There's a dirty little secret behind this monster IS300. It's nothing as bad as Editor Nads' private collection of Dixie Chicks autographs, but not too long ago, owner Charles Park actually held the pink slip to a '90 Ford Mustang. Don't worry, there is a happy ending to this horror story. It was during this time with the Mustang that Charles really honed his philosophy of fixing up cars into what he now calls "The Complete Package." When I spoke with him before the photo shoot, he recited the breakdown of this goal like a tongue twister: speed, stop, suspension, and style. And it was obvious from the outset that he couldn't achieve this goal with the wobbly domestic.
"I got speed with the Mustang, but I couldn't get stop because the thing was so damn nose-heavy," Charles explains. "I was having problems with stopping, suspension, and this and that. And I got tired of just drag racing the car. The ideal car for me is a complete car that's not just fast, but something that I'd be able to take to a quarter-mile track and get respect, and then hop the same car over-without changing tires, nothing-to a road race course and just go all-out."
After Charles heard about the Altezza in Japan, he immediately plunked down the green to get on a waiting list for the IS300. "The reason I did that was because I saw the specs on the Altezza in Japan, and I saw the capability of that car in the Super Taikyu League racing series and how well they performed," he says.
When Charles got his domestic-stained hands on the Lexus, he immediately went to work maxing out his philosophy. In terms of style, he wanted to keep everything JDM. As any card-carrying Super Streeter knows, going strictly JDM is as cash-heavy as a bad week in Vegas, and Charles estimates that he's dropped more than $50,000 into the car-not including discounts and the parts he's received from sponsors. But he wasn't going let anything get between him and his goal of addressing every aspect of the car's performance and styling. Has he succeeded in building the complete package? You be the judge.
SpeedOn his laptop computer, Charles has video footage of the IS300 pegging 143 mph on the pull, and with room left to go. But then, on the brink of hyperspace, the needle just flutters. That's because the Lexus is still on a piggyback computer, and the factory speed governor prevents the needle from spinning higher. This is the sort of problem you get when you turbocharge Toyota's JZ-GE engine to the limit.
The Supremo Engine Tuners At SwiftRacing Technologies (SRT) in Maryland get the credit for the insane boost work. They dropped in a custom-spec Turbonetics T62-1 turbocharger with a T-304 stainless steel turbo manifold, and an assortment of custom mandrel-bent piping. There are two Blitz blow-off valves, severely tuned to be noticed, along with a wide Spearco intercooler core. The entire turbo setup fills the engine bay like Anna Nicole in a Wonderbra, and the full effect is even scarier. On SRT's chassis dyno, the IS300 has put out max power and torque ratings of 503.3 hp at 5,750 rpm and 472.1 lb-ft @ 5,250 rpm without nitrous. On the bottle, the car has reached 561 hp and change.
With that much raw, molten, mouthwatering force steaming underneath the carbon-fiber hood, SRT was worried that the factory automatic tranny would bend and melt inside Charles' IS300, so the tuners built a custom automatic race transmission to handle the strain. They pulled the entire transmission, blueprinted it, and then beefed up the internals. They also added a triple-plate racing torque converter with Kevlar clutch plates. "The SRT race tranny shifts harder and a lot quicker, so it's more responsive," Charles says of the results. "And most importantly, it holds all the horsepower. I don't have to worry about my tranny breaking. I mean, I can just floor that thing and not worry about it."