Archie: As of now, I'm a truck driver doing western states. It's cool to travel somewhat. In '03 I built a single cam for a '00 EK turbo charged that was a daily driver and did 11s all day long. I think it's the best single cam car I've built so far. Then I crashed and never did anything after that, but right now I'm working with Lokwerks Fabrication in South El Monte on a twin cam B-series motor.
Frank: I'm the National Event Director for Battle of the Imports. I'm still active in the industry.
SS: Did you guys expect that you had the potential to race professionally, or were you guys doing it just for fun?
Myles: For me, it was bragging rights.
Junior: When we were racing, we were all working. Some of us were in high school, most of us were in college. Everything we got, we didn't look at it as a profession. We looked at it as a weekend activity, to meet each other. But we didn't think about being marketable or getting on the national stage. And because of that we got taken advantage of.
Archie: Amen on that!
Myles: Junior was the first guy who spit out a T3 turbine out of a turbo. What does that tell you? Turbos were too small. Tony was the first guy who brought drills for his nitrous jets. He made it work. He went with nitrous against the turbos.
Junior: Everybody's talking about JDM. We didn't even call it JDM back then. We had Mugen back then. I bet you bring up Mugen right now, it's worth a million bucks. We had it all. But do we get any credit? No.
Archie: We just want people to recognize that we started this big trend. If you look at the stuff tuners are doing now, we did all of them back then.
SS: Why did you guys stop racing?
Myles: In my case, I was taken advantage of by some companies and people can't be original [staring at Dave].Dave: Myles is always sad because he was always behind me. When we were building the tube chassis cars, all the manufacturers were your friends, and when it didn't perform as planned, they all pulled out. That left a real sour taste in my mouth. It's all about having fun. Don't let it take control of your life.
Tony: When we were all doing it, we were doing it with every paycheck and with money we'd make at the street races. We'd put it on the cars and the cars would get faster. Then I got a sponsor and they'd tell me, "We'll give you anything." But once I wrecked it, they went away just like that. When NHRA got involved, it ruined everything. They picked and chose who came in, who could race and who would get sponsorships.
Junior: I ruined my Civic by spending a lot of money on it by changing it to a tube chassis. We gathered up all our own money to do this. When the chassis was 80-percent done, then all the sponsors came in. They didn't pay us back. "We'll provide your transmission at cost," they'd say. At cost?! We built 80-percent of the car already. Why can't you provide the transmission for free? At that point, we were all tapped out. I spent $80 grand and we were all college students. We only had $20,000 on each of our credit cards with 25-percent interest. They're crazy when we put 80-percent of our hard earned money into the car and they tell us they can only provide us services and products at cost. Nowadays, these companies are providing it for free.
SS: What do guys think of the industry now?
Tony: Nobody builds anything cool. They come into my shop and all they want is to lower the car, put rims and tires on it. That's it.
Junior: I want everyone to know that not only are we old school, original tuners; this group could be classified as the OG JDM'rs. We had the headlights, the side markers, Mugen exhausts and wheels. Before today's "JDM" terminology, there was "old-school".
Myles: If Junior saved all his Mugen stuff and he had a lot of it, he'd probably buy another house with it. Let's just put it this way: If you never had carburetors in your Honda, you are not old school. You are not OG enough.
By Roel Concepcion
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