Revolution - Japanese Performance Car Culture in New Zealand

Once it would have been considered blasphemous to prefer anything on wheels that wasn't a Ford or a Holden. Now Japanese performance cars rule the hearts and wallets of thousands, who are seduced by their power, speed and style. Including legendary cars from the early 1970s, when Datsun SSS variants and Mazda RX-2s and RX-3s ruled the race tracks and rally stages, this book is an unprecedented look at our long-standing love affair with Japanese performance cars and those people at the forefront of the street tuning and modifying movement. Everything from the rotary revolution and the start of turbo tuning in the 1980s, to the early 1990s when the wide-scale importation of used Japanese cars saw the birth of new power-making techniques and signalled change was on the way, is covered off. In the new century their popularity has exploded, with a new wave of drag racers, including Arnie Nguyen, Ronnie Lim and Reece McGregor, leading the charge towards New Zealand's current crop of world-standard, world-beating cars. Drifting's local roots and its rise to the world stage with drivers like Mad Mike Whiddett are also uncovered, along with other racing and tuning personalities of an earlier era, such as Bill Shiells, Dennis Marwood, Reg Cook and Tony Rutherford -they're all here.