The idea of the world issue came to me when I stumbled upon Kevve.be, a Belgian photographer's website that had countless cars from a variety of different countries. There I found the Lancia Delta Integrale featured on page 42 and as soon as I saw that car, it dawned on me that-other than JDM cars-we really don't feature many "tuner" (and I use that work loosely) cars from other parts of the world.
With the Internet being a portal into every country and its respective car culture, there really isn't an excuse why we shouldn't be featuring cars from all over the planet. However, I quickly found out that most of Europe is based more on show than go, and stereo systems dominate the rear passenger seats rather than rollcages.
But with some more digging I was able to find an outrageous Mitsubishi Evolution built in Sweden, and a trip down south to Australia netted me a time attack R34 that rivals any top JDM tuner. Seriously, once you see the build quality in this machine you'll be blown away.
I didn't have to look far north to find a world-class drift car. In Canada, Dave Briggs' Nissan 240SX has been engineered solely to slide sideways and destroy tires like they are going out of style. When you glimpse at the build photos included in the feature you'll see that nothing was spared to ensure this machine was built right from day one.
You'll also notice the lack of a JDM car in this issue because we feature enough of them during the year, and I felt the pages were better utilized showing off some of the lesser-known countries. It wasn't easy picking the four features either-there were many very cool cars from China, the Middle East and New Zealand that you may see on the pages of Modified later in the year.
In closing, focus your attention to the vehicles in this issue because they'll surely provide you with plenty of ideas and even some styling cues to make your car stand out from the rest of the USDM crowd.
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