All posts tagged Speedhunters

SEMA 2016: Spirit of 147 – The Need for Speed RWB Porsche reborn

The Speedhunters car culture program reached out to me towards the end of September for a livery re-fresh of their Need for Speed Porsche 911 RWB which had been on show previously at SEMA.

SEMA is the largest trade after market car show in the world and takes place every year in Las Vegas in November.  The show is huge so its vital to create something that is a talking point so its remembered.

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With the desire of a refresh and timescale our options were extremely limited. Speedhunters wanted to call out reference for the 1965 Monte Carlo Rally classing winning Porsche 911 of Herbert Linge and David Falke which carried the number ‘147’.  While this was Red, the brief called for something Black, more sinister and ‘home-grown’ in appearance but with Rally influence.

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Scion retrospective

Last week, Toyota announced ‘Scion’, its so called youth-centric brand, in North America would be absorbed into the Toyota line up beginning August 2016. It marks the end of a thirteen year journey for Scion, a brand I worked with during the Scion Tuner Challenge in 2014 and a number of Scion chassis over the year.
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The original concept for Scion was to appeal to the youth market and in the early days it did just that, bringing previously JDM only vehicles to the US marketplace including the xB ‘Toaster’ which was a decade before the Kia Soul and Nissan Cube.

However over time, aside from the FR-S, the Scion product range was watered down to nothing more than bland Toyota with Scion badges.

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SEMA Show 2015 recap

Another successful SEMA Show in the books. My tenth visit to the largest automotive aftermarket show in Vegas, SEMA is a trade only show filled with thousands of competition cars and car builds, and this year, an insane 140,000 people.

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I have over 90 images of the show on my Instagram feed, which you can view here.

A quick overview of my cars at SEMA 2015….

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Refreshed Toyota 86-X for Fredric Aasbø

Formula Drift winner, Fredric Aasbø, debuted his updated Toyota 86-X at Gatebil in Sweden this past weekend. This vehicle will be used by Fredric extensively in Europe and has been updated for 2015 to match the florescent orange vinyl from his 2014 Formula Drift Scion tC.

As featured here, back in 2014, Toyota Norway originally wanted to retain their corporate colour on the 86-X which was a shame, but after a year of seeing the more vibrant tC in the US, it appears Toyota has relented and the original vibrant vinyl now adorns the coupe.

You can follow Fredric’s exploits in North American, Europe and Asia on his website.

Jay Leno meets our Scion Tuner Challenge Winner!

The Speedhunters ‘Maximum Attack’ Scion FR-S which I designed for Speedhunters and top car builder, Keith Charvonia has been on the show circuit recently but made a quick stop off at Jay Leno’s Garage a couple of weeks ago. Keith was able to present the car in detail and give it a quick run on the outskirts of LA. Pretty cool to see one of my designs on Jay’s internet show.

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The Scion Tuner Challenge is an annual competition where three car builders face off to build the ultimate car in 90 days and $15000 with the winner chosen at SEMA. We developed a concept around the theme of a track-day racer, married with the heritage of Japanese tin top racers in North America in the 70’s, paying particular homage to the TRD Toyota Celicas which dominated the GTO and GTU classes of IMSA in the 80’s.

You can follow the design process of the Scion HERE, or hop over to Speedhunters where Keith is posting a multi-post build diary.

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2014 Scion Tuner Challenge Winners!

It has been a crazy week at SEMA for me this year with various meetings and launches of various cars, but one of the main highlights was Speedhunters ‘Maximum Attack’ Scion FR-S winning the 2014 Scion Tuner Challenge earlier this week.

2014_SEMA_Tuner_Challenge_Winner_Speedhunters_001Andy Blackmore, Scion Corporate Manager Dave Harbuck and Speedhunters Technical Editor Keith Charvonia

Hot rod car builder, Keith Charvonia of Charvonia Design, created an amazingly detailed build to an exceptionally high standard, with our reference to the old 70’s and 80’s IMSA heritage and a reason for everything on the car we managed to take the win narrowly from SuperStreet, who had previously won the Fan Vote.

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Thanks to everyone who took the trouble to vote for our build last week. It is much appreciated. Thank you to the many partners on the build along with Super Street Magazine and GT Channel who produced awesome builds.

