Meet Shaquita. She’s big, black, loud, and proud. Honey’s hood rich and ghetto as hell, with the booty to prove it. Now, before you call the NAACP on us and fire off the hate mail, know that these aren’t our words, rather those of Shaquita’s owner (crossing the line?): Steven Darchiville. As the short, broke, brown (also his words) Canadian kid from Spartanburg, SC, who’s put up with her for the past five years, he claims he gets to use these terms of endearment forged during the two’s love/hate relationship. She refuses to do anything he wants without a fight, he beats her around on the streets for fun. But ask anyone who knows them and you’ll hear two truths: He’d sacrifice nearly anything for her, and she makes him a better man.
The saga begins back in 2005, when Steven was just getting out of a long, stale relationship with a ’96 Plymouth Neon. She was his first, and he’d saved seven months’ worth of dishwashing wages to bring her home. She taught him how to wrench. He bought her all the best clothes, shoes, and power-adders. They went far together, but Steven dreamed bigger; the Plymouth was content with settling down in the small town and relishing the slow life, and he knew she would only hold him back. Five years came and went as Steven worked his way up to a better-paying server position in the restaurant, and looked for something new to accompany him on the next steps. A friend told me about a used 300ZX some redneck guy in town was selling for quick cash, Steven tells. It was parked under a tree when I went to see it, and looked like it had been there for years. It was covered in leaves, sap, and bird shit, was running on five cylinders, had a chopped stock suspension, and well over 200K miles on the odometer. It looked like hell, he continues. I was in love.
The car was red, naturally aspirated, and neglected. Steven bode farewell to the Neon, and invested what little he made off her in tuning up the Z. He replaced her mangled stock suspension with Tein springs and Tokico dampers and fitted her with a new set of wheels that same year. The next saw Steven upgrade the Z’s suspension with SPL solid subframe collars and Topspeed front and rear camber arms and tension rods, swap out the Teins for Megan Racing coilovers with more aggressive spring rates, and add an HKS Hi-Power exhaust, bolt-ons underhood, and a Stillen lip in the front. Like the ugly-duckling-turned-beautiful-swan of the after-school special, Steven’s new lady had taken off her glasses and let her hair down. And it made him want her even more. I took on more shifts at work and started thinking about what I could do to improve my income, he tells. Anything I could do to keep upgrading.
2007 saw Steven work longer hours and save for two important milestones in the pair’s relationship: a set of ultra-rare Work wheels and a JDM twin-turbo VG30DETT swap. If you’ve never turned a wrench under the hood of a Z32 300ZX, here’s a tip: buy those fancy low-profile ones, some swivel sockets, and a vast assortment of extensions. Installing bolt-ons was enough for Steven not to want to mess with it again. I had the front clip shipped to my friend’s shop, NSPerformance, dropped the car off, and picked it up one week later with the conversion done, he explains. This included the shop having to fabricate custom brackets for the radiator, source custom radiator hosing, bypassing the factory ECU-controlled boost solenoid by way of a Greddy electronic boost controller, and convert plugs and wiring to the crank angle sensor, power transistor unit, and fuel injectors. Not bad for a trial run. It was their first attempt at the swap, elaborates Steven. Almost four years later I’ve had no problems.