Targa High Country featuring the Targa Racing NC’s.

Wallpapers here.

We’re going to say we called it here, and after All Japan Day recently, it certainly appears that tire lettering could be making a comeback.

It’s great to see! With the right application, in the right context, it really works.

All Japan Day is a Japanese car event with a difference. For starters, it has it’s origins in that ‘city with a country town feel’, Adelaide, Australia. Radelaide happens to have some great hills for driving just minutes from the centre of town… but let’s not digress.

The difference with All Japan Day is the community spirit of enthusiasts that the AJD organisers are trying to represent. No prizes or trophies or fences or displays. Just a nice mix of Japanese cars of all makes and models, modern and classic vintages, stock and modified.

The innaugral Sydney All Japan Day ran recently, and a few of Roadster Life’s brethren were there to represent. The photos above are by Roadster Life Representative Reggie - try saying that 3 times fast!

There is a great write up of the day by Ryan on The Lowdown here. Their great photos and coverage also include a shout out to Reggie’s NA and Guy’s NC… thanks guys!

Mazda announces 2 MX5’s for SEMA 2011.

Mazda returns to SEMA 2011 this year with two familiar Roadsters that have had a bit of a makeover. Trainspotters will notice the orange NC is reminiscent of SEMA 2010.

It is in fact last year’s MX-5 Super20 sporting a new orange livery. It looks to us like they’ve taken the roll bar colour of last year and used it over the entire car.

The performance enhancements remain - DPTune reflashed ECU, full Racing Beat exhaust and the usual complement of damper, swaybar and brake upgrades. Nice to see they have retained the 16” RPF1s, too.

However the white NC is the big announcement for Roadster fans at SEMA. Again, this appears to be last years car, still wearing it’s tasty 17” Advan RS wheels. It has some interesting new modifications though. Firstly, we can’t help but notice that new front, with a mouth reminiscent of the stunning Shinari concept. There’s also a stretched roof reminiscent of Project G’s Bikini Top and an OEM MZR 2L engine running on BP’s isobutanol. The claim here is that this fuel can be reproduced by renewable means, but does not come with the ‘performance penalty’ of ethanol, as it carries a similar energy density to that of normal gasoline.

Mazda is referring to this MX5 as a Spyder. Naturally though, it has also drawn comparisons with Mini’s new ‘backwards cap wearing’ Cooper Coupe.

We prefer to see an approach which compares quite favourably to the track-focused work of tuners like GWR.