Dan Dominé

Hennessey Performance has become one of the better known American tuning companies, in no doubt thanks to their own production cars: the record-breaking Venom GT and Venom GT Spider. The company was founded as Hennessey Motorsports in 1991 by John Hennessey and got its first media attention with a tuned Mitsubishi 3000GT VR-4 that participated in the Silver State Classic, the famous Nevada flat-out race. The 3000GT dubbed by Hennessey as the VR-200 went to win the 91 mile (146 km) race in the “unlimited class” with an incredible average speed of 166.3 mph (268 km/h).

Mine’s is undoubtedly one of the most famous Skyline GT-R and GT-R tuners in world. This is in no small part thanks to Tsuchiya Keiichi’s Hot Version and BMI International car shows where their cars were featured in several episodes. The Inline 6 battles as well as the battle between Mine’s R34 GT-R N1 and the Amuse Supra are those we remember the best. But it undoubtedly was the video where Paul Walker visited Mine’s which propelled the company to world fame.

Before the good stuff you’ve all been waiting for appears, just a word of caution to all drivers for experience matters little in the situations. A Word of Caution Last summer, I was back home in France, driving with two friends to a party. Usually, you’d expect stuff to happen after a party but not in this case. Anyway, I was driving along quite quickly (as much as the road allowed) and came across two of those:

1. Tec Art’s - Tsuchiya Keiichi’s AE86 Based in the Saitama Prefecture, Tec Art’s is one of the most respected AE86 tuners out there, in no small part, thanks to their endorsement from Tsuchiya Keiichi who, after the passing of TRD Legend Sakurai-san in 2008, gave Tec Art’s the job of tuning his Hachi-Roku Touge Monster.

Searching for my First Car As most of you know, finding your first car is not as easy as you want it to be. There are lots of things to consider. Affordability is definitely one of them and that point isn’t limited to buying the car but also the cost of repairing it if and when things go wrong. Most of you who haven’t go a car yet won’t start up with a brand new car even though some will be lucky enough to afford it (or the parents will).