Well said.

 

5 years ago these kids wanted to be drag ricers , had civics with speed holes in the rear bumper, now the trendy thing is to be slammed wit killa offsets. They brought their same mentality to the new game (I'm broke and want to be a cool kid) and here you have the HellaGay scene that infected out community.

 

Hmmm I drove my Z for 6 yrs and actually finished my project with probably the rarest parts you could imagine. WTF did YOU bring to the Z community? Everything on my Z was genuine and that's something I'm extremely proud of.













My "econo-Box" is probably one of the nicer cars on the road and probably faster than your garbage Camaros might I add. My car stock came with 200hp with 270 tq… it'll be 320hp and 330tq when I get home.





Coming from a guy who has these garbage vehicles and not to mention talks so much about things you know nothing about. You still at Automotive Tech school claiming to be a Master body man and Master Tech?

 

Thanks dude… though a lot of people with Authentic set up's didn't care for mine which is all good.

 

Iv always said...if you can afford your knock off BS why not save up a little longer and buy the legit parts.

Patience is key

 

Not sure if mentioned as I didnt read all posts and trying not going into the knockoffs/replicas -vs- authentic argument directly, but pertaining to OPs/Advans and others disappointment on the SN dominican coverage and the over saturation of replica wheels, I do understand the disappointment to a degree.
Being on the other side of the coin, building a car in the caribbean will be significantly more expensive than in the US or Canada.

Shipping & Duty would be the factors I think in this case.
Don't know the dominican exact duty rate on wheels but they have a luxury tax duty applied to goods deemed non-essential, which can be 0% to as much as 300%

So for example:
Wheels = $3500.00 USD Shipped to freight forwarder in FL
+ Sea Freight Shipping & Insurance to Dominica = $250 USD (not sure their rate so used to me in Cayman)
CIF = $3750.00 USD
Duty payable to customs = $5,625.00 USD (using the middle rate of 150%)
Total = $9,125.00 USD for a set of authentic wheels (not factoring in tires)

That is a tough pill to swallow.
Jamaica is 100% duty i believe. Here is 25% on auto parts.

So you have shops in these countries that buy the replica wheels in bulk so they get them even cheaper and the retail prices they turn it around for become much more attractive and "makes more sense" even though we are talking about buying something thats not a neccessity.

I have gone with some replica body parts on my car cause of this as I factored in the damage that will occur (front lip needs replacing already)
but I go with authetic in regards to any interior parts, performance additions, wheels and suspension. I guess its a matter of picking your battles.

Just trying to put a little perspective on it.

 

Just so we're on the same page Vex, my complaint wasn't with the location of the show...I just so happen to be looking at that coverage when I started the thread.

 

Yes I am clear on why you were disappointed. Was just giving "an excuse" if you will on why there might have been so much of it there.
That being said if their import duty tax rate is less than I would say 40% then I would also like to see more authentic wheels in that article.

 

J 0 K 3 R is living up to his name.

 

It's rampant in all cars not just used 350z's. I see people with brand new 370z's scrambling to buy the cheapest crap they can afford even when the model just was launched.

It really comes down to owner preference, some people would never run cheap wheels on whatever platform they own regardless of what the car is worth

 

Hot damn Flo-rida I forgot how amazing your Z was. Kinda makes me want to do my Works purple next.

Instant gratification has ruined society. What ever happened to working hard and saving money for quality parts?

 

well put.

 

I completely understand there's issues like yours and I remember your car looking real nice but ti's not like you come here with some of the other excuses like the others do.

 

Why do people hate on these guys who buy inexpensive wheels? It's not like Z's cost a lot these days (hell, you can buy Z's now for almost the cost of some of the higher tier wheel setups). What you guys should be instilling into people is the knowledge of correct offsets and fitment. 9 times out of 10 that's the main problem with someone who goes and buys a cheap wheel with 50 plus offsets and 7 inch widths at discount tire, ntb, etc.

