Perplexed? Confused? Baffled? Befuddled? Mystified? Besides inciting a trip through a thesaurus, those are the exact emotions I felt when I first glanced at the photos. Fresh off the plane from Japan, Nads, who to our utter bewilderment somehow always manages to squeeze past Homeland Security, produced an envelope filled with images of a bizarre orange spectacle. Rummaging through the envelope to satiate the George-like curiosity as to the vehicle specs, I found that the object of my search, the tech "cheat" sheet, was missing like a child beauty queen. When I confronted Nadsy about the make and model, his terse response was, "Beats the crap out of me, it's something JDM." Ahh, Super Street, investigative journalism at its finest.
Now that the task of identifying the mystery machine fell to me, I searched for subtle clues in the body. The first obvious giveaway should have been the roadster configuration. But the low profile, shape of the front fenders, and the protruding ass belies anything resembling a S2000 or 350Z convertible. And it couldn't be some new German, Italian or Swedish creation-by my last count we haven't made the mistake of featuring a Euro since May of '97 (check this month's Classic Super Street in the Street Speak section). So that lead to the conclusion that this was some sort of chop top coupe conversion. After a lengthy five-minute brainstorm, I did what our staff is renowned for, giving up. Just kidding. Instead, I did what all good editors do, pass the buck onto someone else, preferably onto one who is ill-equipped to defend himself. Thinking of someone along those lines, it dawned on me that Tetsu, our lovable yet mildly diminutive and incredibly passive JDM correspondent, would be the ideal target. After forwarding him a blank tech sheet and the arduous task of completing it, Tetsu and his god-given abilities to speak Japanese and rebuild Honda motors contacted the owner of the vehicle and design house credited for the build, Tamon Shoji (no, not the feminine product, silly-that has the letter P) of Tamon Design.
With the tech sheet handy, let's play a little game. I'm going to drop some hints one at a time (no cheating by reading any cover blurbs!) and let's see if you can figure out the mystery behind the machine. Here we go. The mother that gave birth to the car you hold in front of you was Mazda. For the next clue, the heart and soul of the tangerine beauty is a beating turbocharged Wankel rotary engine. Getting warmer? The measurements of her sexy figure are F and D with a 3S waist. OK, if you haven't gotten it by now put this damn book down and walk away.Go read Teen People. Cuz' on a wack scale from one to ten, you're about an eleven. For those of you that guessed correctly, yes, it's that still hot yet extremely unstable chick from the '90s, no, not Kate Moss, but the Mazda RX-7, or for rotaryheads or admirers thereof, the FD3S.
Chopping and reworking the near-perfect shape of the FD to many might sound blasphemous. Sort of like taking the Mona Lisa and thinning her eye brows, fixing her nose or collagening her lips. You just don't mess with perfection. Tamon, however, a practicing clay model artist with a degree in car design, found perfection and saw a blank canvas to create a masterpiece to commemorate Tamon Design's fifth year anniversary. Studying the stock lines, Tamon's initial undertaking was to create conceptual sketches based on the body lines of the RX-7 with a heavy infusion of his own style. "I need to know the stock car's original body design very well in order to start designing a body kit," affirms Tamon. During this creative process, he decided to incorporate a dramatic chop top twist in the design from his deep-rooted passion for exotic roadsters. Once his ideas were sketched out on paper, the hard task of realizing his vision was at hand.