They say that college is time to experiment, so why not get drunk one night and let a random dude you met on the internet come upstairs?
My sense of humor has always been pretty dry, but one of my favorite stories ever is the night that I met my buddy Andy Cook. Back in the glory days of forums (Yeah, I am kinda dating myself here) there was a local DSM forum called WIDSM. I spent most of my time on the forums, and was lucky enough to be introduced to a number of really cool people in the DSM world. At the time I was in college and saw a post pop up “Anybody else go to UW-Milwaukee and want some help wrenching on their DSM?” Typically I don’t respond to those types of posts, even if I was going to UW-Milwaukee, but a little bit of liquid courage might have responded with a message saying we should get together some time and hang.
The DSM community was small and close nit, and I daily drove my 2g AWD down to campus all the time. Late one Friday night (think 10-11pm) I get a random phone call from a number I don’t recognize. Thanks to some late night adult beverages (notice a theme here?) I decide to answer it.
“Hey, is this Myboostedgst?” (My forum username)
“Uh, yeah”
“Hey this is Andy from the forums. I am on ‘insert street name’ and I think I see your DSM parked in front of this house”.
“Oh sweet, come on up!”
And from there blossomed the most beautiful love story this world has ever seen. Well not really, but our friendship grew from there.
At the time Andy had a 1g FWD Plymouth Laser, but that was sold shortly after being introduced to him. As we began hanging out he picked up a 2g FWD Eclipse that he owned for a few years. It was during his time owning the Eclipse that I began to get into photography. I used his car a few times for photoshoots and experimenting with some off camera flash stuff. Looking back now, my photography has progressed greatly, but those are still some of my favorite photos. Images that have some significance to you will always be better than the best photo of a subject you really don’t care about. Going back through my archives to find photos for this story really reminds me of all the great times we had. These photos are from roughly 2010.
I eventually sold my green 2g AWD DSM, but not after beating him pretty bad from a second gear pull (don’t ask him about it, he is still pretty salty about the whole situation). It wasn’t long after and Cook ended up getting out of the DSM world too and stepping into a 240sx. At the time I had a 2g Eclipse Spyder, and as my photography progressed so did our friendship. I’m not sure Cook had any sort of plan for the first 240sx, but a fresh paint job by our buddy Ned, a manual trans swap, and some big ol’ XXR’s made the car look pretty sweet. These photos are from 2013 shot in the same parking garage as the above photos. You can see my skills slowly progressing.
The car was owned for a little while and then sold, which lead to picking up this 240sx you see below. Some of the greatest memories are road trips to pick up cars. Some of the shenanigans that ensued on the trip were priceless, and I will undoubtedly remember when I am 60 years old. Oh, and that is the day that I found out Chick-Fil-A isn’t open on Sunday. What kind of shit is that? But we borrowed a friends truck, rented a U-haul trailer, and we were off to Indiana pickup the shell in the summer of 2014.
At the time I believe there was a plan to make the car a track car. All of the modifications were based around grip. But before that, there was a lot of work to do. The car came as a shell, with boxes full of parts.
Some sweet XXR’s that came with the car. These were sold pretty quickly to fund a 5lug swap.
Going back through the archives, I don’t have many photos of working on the actual car. It’s disappointing, but does make me realize the importance of capturing memories, not just great photos. It doesn’t matter if the lighting is poor, it is 32* outside and your hands are freezing, you will regret not taking a few more photographs when you want to look back it. Here are just a few random snaps from the time building it.
After a winter of building the car, this is where it finished. We will call this Part 1. It was setup for grip, with a half bolt in cage, wide RPF1’s with sticky rubber, and as reliable as possible on an old KA. This is where the grip racing started. I got lucky enough to tag along to a Thursday Night Thunder event at the Milwaukee Mile and take some photos for Cook. The car was together, running, and putting in lap after lap on stock power. To see a car that a friend purchased as a bare shell running for hours was awesome. Super proud of him for all of the work and the late nights in the garage.
