WALL & ALL

We're halfway through 2007 now and it's been great so far. Many cars are starting to break records, or at least set up new personal best times just
like I predicted. The Sport Compact Series has been the event of choice for many of SA's top racers out there, so it's not surprising that the times
were posted during round two. Take a look at the Movers & Shakers page a bit later on to see who's doing what on the strip now. Still on the racing theme, take a look at the rest of the event too. There's some extra racing among these pages including a BMW Club track day at Kyalami and drags in Kimberley. The Kimberley guys hosted a killer event that was not only well attended by the local guys but it had a decent helping of Jozi racers including a bunch of the SouthSide Crew boys.

Not quite racing, but still featuring some hot cars was the RGMotorsport Dyno Day held at their premises in Strijdom Park, in the northern part of Jo'burg. The event was used to kick off the use of their new four-wheel drive dyno in a specially built, climate controlled room. At the same event, they used the later part of the day to announce the winner of the supercharged RGM 350Z, the grand prize in their well-known competition. On to the features side, there's a pretty easy way to put your race car on a diet, and even with a good couple of beers in your system, it shouldn't take you more than a couple of hours to do. Take a look at how the whole office got out of a day's work to “help” Batty, Crack and Spyke fit Lexan windows to the CRX. We had some other technical pieces planned for this issue but they were put on hold when we realised that we could show you the catalogue build of a Honda Civic Coupe turbo with the team at JDM. It's insane what's available on the shelves in the States! The tech piece is joined with a feature on the car too.

One feature here will be of great interest to Ford fans as well as fans of SA culture. We hooked up a small feature on a very neat Gavin Wilkins-built Ford Cortina 3.0S owned by Chris, also known as JVC from when he stayed in Durban. To add some spice to it, we organised an interview with the one of the most famous names linked to the Cortina here in South Africa. Allan Heyl was a bank robber many years back and he used to roll with Andre Stander when the press dubbed them “The Stander Gang” and “The Gentleman Robbers”. Their getaway car of choice was a Cortina - find out why… Other hot features include two of Kimberley's finest done by Ernie when we flew him into the little city with the big hole. Andre van der Nest is a well-known resident with a passion for speed, which is clearly evident in his V-Tec-powered Toyota MR2. This is nothing less than the country's hottest version of that model.

Then there's Wouter's old school Datsun 260Z brought up to date with loads of custom mods including some very shiny paint and a Nissan RB25 power plant. Don't forget you can catch the Sport Compact Series in the Rapid Motion program on M-Net's Super Sport channels. The next round is on the 3rd June

- See you there!

Namaste,

Krutch