If you're a regular 2NR reader, you're probably hip to our ways by now. You know that we prefer to make the most of our emasculatingly small package size by giving you a mix of cars that span as broad a spectrum of the tuning world as possible. And while this doesn't mean we'll be featuring your mom's '01 Toyota Camry anytime soon, you can count on us to mix it up between popular makes and models, engine/drivetrain configurations, and genres of build. Take this month's dual Scion feature: one for the track crowd, one for the street guys, and both reppin' brand-spankin'-new tuning potential. We've also got Duane's slightly older Supra for the power-hungry, and that nitty-gritty turbocharged DC2 that all of us Honda owners can wish was our daily driver, like it is Hai's. Now, in case you think you know where we're going with this, about to segue into our big-budget, dedicated show/audio car of the issue, let us offer one hint: You're dead wrong.
Despite its flawless metallic yellow hues, killer-offset SSRs, ground-scraping height, and the fact that you'll be hard-pressed to find a single flaw anywhere in its build-let alone a spec of dirt-this is an honest-to-goodness street car. We know this because we first spotted Ryan De Guzman and his flawless FD on Pacific Coast Highway, during his daily commute. We thought we'd missed a show or something. "People trip out when they see it," he laughs. "Either they know what it is and can't believe I drive it, or they think it's some sort of Ferrari or something." The story gets even better. Ryan built the thing almost entirely in his two-car garage.
At 32, Ryan's background is rich with DIY projects, including everything from CRXs and assorted Honda makes to a high-compression, L20-powered '70 Datsun 510 he hocked to buy this current whip. "I hated to sell it," he says, regarding the 510. "But I had to. It was finished and just sitting on the side of my house, rotting away." He found a good friend to take the reins, and flipped the kitty on a silver, single-owner, low-mileage RX-7. It was the first rotary platform he'd ever owned and built, and admittedly, he'd never considered one in all his years. "I was curious," he says, simply. "I always thought they were cool, and finally decided to see what they were all about."
Ryan fell in love with the car. "I drove the crap out of it that first year!" he laughs. Its HKS Hipermax III suspension was one of his first mods; Racing Beat heavy-duty front and rear sway bars went on shortly thereafter, along with some bracing, and then Ryan got into the power mods: a boost controller and all the necessary bolt-ons to help the 13B-REW maximize power with its sequential twin turbos. "Even stock, the RX-7 is a fast, fun car," he says. "I was fine with the stock power level." Stock reliability, however, was another matter.
The car's factory silver hues had long ago faded, along with underhood concerns like vacuum lines, sensors, and whatever casualties a decade of high-heat battle will claim. The car was stripped completely in Ryan's garage, its engine and surrounding components yanked, and appearance became his first concern. He handled bodywork himself, sanding every painted inch of the car sometimes to its metal, smoothing out door dings and welding closed every unused hole in the bay before skim-coating it lightly with fiberglass and painting it himself. "It's kind of difficult to see how much work went into the bay, being that it's flat black," says Ryan. "But I have a good 30 hours in it, easily." And that's not counting the custom V-mount intercooler/radiator setup Ryan took upon himself to install. "Cutting the bay after all that work was definitely nerve-racking!" Exterior paint was one of the only areas Ryan outsourced, and rolled the FD over to Auto Explosion in Gardena, CA, to get it done right. "I wanted to paint it in the garage," he laments, "but the boss (wife) talked me out of it."