As time progressed, more work was done to the car. This photo was taken in 2016 a mile from his garage while scouting for a shooting location. It was to be with a model and a R34 so I made sure to invite my Nissan friend to tag along. Somehow I lost all of the RAW files from this scouting shoot, but I have this one remaining JPEG left. Yes, that spray paint really was there. And yes, I absolutely took a sweet photo in front of it.
During the day of the shoot with the R34. This Skyline is the actual car that was used by Paul Walker in Fast and the Furious 4.
And here, the start of 2017, is where things went downhill. After joking for years he was going to turn into a drifter boy, and a steadfast refusal that he wasn’t, he approached us one day to come out of the closet. He was going sliding, and he probably knew it all along. No longer was grip and speed the most important, but being a hooligan and destroying the environment one tire at a time became his single goal.
But I guess it’s ok, drifting is pretty fun to watch. I got a chance to head to great lakes during the early days and watch some practice on skidpad events.
Notice the front bumper? I’ll call this Stage 1.5, starting to morph into a pure drift car and away from grip events.
By now it is full drift boy. I mean look at the haircut, the sideskirts, everything. There was no turning back now. I will admit though, this was one of my favorite looks on this car. I absolutely loved the silver sideskirts on the black car. It reminded me of the DSM’s that we both came from. It had this battle tested look to it. It wasn’t over the top flashy, and wasn’t so low that he couldn’t drive down the street (a little foreshadowing possibly?). I got a chance to do a little shoot of the car in the dells during Automotion 2017.
The sign of a drifter. Mismatched wheels. The bane of my existence.
I had always wanted to shoot a car inside of a warehouse, and I envisioned one of two cars. Either a perfect and beautiful exotic, or a ratty racecar. After being lucky enough to get access to a warehouse from Stephen (contributor on this site), I decided what better car to use than Cook’s ratty 240sx. We cleaned the car up and headed out to the warehouse to get some shots.
Some last minute touches to clean her up.
During the shoot I was trying to teach Stephen how to shoot, while simultaneously getting shots myself. I’m not sure if I wasn’t paying attention or just didn’t notice, but the different types and color temps of lights in the building gave wild results. Some spots of the building looked white, some blue, and some the ugly tungsten. I really want to do this shoot again, and I think I would be able to alleviate some of the aspect I don’t like and get cleaner images. But overall, I think the shoot came out decent for my first time shooting inside.
I’m really digging this shot from the rear.
These shots are actually back from 2018, but this is actually the first time I have released these images. Back then I had an idea I wanted to create this story, I just didn’t have the content yet. So they sat on the backburner for a few years until it was time to release them.
Always repping the Midwest Automotive for us.
Foreground objects are my jam.
I’m pretty sure the blue light in the background was just a different color lamp, but its been a few years and I don’t remember. But the shot did turn out as well as I thought it would.
I found a ladder so I decided to shoot a small set from above.
Unfortunately I didn’t have a strobe at the time (and still don’t) so I brought my speedlights. They weren’t enough to strobe the car, so I only used them sparingly. This shot is just different from the others with the harsh shadow and the focus on the Sparco seat.
I’ve only got a chance to photograph Cook drifting once or twice. Schedules just don’t work out and I don’t go to many events. But I did get a chance to photograph one event in the summer of 2018, right before the car went down for the winter for some much needed cosmetic upgrades. By the time the car was a KA-Turbo, and had been mostly sorted. As is with most drift cars, reliability was the focus and pushing a KA to over 350+whp introduces some problems. But a number of late night thrash sessions he was able to get the car to most events and his skill has progressed quickly.
And that brings us to the end of Part 1. Winter of 2019 brought a lot of cosmetic work to the car, and an opportunity for me to advance my photography skills. Remembering that I wish I had more photos of the build process, I decided to make it a point to photograph the bodywork being done on the car. After sourcing some overnight parts straight from Japan, and Touge-Factory, we setup a weekend to head up to LaCrosse and overhaul the car. Some of my favorite images of this car come from that weekend, and I feel personally advanced my photography beyond what I had been doing for years. It introduced me to a world of new ideas, and I hope to be able to execute those this summer.
Keep your eyes open for Part 2 soon.
– Andrew
Additional Photos Below
