When you've been in the scene for a while and have tucked a number of project vehicles under your belt already, it can prove to be a difficult task to keep your head in the game. No doubt a lot of guys who get interested in the hobby have just enough creativity to throw a set of wheels and a loud exhaust at their car, run out of ideas, and trade it in for a big truck. Those are the fakers. Others can maybe get through one or two projects, pour their souls into the vehicles, and come up empty on the other side. These are the fools that trade their projects in for a BMW or Benz, sign their lives away to the bank and get hooked up with a $900 car payment for their efforts.
Other guys just seem to secrete an unnatural amount of import-building proficiency. You know, the guys who wrench at the tuner shop whether they work there or not, the guys who work on two of their own and three of their friends' cars at the same time, the guys who have a different car or a different look at each event. These are the guys who make up the core of our industry.
One such personality is Ahn Quach, a technician at Type One Motorsports in Orlando, Fla. When you've been in the game as long as Quach, you've pretty much seen it all. In between working on a sea of customer cars, Quach has put out a fleet of his own impressive project vehicles in the decade or more he's been involved in the scene. Included in this list is a '95 Supra TT, a '92 300ZX TT, and a built 1991 Maxima, as well as three he still owns, a '94 Prelude, '92 Civic and '97 Nissan S14 Kouki.
For his most recent vehicle build, Quach went for the JDM holy grail: a late-model JDM Honda Integra Type R-yes, that's Honda Integra, meaning it was built for Japanese consumption and has a steering wheel on the right-hand side of the cockpit. For the arduous task of importing the car, Quach had some help from friends in California's Inland Empire, from various online sources like Wholesale Hyperformance and Garage Advance, as well as his own shop, Type One, and Garage Advance when it came to getting the parts and effecting the mods he has since put into practice. The car is, in fact, a track edition ITR that Quach and his hookups sourced through a Japanese racing team.
On this side of the ocean, Quach's Type R has actually gone through two distinct stages. During the first stage he attended to all the car's cosmetics and basic performance issues, while in the second stage he built the motor's bottom end and added a few other performance mods-including more boost. On the car's exterior he's got full C-West trimmings from Japan. This authentic kit also incorporates a carbon-fiber hood and carbon-fiber rear view side mirrors. Body work, prep and paint was executed by Type One in Orlando, using a custom pearl white with gold mica-not exactly a JDM color scheme, but dope as hell if you ask us.