A few years back I helped my cousin get himself a nice RX8. As time went by I think he caught the modding bug from me and steadily would ask for advice on how to hook up the ride and this is where it got him.
My cousin Carlo is only 19 and has only been on us soil for 2 years so he is building the car on a budget, just like all of us in Jade started off doing (and still do to this day). A part here, a part there and eventually you get something like this mean looking RX8.
The overall plan on the car was to go for a clean but menacing look. Since the car was a nice dark silver to start we would accent it with dark wheels and carbon fiber accessories. Not wild or over the top, just a clean tuner car.
My advice to him was to start with the basics, rims and drop. The drop was taken care of by a set of Tein S-tech springs and originally his stock 18′s were painted black. At the same time the springs went on a GReddy dual exhaust was fitted to give the car some growl. This satisfied him for a little but the need for a real set of wheels kept him up at night. Thanks to Brian at Mackin a set of Conniosseur 151C’s in gunmetal were ordered from Japan and the wait began.
While waiting for the slow boat from Japan he wanted to ditch the stock kit for something more aggressive. There are tons of swoopy crazy kits for the RX8 but in my opinion the best looking is the Mazdaspeed. It’s clean but obviously custom and just sets the car off. Since Carlo was on a budget we ended up getting a copy kit. Now there was quite a bit of work to get it to fit right but we still came out at half the price of the OEM kit and it fits dead on.
Once the kit was fitted we had the lower body lines painted a lighter silver like the do on the OEM kit to give it that subtle distinction. Carlo also opted to have the tail lights lightly smoked to add to the “darkside” look.
3 long months later and the Advans arrived. We quickly slapped some Falken rubber on and ditched the stockers. The Advan Conniosseur 151C’s are a tuner rim as the spokes go all the way out to the rear so they look bigger than they are, but you don’t get any lip. What you do get is a nice concave center bore that we showed off with a set of Blue MXP Duraluminum lug nuts also from Japan via Mackin.
Right now the car is sitting about 1 inch to high in the front and 1/2 inch in the rear, this will be taken care of soon enough by some messing with the springs.
4 mods, thats all this is to take a car from stock to stunning. All and all I love the way Carlo’s RX8 looks right now and he has future plans for a lot more carbon and some products from GT-SPec. Watch out there is a new kid on the block and he ain’t in no boy band.
Vehicle Specs:
- 2004 Mazda RX8 Grand Touring
ENGINE/DRIVETRAIN
- GReddy SP2 Dual Exhaust
SUSPENSION
- Tein S-Tech Lowering Springs
WHEELS / TIRES
- Advan Conniosseur 151C 19 x 8.5 +30 F
- Advan Conniosseur 151C 19 x 9.5 +30 R
- Falken FK452 235/35/19 F
- Falken FK452 265/30/19 R
EXTERIOR
- Mazdaspeed Replica Full Kit
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