You can read about the other builds and liveries at SEMA here. Thanks again for the vote and the support.

Vote on the Scion Tuner Challenge!

The Maximum Attack Scion FR-S by Speedhunters, created for the 2014 Scion Tuner Challenge has now been released to the public and a Fan vote is now underway.

Three teams are competitng for the Fan Vote and an overall Judging at the SEMA show next week.
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I partnered with Keith Charvonia of Charvonia Design to create a special track day racer inspired by the early days of my client, IMSA, and the introduction of Japanese manufactures to American racing including the legendary TRD Celica by Dan Gurney’s All American Racers.  You can read more about the design process HERE.

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Scion Tuner Challenge : Design Process, Speedhunters Scion FR-S

I have been fortunate to work with Speedhunters and car builder Keith Charvonia on their entry in the 2014 Scion Tuner Challenge, which will be showcased at the SEMA show in November. I recently published a post on the detail design process for Speedhunters which is now available in the Portfolio section.

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Grab a coffee, its a long one….

 

SEMA Show and into 2015

Many series have completed their 2014 season and now the focus is very much on 2015. Andy Blackmore Design will be at the SEMA Show in Las Vegas, in early November, so please do not hesitate to contact Andy if you want to arrange a meet up and discuss plans for the coming year.

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I will have a number (currently 10!) of vehicles on display, a mixture of builds like the Speedhunters ‘Maximum Attack Scion FR-S and liveries including the Championship Winning Turner Motorsport BMW Z4.

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A Full post covering all the vehicles will appear around SEMA.

Scion Tuner Challenge Update

I was recently contracted by Electronic Arts and their Speedhunters car culture blog to design the look of their entry in the 2014 Scion Tuner Challenge at SEMA in November. The car builder is Keith Charvonia who built one of the stars of the show, a Kaiser, back in 2012 and has been featured on Jay Leno’s Garage web-video series. We have less than 90 days and a $10,000 pot of gold to transform the car.

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Speedhunters and Andy Blackmore Design partner for SEMA Scion Tuner Challenge

via Speedhunters

The Scion Tuner Challenge is known for attracting the top builders and turning out some of the most radical automotive creations each year at the SEMA Show, so we’re honored to announce that we’ll be participating with a build of our own this year. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Tuner Challenge, Scion have mixed things up by choosing three of the top media outlets to compete against each other. Super Street will represent print, GT Channel as video, and of course Speedhunters as your digital media source of all things car culture.

True to form, we’re brainstorming behind the scenes to bring you guys the type of stylistic automotive mash-up you would only expect from Speedhunters, and we’ve teamed up our resident car builder, Keith Charvonia with designer Andy Blackmore to develop the build. Scion will be kicking in an FR-S and they’ve given us less than 90 days to transform the car from bone stock to show stopper. The FR-S has just arrived and we’re tearing into it now, so stay tuned for build updates.

Follow along right here on Speedhunters and ScionRacing.com, and let us know how you would build a Scion Tuner Challenge FR-S in the comments below. You never know, your ideas might even make it into the build!

The Speedhunters,

Original Scion Press release

Comment:

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One of my previous projects with Speedhunters for SEMA was the Mustang RTR-X which I designed with Vaughn Gittin Jr., While the Scion Challenge has a significantly smaller budget, we plan to be different and create somethings striking….

 

2014 Fredric Aasbø Scion tC Formula Drift Livery

I have recently been working with Formula Drift driver Fredric Aasbø, his team, Papadakis Racing and Speedhunters on a new identity for his Scion tC.

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Speedhunter’s Rod Chong originally contacted me last year to work on some ideas for new liveries to replace the iconic Team Need for Speed identity which I designed in 2010. Despite ‘Team NFS’ ceasing to exist a couple of years ago, the asymmetric has continued with updated Speedhunters branding for Fredric (below).

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Speedhunters Article: Photos of the year!

Andy recently published his Photos of the Year on Speedhunters.

As a part-time contributor to Speedhunters.com, the leading Car Culture website, Andy has attended a number of events during 2010 including Formula Drift, American Le Mans Series, SEMA and Le Mans.

All the contributors were asked to pick their photos of the year. You can view Andy’s images HERE!