It's very hard to impress the Super Street staff. But, honestly, can you blame us? Every car we see has been done a billion times over. Like tract housing, so many cars are way too similar in build. JDM-style Hondas with stripped-down interiors and Type R everything: very clean, only about seven or so years too late. Wide-body Supras with single-turbo conversions: badass, but pretty much the same as every Supra that we've featured. Turbo 350Zs with wide-body kits and giant wheels: dope, but again, not tallying up the originality points.
However, there is always an exception to this drone cookie-cutter style of building cars. When we feel the need to be wowed by a car, one of the first shops we turn to is Signal Auto. There's no denying the fact that Mad K and his posse are some of the biggest pimps when it comes to building cars. Any doubters can look through the past few years of Super Street for confirmation. They haven't failed us yet, and their new SR20DET-powered Kandy Orange (see sidebar) V35 Skyline continues the legacy.
Nissan took a once super car known as the Skyline and toned it down to what's known to us Americans as the G35. Although it is strong out of the box and has a nearly endless list of upgrade possibilities, the VQ35 engine doesn't quite match the high-horsepower potency of the monster RB26DETT. The V-6 configuration left little room to work with in the engine bay when it came down to forced induction. A swap was needed. Trying to cram the inline-six RB26 motor inside the bay would require too much fabrication and wouldn't do much to help shed any numbers off of the car's 3,500-pound curb weight. Keep in mind, this is Signal Auto, so expect nothing less than crazy. Crazy like an SR20DET motor out of an S15 Silvia. A crazy bottom end that's stroked to 2.2L with Toda internals. A crazy top end with Trust cams and sprockets tucked inside a Signal Auto ported head. A crazy fuel system consisting of HKS 850cc injectors, a Sard fuel pump, and HKS F-Con V Pro management. A crazy turbo system using a GReddy TD06-L2 turbo and PRofec B boost controller. A crazy . . . well, you better get the point by now. That's how pimps do things--top-quality parts all around with a final dyno reading at just over 450 hp to the wheels through a modified RB25 tranny and differential.
We've been told that the Signal team plans to drift this car, but we have reasons to believe they have other motives. Perhaps it's the full Alpine audio system complete with DVD player and carbon-fiber trunk enclosure that hints that this car will be driven on the streets. Or it could be the fact that our Time Attack is just around the corner. Whatever the case may be, we know that Signal will deliver.
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One thing to remember about Signal Auto is that they're not about primered race cars rolling slicked-down black-eye wheels and mismatched bumpers. Every car we've seen from them has been given the full body treatment inside and out, not only bringing a touch of class to the track, but also proving that show is just as important as go. This time around was no different. As always, Show Up implemented the bodywork using retina-burning House of Kolor Kandy Orange paint. To top it off, Kal Koncepts tacked on some extra airbrushed "tattoos" that could only be conjured up by Mad K's warped mind. Check out the pics below to see the steps that it took to transform the Signal Auto V35 Skyline. Only at SuperStreetOnline.