Crazy Super Mega SEMA 2009 Coverage

All pix courtesy of teal_dx from Ohio Hondas, complete lack of 2010 Camaros and anorexic models courtesy of me lol!

CR-Z Photoshop Tuning

via Tuner’s Tribe

Melissa Project Update October 5

If this is your first visit to the site you can read about the Melissa Project right here. Basically I’ve been selling stickers to try and help raise money for my girl who has a particularly nasty form of cancer and no insurance.

I just wanted to take a moment to update you guys and thank you yet again for your generous and giving spirit, special shouts go out this week to AZHT.net, I just shipped a couple orders to members from there today, you guys have been so great and it is appreciated so much! Thanks to the orders received so far YOU have made it possible for Melissa to make the needed down payment to see the oncologist to get her biopsy, blood work, and full scan. Even though the results of the biopsy were quite bad, The Melissa Project has lifted her spirits and inspired such hope in her it’s absolutely priceless.

The Hatch Life bumper stickers arrived today and they came out better than expected. I have ones set aside for Slappy, Brian, Karsten and Duke, even if you guys don’t wish to donate I want to send you one for always being such great supporters of the site. That leaves 6 up for grabs @ $8ea shipped. Just like the Heart stickers 100% of that goes to Melissa’s medical bills. Leave a comment or hit me at stickerdonations@yahoo.com

Lots of the Heart stickers left too, I just cut 30 more Honda “H” ones today, $5ea shipped or two for $9

Concepts

We all love getting a glimpse of a cool concept car, but with that always comes the knowledge that by the time it reaches production it will be watered down and loose it’s cool concept car edge. The latest pix of the CR-Z prove it’s not immune to this phenomena, but it still looks pretty damn good to me. Next comes the other concept car curse, will North America get it? You can see the earlier concept right here

Next up the oh so cute and retro EV-N, drawing heavily upon the styling of the original N360.

It even has a spot to store a Honda U3-X that you can’t buy

an original N360 for comparison

Honda U3-X Unicycle

This thing is crazy in action

Thank You!

From the bottom of my heart guys, thank you for your generous support. Special thanks to Yoshitomo from Westhill Motorsports, Manny, Duke, Karsten, and Slappy. I have no idea why but Hatch Life gets about 2000 views a day, my goal was if just 1% bought a sticker, 20 orders, we could pay for just one doctor visit, or one prescription, and we could give Melissa the hope that’s so hard to come by right now and show her that she doesn’t have to go through this alone. Thanks to you we met that goal in just 2 days! That’s community, that’s family, that is what makes cars such a special hobby….the people! You’re the best and if there is ever anything I can do to for you just give me a shout.

There will be a permanent link to the sticker post in the Blog Roll over there titled Buy Stickers, and I will probably bring the original post back up to the top of the front page from time to time, not trying to ram it down your throats, just to keep the exposure going. I still have plenty left to sell, and in the future I think I’ll add a B16 and DC version, maybe even S13 and S14 if there’s interest. There was also a request for a Hatch Life sticker which blew my mind. There will be a very very limited initial run to test the waters, I sketched something up real quick tonight but they’re at least a week away yet. You guys are the best, thank you so very very much!

Make a Difference

There’s a girl near and dear to my heart named Melissa. She’s one of those rare people who feels the injustices of the world to her core and fights everyday to right them. She lights up any room she’s in, she’s smart, funny, tenacious, and has the most beautiful blue eyes you’ve ever seen. Last month she was diagnosed with cancer in one of her lower vertebrae, the tumor is pushing on her spinal column and generally making her life miserable. When her insurance company got wind of her diagnosis they straight dumped her and she is now uninsurable because it is a pre-existing condition. She is a single mother of two grade school aged kids and has no family to lean on. As you can imagine her medical bills are quickly becoming outrageous. To help her from now on I will be selling some stickers I came up with here on Hatch Life. I’ve already done an initial run of 50, they were professionally printed by Next Day Signs here in Columbus on 3mil outdoor calendared vinyl and are 4 inches by 4 inches. They will be $5 each shipped or 2 for $9 shipped in the US. 100% of the money -NOT JUST THE PROFITS- will go to Melissa’s medical bills, the production and mailing cost are out of my pocket.
For right now there are three designs to choose from as shown below, they are red and diecut so what is black in the sample images will be red and where there is white there will be no material when applied. If this takes off I’ll be adding more chassis and engine codes and other colors.

They are of course inspired by the classic Hakosuka Heart Skyline stickers.

I threw one on the red car so you can get a feel for them.

I’ve checked around at the usual shocker sticker places and as far as I can tell no one else offers anything quite like these and I pray to God no one knocks them off, I’m not promoting my lame blog or trying to cash in on some “JDM” trend, I’m trying to help give someone the miracle she needs and deserves. Part of me thinks this won’t make a dent, but all of me thinks I can not just do nothing. Any word of mouth advertising you can help me out with would be appreciated more than you know. If you are interested in helping a good cause or just want a new sticker to rock send all inquiries to the address below, Paypal, money orders, and checks are all good. Thank you

stickerdonations@yahoo.com

First Look : Trend Killer

Brian was cool enough to get in touch with me when he spotted his car in my post right here. He told me the car had a new full graffiti paint job and is now a full time road course track car. Well you know I just had to see and hear more about it now! He generously sent some pix and tells me this is the first time the car’s been seen on the interwebs in it’s current evolution, exclusive content here? I was as surprised and delighted as you lol. It’s different, it’s crazy, and it gets put to work on the track, and those are three things I’m always a huge fan of; honest cars built to suit the owner and no one else. No hardparking here! Remind me to ask Brian about that plug for his rear wiper, I’ve just got a JDMego sticker covering mine (ghetto). Alright let the pix do the talking…

There’s “Honda Clean”

and then there’s “VW Clean”. I love my Hondas but let’s face it, the Vdub guys have the engine bay game locked down. Yes, there have been a lot of very high quality Honda builds the last couple years since wire tucking has become so trendy, but very few on the level of some of the VWs I’ve been seeing lately. One of my pet peeves is seeing a fully tucked and detailed bay and still seeing it full of holes where things used to be and nasty seam sealer, it just seems like more VW guys take it all the way than Honda guys. I wonder if we’ll see street rod style smooth sheet metal firewalls and front tubs in the future. Just some random thoughts I had when I came across this MKI, it’s very much a “Foose style” street rod in the sense that it’s been smoothed in very simple subtle ways like tucking the bumpers in closer to the body, and in the way the overall fit and finish are to a higher standard than when it left the factory.

S2000 Rumors

Given the current state of affairs in the automotive industry it probably didn’t come as a shock a few months ago that Honda has abandoned the NSX replacement and retired the S2000. The CRZ however is still on track for a 2010 launch. I posted a while ago that if it came out I would seriously look into selling both my hatches to get into one so it might be time to stop dumping money into them. But from the ashes and for better or worse Japan’s Best Car Magazine is reporting that Honda is moving ahead with development of an S2000 replacement, although for the purists it may only be an S2000 by name, not spirit. It’s said to be a 2+2 coupe, hybrid powered, and using Honda’s SH-AWD system. None of this however is confirmed by Honda.