Even without a neon-pastel colored paint job or a body kit with a front opening wide enough to ingest small animals or children, this gunmetallic G35 Coupe fashioned by Mark Bruno is one hell of a built car. Boosted with not one, but two GReddy turbos (18Gs that have been modified with 20G compressor wheels), this particular VQ35 screams a sweet note of 571hp. To be so powerful with such subtle looks is an absolute blessing.
All it took was a quick spin in a twin-turbo Z to convince Bruno to take on the more luxurious Infiniti Coupe. "The exterior styling [of a G35] is sleeker, sexier and more refined than a Z," he says. Another friend of his gave him one with low mileage after upgrading to a Gallardo, and so began the two-year quest to turn out one of the cleanest and fastest Gs on the West Coast.
Bruno, who for years worked as an audio specialist at Rockford Fosgate, was used to building his car for the perfection of sound rather than performance, but he knew that the twin-turbo setup he had already seen was just what his VQ needed. Rather than bolting the kit in and calling it a day, Bruno prepped the motor with more boost in mind, and that meant rebuilding with stronger internals. UMS Tuning balanced out Carillo A-Beam rods with stock bore CP pistons and piston rings as well as the factory crankshaft, and after reassembly the cylinder head was ported and polished. Feeding the V-6 air-and lots of it-is a larger, stainless steel plenum from Kinetix Racing along with GReddy air filters.
On the fuel side, a Turbo XS U-Tec controller signals a Walbro fuel pump to send heaps of fuel to the 750cc RC injectors and AAM fuel rail, keeping the engine from leaning out. The dual exhaust, also from AAM, is three inches in diameter and has external wastegate dumps built into it for the TiAL 38mm wastegates. There are also two HKS Super Sequential blow-off valves to skim off any excess boost pressure and a GReddy intercooler mounted stealth-like in the front air dam.
In order to maintain the daily driver status Bruno intended on keeping, the handling had to come as close to factory as possible without being too rigid. He made a call to Tein, who supplied him with the Super Streets, a softer offering of their expansive coilover line, with the addition of an EDFC controller to make fine adjustments if needed. Hotchkis adjustable sway bars and Kinetix control arms also give Bruno further options to make the car more track appropriate if need be, and a Richie's front strut bar pushes the flex out of the shock towers.
Bruno's G comes loaded with plenty of other sought-after gear that one might expect to find on a ride like this. Dubbed-out Volk GT-C wheels going 8.5-wide on the front and 10.5-extra-wide on the rear are always a welcome sight, complimenting the freakishly large Baer 14-inch brakes. The Version 1 body kit from VeilSide makes us forget the wide mouth trend that the company became famous for and a custom silver carbon hood from Versus blends in so perfectly, you'd have thought it was a dealer option.