of our group):

There was also this ND which I had a very hard time keeping up with until I realized he had tuned ECU ^_^

And those flashy Floridians which we later became best friends~

That’s a lot of loudness here:

After the event, we went for some rolling shot, and it turned out pretty good! I had finally decided to install the Zeromotive Aeroguard-II and I can tell you that it saved my TK-Style Front Lip from being destroyed (Thanks for my friend Jonathan for the awesome shot).

And, after that, a little group of us decided to go for some fun driving… ^_^

I ended up chasing two white FC3S RX-7 with serious oil leakage issue as I had difficulty breathing when I was following them -_-

 

We finally stopped to enjoy the beginning of the sunset (and let engine cool down)

^^ This shows how the Odula Rear Diffuser looks with the Integral Kobe Type-US Muffler as well as the Rallybacker Low Ducktail Spoiler~

And even my friend from this morning found us (cool shot of his Runabout M2 Mirrors):

We finally headed back to Fontana Village to go for a craft beer exchange and did a very last photoshoot :

It was an awesome event that I look forward doing again, even though it’s a straight 20+ hours drive from home. It’s always great to meet other enthusiasts, get scared driving the Dragon and make friends. The blog post of the next event I organized is actually already online, check it out : Road(Ster) Trip – Charleston Meet & Road(Ster) Trip – Atlanta Meet

Our 2017 Holiday Schedule

Hey everyone, as you may have noticed, Christmas/New Year holidays are just around the corner!

We’d like to inform you about the holidays and shipping schedule for the next 2 weeks or so!

 


 

Shipping Schedule

The shipping schedule (packing and shipping) at our warehouse will be available on week days as usual, but will be down from 29th of December to 3rd of January. There will be no parcel sent during those dates, everything will resume from 4th of January.

 

Production Schedule

The production schedule depends on every different shop. Some more mainstream products will be available throughout the holidays, but the smaller company will usually take vacations from 28th of December to 4th of January. There is a holiday on 8th of January, so it’s possible that some manufacturers will be unavailable until 9th of January.

 

Delays To Expect

We will try to inform every customer who place an order with an accurate estimate on when the product will ship. It is possible that this estimate is not ready until 4th or 5th of January due to holidays in Japan. Every order placed after 25th of December cannot be guaranteed our regular 5-10 business days timeframe (due to multiple holidays and the shipping schedule mentioned above). Expect 1 to 3 business days extra wait on regular items and for special order items, we will contact you with an estimate. Regular order timeframe resumes on 9th of January.

 

Support/Questions

For those with questions relating to products, we will continue working during holidays, but the answer may come later than usual due to the holidays.

 

In a hurry?

If you are in a hurry, it’s best to either contact us before placing the order or waiting after the holidays, as shops are taking time off and we mostly cannot provide shipping estimate or process the order quick.

 

Relax and enjoy time with friends & family, it just happen once a year~