The Willow Springs International Raceway is a hidden gem of race courses situated in a not-so-beautiful part of the desert, way out in the middle of BFE, close to Palmdale, a city known to most Los Angeles county residents for its more "affordable" housing and to many car enthusiasts as the legendary birthplace of import drag racing. At Willow Springs, you are more or less a nameless racer and your car is your vessel. Lap times are recorded and some are broken. It's a safe haven for those who have a spiritual bond to the automobile, letting their four (and in some cases, two) wheels do the dancing as they glide around a ballroom floor made of tarmac, providing the ultimate thrill ride for anyone who has the time and enough spare change to pay the man at the gate for a day of racing.
Most weekends at Willow Springs serve as track days for local racing clubs and the occasional weekend racer. And because it is the desert, you can be sure the forecast around these parts will bless you with conditions ranging between these three levels: freezing cold, windy or hotter than the tenth level of hell. But this is the closest track to Los Angeles and it's a damn good one to test, practice and become a better driver on. And so it begins: our love story between man and machine.
For Dominic Chen, racing is a passion that burns very bright, and by working as part of Endless Japan's U.S. operation, that passion ties in perfectly with the company's own philosophy towards racing: to kick much ass. So, it only seemed natural to pick a car to represent Endless' dedication to racing, a Nissan S15 Silvia. He says, "[The S15] has been one of my favorite cars for years and the opportunity to acquire one that could be registered legitimately presented itself. I wanted it for myself, but since I have an incredibly strong devotion to Endless, I decided to build it as an official Endless car. Although the S15 is used predominantly in drift, drifting is not what Endless Japan is into, and since I felt it was going to be too risky to drift it, I decided to turn it into a Super Lap car instead." With close ties to other big name Japanese companies like HKS, Yokohama, Moonface, ARC, Bride and C-West, Dominic went forth with the mindset of building the S15 the same way Endless Japan would have, by working with those companies' U.S. counterparts to build one hell of a car. "This car's unique because a lot of cars built by U.S. versions of the Japanese companies are dominated by price," he explains, "You see all these great Japanese parts and all of sudden see parts that aren't so 'JDM.' Our S15 represents the strong relationships and the respect Endless carries between itself and these other Japanese companies."