Half way into June earlier this year I joined some friends to check out Winterfest.
After we assembled, we proceeded to Sandown to enjoy the best Toyota’s Melbourne had to offer, unfortunately it was around midday and harsh sunlight had forced me to put the camera away, so I decided to actually walk around and somewhat socialise, it was somewhere around then that I spotted my favourite car at the show.
It wasn’t an AE86 or even an iconic Supra. It was an old, low, twin turbo swapped, glitter painted Cressida that would be right at home at Meihan Sportsland, yet there it sat in a Springvale carpark. Through the technological marvel that is Instagram, I managed to get in contact with the owner of the MX73 making it quite clear that I would like to shoot the car, luckily he was also keen and a mere 2 months later it was done. With a car this interesting, it would be a wasted opportunity to post a feature without doing a short interview with owner Akshay Kumar.
B: Firstly, lets get this out of the way, what is the car used for?
A: To keep it short; Drifting.
B: What inspired the build?
A: Well I actually have Victoria police to thank for the car becoming what it is now, but I’ll get to that in a second. The entire reason I bought & modified a Cressida is because my grandad had one since I was a child, I had always seen potential in it.
Now back to Victoria police – I had this car as my daily driver for just over a year in a slightly more subtle form but was always limited from doing what I really wanted due to it being a street car; after being grounded by highway patrol on the way home one day I decided it was time for me to do everything that I had wanted but was too worried about.
B: Brief rundown of the car?
A: The Engine is a 1JZ-GTE non-vvti with a W58 behind it, only real mods are straight 3 inch exhaust, front mount, FCD & Bee*R loud bang maker. Megan coilovers all round, cut & shut knuckles, 50mm extended lcas, AJPS rcas provide the many cambers, low & lock. The interior is fairly stock with the exception of a Bride seat, GR wheel plus the usual gauges & drift junk.Now the fun part, the exterior; first & foremost is the custom as hell blue with 13kg of glitter, designed solely for the purpose of blinding spectators so they can’t tell that I’m a rubbish driver. Jack handle special flares too. Finally the oh-so-glorious wheels, these are SSR Star Formula’s that have been refurbished by PINE engineering, measuring at 14×10 -40 all round & wrapped in 185/55 Federal 595’s.
There’s a lot of other bits & pieces but I don’t want to start rambling.
B: Which would be a better engine for my car: A Gallo 12 or a Gallo 24
A: Gallo 24
B: Shout out’s?
A: My best mate Ben for spending long nights working on this hunk to get it where it is today (also for ruining my rear left guard; thanks dick)
612 Autoworks for their mechanical work & troubleshooting any issues I’ve had since
Ben at Wizards Autobody for the amazing paint job
Havoc Fabrication for all the plumbing/exhaust work
JDI Fabrication for the knuckles & lcas
PINE Engineering for the spectacular work on the wheels
And most of all – my family for putting up with me throughout the past 3 years of me working on this thing & it being in the way a majority of the time
