Holding power to account
To get straight to the nuts and bolts of it, as it were, the Cape car community lives to haal uit en wys, as it is said. What that means is bringing your motor to the track and pitting your power against others, and no one is to be underestimated.… Read more
When Jackie Cruze first started chatting with Thaariq de Klerk about his wine-red Honda CRX, he didn’t realise he was about to get a front-row seat to one of the most underground trends in local car culture, the legendary K-swap.… Read more
A chance meeting in Barrydale had Jackie Cruze stumbling upon a rare rat rod of rust and rebellion, parked with a rough-and-ready bearing.
Identifying the owner was straightforward. Div de Villiers has a similar disposition to the rat rod genre: creative, unruly, a collector and a raconteur.… Read more
One car subculture that announces its presence with sheer volume in Cape Town is the audio enthusiasts.
Take Granger Nieuwoudt and his Seat Vario Cordoba, the only car of its kind in the country. Experiencing the force of his sound system is a full body experience; you can literally feel your skin vibrating while your hair gets blown in every direction by those blasting decibels.… Read more
On the Cape car calendar, there are a few events that stand out as representing the local car culture on an international level. Only the Fittest is certainly one of those.
Hosted by automotive cultural movement Capestance, the Only the Fittest exhibitions have developed over the past decade into a must for car fans across the Cape.… Read more
The sound-off is a lesser-known but no less exciting aspect of the Cape Town car scene. This is a subculture in which, simply put, creative car folk build as much powerful audio equipment and power supply into a car as is humanly possible, and bring that car to ‘the lanes’, where the loudness is measured using hi-tech equipment.… Read more
The homegrown motorsport of spinning has gained solid traction over the past decades in Cape Town. Now, although that might be a contradiction in terms (spin is about losing traction after all) it is testament to the popularity of a motorsport that started out in abandoned parking lots and has risen to being Mzansi’s fastest-growing sport.… Read more
There are certain characters on the Cape car scene who could be described as larger than life. Jonathan Schaffers is one of these people.
Known on the track as Johnny 2J, he is probably best known for his red Nissan Skyline powered by a Nissan VK45 turbocharged V8 powerplant.… Read more
The most appropriate way to introduce the Toyota Corolla – drum roll – is to remind readers that it is the world’s most successful car, with about 45 million having been sold since its launch in 1966.
Of course, many versions of this global favourite have been produced, and the Corolla accounts for one out of every five Toyotas’ sold.… Read more