All posts tagged Scion

Rockstar Energy / Nexen Tire Toyota iM Livery for Papadakis Racing

Formula Drift Champion winning team, Papadakis Racing commissioned me earlier this year to create a new livery for their all-new Formula Drift car, the Toyota Corolla iM (Toyota Auris in some markets).

I had previously styled a number of liveries for Papadakis way back to the Team Need for Speed days when current champion Frederic Aasbo joined the team.

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With the Scion brand and the ‘tC’ model disappearing from the market place, Toyota needed to showcase a new product. The easy option would be the Toyota 86, but the 5 door iM was chosen instead.

Not your typical Formula Drift car, despite its Corolla heritage, we need to make the car stand out and look dynamic.

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While team owner Stephan Papadakis developed their own bodykit, I started work on some concepts. These first round concepts show some of the early variations. Traditionally Rockstar have busy liveries with tight corporate identity requirements, but with a design chosen, their feedback was for a cleaner livery, so working with the Marketing Director, Jen Horsey.

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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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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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Fredric Aasbø and Papadakis Racing’s newest adventure, Dreamride: Los Angeles

Fredric Aasbø and Papadakis Racing have been clients for many years. I’ve had the oppotunity to design many of Fredric’s liveries way back to the Need For Speed Toyota Supra which he drifted in Europe, prior to the Scion tC campaign with Papadakis.

Fredric narrowly missed the 2014 Formula Drift title in North America but later took the 2014 Formula Drift Asia title in October.

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This short film showcases the 2014 Formula Drift weapon, one of my favourite liveries. I was really pleased with how this came out and the contrast between the Florescent Red and White and the Satin Black and Dark Grey.  This is a very cool flm.

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Speedhunters have also posted an awesome behind the scenes article .

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….

 

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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My designs in Formula Drift

I took my now annual trip down, into the States for Formula Drift this past weekend. After a successful debut with Team Need for Speed in 2010, when I won the ‘Best Looking Car’ with Mad Mike Whiddett for the Team Need for Speed Mazda RX-8, I’ve always had a presence in the series.

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Papadakis Racing continues in Formula Drift with ABD

Scion works team, Papadakis Racing reached out to Andy recently to update the livery of their Scion tC Formula Drift car, which he originally designed back in 2011.

The car has minimal updates and has retained the original Team Need for Speed livery even though the organization bailed out of motorsport. Shows how a good striking livery can have more impact and longevity than the brand! Continue Reading