 

Man was just talking to my buddy about this stuff yesterday. After lunch, we stopped to peep mags at a local store, which is something we used to do a lot. Walking out the of the store I was like I don't think I'll even look at mags anymore, half the stuff in them is BS knockoff stuff. I want to see features of legit cars, rare, authentic parts, etc. Joel's car is a perfect example of what I'd want to see in a feature car, parts that aren't a dime a dozen, that took patience, timing, discipline, maybe even a little luck to acquire.

I can see all these garbage knockoff parts around town every day. Here in Boise, that stuff runs rampant (probably that way everywhere, from the sounds of it). I certainly don't want to read about it in mags or look at pictures of that junk on every website, which probably explains why I haven't bought a car mag in forever, and rarely look at most of those slammed blogs anymore.

 

Super Street.

I have a sub to them and I enjoy reading them/looking at the pictures.

 

Super street ftw

 

I still buy mags myself.. Even tho I have a Ipad I still like the look and feel of mags especially when taking care of business!

 

Example, I'm selling a set of Mugen MR5's. All original but they need to be refinished. No curb rash, no bends, no cracks, all the hardware is there to include the center caps and lug covers. So an acquaintance of mine asked how much I wanted for them which was $850.00. The guy had the audacity to tell me that he could get a set of Rota My knock offs for $400! Then he gets pissed when I tell him to go F himself and buy the Rotas.

 

jumping in kinda late here, but a couple things of note.
1) All the major import magazines have had cars with knock-off wheels. Most of them have had several. The ebay build aside (modified magazine), SuperStreet, ImportTuner, and DSport have had at least one knock-off car this year. No cover features, obviously, but they're in there.
2) You can't knock a website for show coverage. It's not like they were doing a feature on any specific car. They covered what came to the show. Now, perhaps the show offered a cold hard look at the state of today's scene, and perhaps that was an unfavorable view, but you can't blame SN for that. That's what came to the show.
C) I know the big thing in the import community is buying expensive parts, and if that's your thing, fine. However, there was a time (even in the import community) before you could go on amazon with a credit card or into harry's shop with a wad of cash, and build your car one name brand receipt at a time. Not that I'm against authentic parts, but, where is the customization? With a high enough credit limit (or well paying job that some people may not even be old enough to have yet) two people can bolt-up the exact same Greddy/HKS/JUN/NISMO/TOP SECRET/WORK/ETC... car. I'm not against authentic parts, but being able to buy stuff isn't really where we should be setting the bar in the 1st place. In the early days of SuperStreet, authentic parts were RARE and custom 1-off parts were even MORE rare, and you saw both. You saw guys MAKE stuff work long before you could "overnight parts from Japan".

I do think Stance is destroying the game, but not because of "fake wheels" and cheap coilovers alone. It's because the culture no longer puts a value on BUILDING a car. I mean really building. We can literally bolt up a race car with no knowledge. THAT, to me, is a problem. People don't research anything anymore. And when they do, it's what brand to buy. Thing is, if they actually KNEW what it was they were trying to accomplish, the questions would rarely come up. Kids are trying to slam cars without knowing anything about suspension. They're trying to poke wheels with no knowledge of width/offset/sizing. They're trying to stretch tires and have no ideal what the lettering means. If they researched THAT, they wouldn't ask. Nobody ask "how does this t-stat affect my motor" or "will these springs rates work for this application" or "what's the advantage of doing a cage like this as opposed to..." or ANYTHING like that. It's "what coilovers slam me?" or "how do these wheels look? will they poke out". Just asinine stuff man. IMO, THAT'S the issue. It isn't whether or not you have real or replica wheels...or even authentic parts. The scene just isn't what it was in the 90's or early 2000's. Nobody wants to KNOW things anymore. They just want to get a feature on a stance website and stickerbomb their car. And THAT is not the minority anymore. That's the norm...