The Raleigh Night Meet Moves Underground

Last month, I started up a night-time car show with the help of some local friends. The first few meetings were in an outdoor parking lot, but another location became available, so we jumped on it: a well-lit underground parking deck.  This has some benefits, and some downsides.  On the upside, you can hold a carshow underground whether it's raining or snowing or whatever.  The downside: it gets hot in there.

For a fledgling car show, a turnout of 50+ cars on short notice is (especially in Raleigh!) is nothing short of astounding.  Without any specific brand associations, the variety of stuff that turns up for a show is pretty satisfying as well.

This Lexus IS350 is well known in the NC area; it was quite a treat to see it roll up to our little show.  Every detail of this car is amazing, from the pearl-effect paint to the diffusers and GT-style rear wing, the Bride seats and interior roll bar.  It's amazing how the wheels absolutely fill up the bolt-on overfenders, too.  But don't think it's all show and no go.

It has a rare HKS GT supercharger setup, a kit that's not even for sale in the US.  The stock Lexus 3.5L twin-injected V6 is good for 306 crank horsepower; with the supercharger it's likely more than 400bhp to the wheels.  I've personally seen this show-car looking Lexus run a smokey low-12 second quarter mile.  Cameo from Ben Graebe's beautiful Volvo S60 in the background.

E46-chassis BMW's don't need a lot of alterations to look amazing; this 330Ci owned by Justin Schaub is crouching low on a set of 19" Vortex Tuning LeMans alloys.

Two Fahrenheit edition VW GTI's parked next to each other.  This is unusual, considering there were only 1,200 Fahrenheits (in this Lamborghini Gallardo orange) produced.

Black and white, not just in color, but in approach: the black E46 M3 (belonging to Joshua Brooks) is all about performance, with coilovers, a loud exhaust, and lord knows what else.  The white Lexus gets that low with air-ride suspension and lots of show car touches to set it off.  Both well-executed.

I can never get quite enough pictures of Daniel Harvey's crazy-low '85 Golf GTI with a 16v swap.  Who needs a hood, anyway?  This car picks up awards at pretty much every show it goes to; considering how perfect everything on it is, that's not surprising.

Some people just have no tact.

This green hatch was out last week; since then it's added a front bumper to cover up the huge intercooler.  Now that the intercooler core and piping is painted black, even harder to see it coming - this boosted hatch puts down more than 240whp.  The S2000 next to it has a built low-compression motor that's ready for boost, too.

I've shot this early 240SX before, but seeing a pig-nose S13 this clean - and boosted - is still amazing to me.  So many of the 89 and 90 models are rotting in fields and junk yards now.

The EP3-chassis Civic Si has never gotten a lot of love in the US market (probably due to the non-valvelift K20A3 motor, shifter coming out of the dash like a minivan, and really bad stock suspension/wheels/tires), but every now and then you see a nicely done one.

Porsche's 944 may not get a lot of respect from Porsche Purists, but I still think it's one of the best-looking cars to come out of the 80's - all blox flares and fastback and spoilers and popup headlights.  Love it on black wheels with a polished lip, too.

He's got the low part covered; now he just needs some wheels to fill up those wells.  The paint on this car looked surprisingly good.

A Flyin' Miata decal on a Miata is always a good sign.  As is a roll bar!  Sadly I don't think this one has an LS1 swap.

You can always tell it's an R32 by the insane, brassy howl coming out of the tail pipes.  It's closer to music than any Lady Gaga song will ever be.

Not only was this LS400 dropped the ground and stanced out to the hilt, but some exhaust work lets the butter-smooth 1UZ-FE release a growl that most people would never associate with a Lexus.  Who knew how mean these things could sound?

Sadly, we had to tell him "No, you can't drive your tricked-out go-kart around inside the parking deck."  The property manager would probably not be very happy with us.

Really though, meets are only half about the cars - the other half is the people.  And it is surely the people - with all their vibrant (sometimes insane) personalities that makes promoting these meets totally worth it.  Till next week!