"They get it." Steph measured the suspension and planned wheel/tire sizing and offset, told John how wide to go on the corners, John designed a kit to follow suit while complementing the OE lines of the car, and Mike and his team physically brought it to light.
The car was wheeled to Seibon Carbon headquarters in City of Industry, CA, where John brought his good friend and automobile illustrator John Sibal to meet with Seibon craftsman Mike Burless, and Steph Papadakis-technical guru for Tanner Foust's racing efforts-to produce two renderings of the car in its planned widened state to be used in the production of new front and rear bumpers, side skirts, widened front fenders and rear over-fenders. "I wanted to do one here, but keep it fully functional." He had two birds to kill, but only one stone: design and produce a fully custom, one-off body kit, and design it around a track-specific suspension and stance. "I've always liked the look of widebodies-I've done them on nearly all my cars," says John.
We were fitting 265-series rubber all the way around with no rubbing under the stock fenders, and Chris has gone even wider with just a little bit of fender rolling." Impressive, but not as much as John was able to fit with by widening the fenders the way he did. "You can fit really, really wide wheels and tires on the new car," he says, "which is very important in a track car. And then, almost at a whisper, "I've pushed our test car to over 12 psi of boost and have made well over 400 whp so far on the stock internals with no problems." Chassis reinforcement came second, and it was here that John unearthed another gem with the new tC. "The increased 2.5L displacement, 10.4:1 compression, and VVTi head really help make a lot of power and torque easily," explained Chris. A quick tune made 333 whp and 303 lb-ft of torque at only 8 psi of boost, revealing the tC's first hidden gem: its 2AR-FE engine, carried over from the Toyota RAV4 and Camry. Almost immediately after taking delivery of the car, John had it shipped over to the World/Descendent facility in Torrance, CA, for the installation.
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"With help from Scion, Chris Rado and the guys at World Racing formed Descendent Racing and developed a full 55mm turbo kit for the car before it even entered production," states John. You know that the manufacturers of that model are behind it 100 percent when they contract one of their winningest racers to develop it. You know a new model is going to be hot when the first production modification for it is a full turbo kit. He went on to build a 240SX for BN Sports, a G35 for Motegi Racing to road rally, a Supra for Speedwell Footwear, and more before trying his luck at the 2008 Scion Tuner Challenge. The experience, coupled with his background in marketing, showed John the mutual benefit to be found collaborating with manufacturers and shops to build a badass car. "It's funny," he says, "because before that, most people in the car world knew me from the E46 show car I built years ago." It was a car he bought for himself as a daily driver, and one that he gradually built to show off at Import Showoff, Hot Import Nights, and in features on the pages of 10 different magazines, including the cover of sister publication eurotuner. An account executive for The ID Agency by day, one of John's preeminent tasks is working directly with race teams, shop and company owners, and the media to promote Formula D and the sport of drifting. John's name might not sound familiar, but if you've ever even heard of Formula D, you're connected to him.