I am driving on the freeway, its 6:55 a.m. and I get a text from Matt asking me if I am close. Two things pop in my head: I have the day off and yet I am up and driving somewhere super early this morning. Two, Matt and Nolan are ready and according to somewhat reliable sources… this is a first.
As we hit the outskirts of Phoenix we get word from the rest of our small convoy telling us they are a few miles ahead. We are making the 90 minute jump heading south to Tucson to attend IFO. I was trying to figure out what IFO stood for since I have never heard about this event before. Since Arizona doesn’t get many events like this, I was a little curious to see how big this was going to get. Oh yeah, Import Face-Off
As we drove through Marana, our conversations of the B787 came to an end so we could find out where to meet Mike Schietroma. This turned out to be much easier than we thought and after a quick stop, we were soon on our way to our final destination.
As we pulled up to the Southwestern International Raceway (SIR) we saw a long line of cars waiting to go in. I soon realized the event was also hosting a quarter mile drag event and this made the crowd much bigger than I had anticipated. BTW, I saw a Civic dip down into the 8’s and granted I don’t follow drag racing as much, it was still an impressive feat.
I am not going to lie, I was a little surprised at the amount of solid cars that made it to the show that day. Yes, there was a large amount of cars that were a little questionable. Some of them left us scratching our heads and a little puzzled. Then again some things are not for everybody and I am sure they were not there to please anybody.
One of the biggest surprises of the day came from James Engols’ Nissan Stagea GT-R. We spoke with James for a little bit and he told me this was his daily car, The Stagea was very refreshing to see since it stood alone in a sea of Civics, Integras, Imprezas, Evos, and 240s. We hope to hook up with James soon to learn more about this car.
Another car that grabbed my attention was a silver Mazda RX-7. Unfortunately I didn’t get much information on this car but it was one of my favorites at the show. The FD was sporting a JDM front bumper, which I think is the best looking for the FD. I am sure we will see this car again soon.
At the end of the day, we left Mike in charge of the grub since this is his back yard. We ended up at El Guero Canelo to hit up some Sonoran Hot Dogs and though they looked very interesting, they were very good. The convoy broke and everybody went home in what ended up being a fine Sunday.
