Last Saturday I attended the SpoCom Norcal Edition car show held at Club Auto Sport in San Jose, CA. If you do a quick Google search of the word “spocom” you’ll find more images of scantily clad women than actual cars–this may explain why legions of adolescent males paid the relatively high $25 spectator fee, but more on that later. Look harder though and you can find some sweet J-Tin at this show claiming to be aimed at “automotive & pop culture tastemakers alike.”

 

The Venue

I don’t claim to be a tastemaster of any kind, but here is my review of the show from a Datsun owner’s point of view.  Let’s start with the venue: Club Auto Sport is a large, retail/commercial complex and home to exotic-car rental agency Club Sportiva and Borelli Motorsports:

 

Inside the main building there were several aisles for show cars to be parked and a main stage for a DJ and wait for it…bikini contest! Club Auto sport offers private garages so naturally I peeked at various man caves…found a Porsche 959 in hiding!

 

The Cars

Those tall orange “Swords” above are actually the coveted SpoCom Awards. I learned that this was a highly competitive show with “teams” vying for these 4-ft tall trophies. Here is a taste of the cars placed near the main stage area:

 

There were about 25 cars lining the aisles inside the building…scattered about in random fashion with one aisle having only 3 cars vs 18 in another:

 

The car scene inside the building was quite different from the cars placed outside, and this is where I found some pretty neat machinery. Let’s begin with my roadster which was staged near this S30 sporting an old-school body kit:

 
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Yedi T came to Z Car Garage with his Vortech-supercharged G35 in bad shape from a hurt engine. To get him back on the road we sourced a clean, 60k-mile drivetrain to swap in and performed extensive clean-up left behind from a previous installation.

A few shots of the drivetrain coming out:

  

Steering rack work and the new engine being prepped:

 

The Vortech parts needed some love too:

 

The fresh engine bay and drivtrain is almost buttoned up!

 

While the engine/ transmission were out we installed a TransGo shift kit, transmission cooler, Z1 25-row oil-cooler, ARK exhaust system and Motordyne ART pipes.

 

ARK exhaust and ART pipes:

 

With the new exhaust and tuning we achieved more power at less boost! Final numbers are 390hp/324tq, gains of 19hp/18tq to the wheels:

 

With a clean bill of health Yedi is Enjoy The Boost once again!

Chris C makes his SF Bay Area commute behind the wheel of this pretty FX35. He wanted to firm up the handling to make that commute more enjoyable so we installed a full set of BC coil-overs and a Stillen front strut tower brace:

 

Coil-over and top hat detail:

 

Suspension F/R stock vs BC:

 

The ride height looks great! Before/after below:

A few more before/after shots:

 

We also added a Stillen strut tower brace and performed full 90k maintenance services. We know your commute will be much livelier now Chris!

Tetsuya has been with ZCG for many years and came back again this time for some exhaust headers and ART test pipes. You can see the TEIN suspension, VOLK wheels and Bassani exhaust modifications from previous visits in the following posts:
2011
UPREVd
2014
TEIN

To complete the exhaust upgrades we installed DC headers and Motordyne ART pipes. Stock parts below, left:

 

Installed:

 

To maximize the gains from the new exhaust we UPREV tuned with nice results:

 

Starting with a baseline of 248hp/242tq, the headers, exhaust and tuning yielded 260hp/252tq to the wheels with strongs gains from 2000rpm to redline.  Enjoy The Ride, Tetsuya and thank you for your continued support!

 

Ron L came to Z Car Garage from a dealership referral and we installed a full Stillen supercharger kit on his 2013 Nismo 370z.

Stillen’s kit offers VQ37 owners 400whp and full CARB compliance—it’s extremely popular with ZCG customers and we have performed numerous installs over the years. Here is Ron’s polished setup:

 

The install went smoothly and we added a Stillen 25-row oil cooler and GT-R spark plugs:

 

Yes, we miss that OEM Nismo red intake cover but the Stillen intake is equally pretty and still fits under the NISMO strut tower brace!

 

On the dyno a CAN tune with ZCG touches nets a satisfying +132hp/70tq gain for a total of 436hp/323tq at the wheels:

 

Icing on the cake is that next time Ron pulls beside a police officer he will be cool as a cucumber knowing his 500hp Nismo Z is 50-state emissions legal 🙂 Enjoy The Boosted Ride, Ron!