I’ve finally got around to sorting the photos out for this, so enjoy

Please note that I did not take these photos, I was driving the car, credit to those photographers who did a great job!

View the gallery by clicking the image below:

Plans
I’ve spent the last few months being skint as hell paying off credit card debts, but they are finally being cleared and I should be debt free (minus the car) after April. Now I have spent the last 3 – 5 months planning all the mods I want to do to the car over the next 2 years (sad I know). The most for-seeable (if that’s even a word LOL) are:

Window Tints – March 2009
Getting a good deal with R-Tec, about 7 or 8 of us from the Swift Owners Club are getting them done at the same time and getting a photoshoot with Performance Car Magazine I believe, but we are still trying to sort a date out for that

Alloys – May 2009
Now I’ve still not made my mine up about these, it will either be OZ SuperTurimso’s that I will get painted black with a red rim;

or the Wolfrace Pro-Sprints in black with a red rim;

Suspension – May 2009
I don’t want to go mega low as the roads here are fucking abysmal, but I don’t want the stiffness of lowering springs so I am going to go for coilovers. Personally, I’d never heard of the company MesiterR but they have registered with the Swift Club and made some coilovers to fit the Swift Sport, not too expensive when compared with other makes too. I’ll get these fitted the same time as the rims with an initial drop of about 45 – 50mm

Exhaust
There is a shop around the corner from me called Predator Motorsport, some of you may have heard of it, but they specialize in motorbike exhaust systems. I have enquired and my boss has had them make a custom back box, which I will also do and maybe a custom centre section as well.

Cosmetic changes
Want to go completely JDM/Track look with this, as I want it to be a track car in the years to come. This is the kit I’ve picked out so far:

Front Lip

Carbon Fiber Spoiler

Side Skirt

I also have some simple decals designed to make it stand out

Other changes
There are lots of other small things I want to do/change, like uprated brake pads, red brake calipers, front and rear strut braces, weight reduction, maybe a proper bucket seat but I can wait for that. In two years, I’m looking to turbo it as well

Let me know what you think, and anything you’d do different (put some new ideas in my head!)

Here is a chop of what I see it looking like once I’m finished, but my car is red xD

Graphics

Visually, the game is stunning, not quite what the pre-release “screenshots” showed but it is still pretty good. The best thing is the map. When you bring the map up, the camera pans to the top of your car and zooms all the way out to view the whole city, then you can do the usual zooming in and out, moving around, then when you hit B, the camera moves towards your car whilst zooming in and getting behind the car rather than on top of it, really cool! All the mods on the cars seem to work quite well, unlike in previous versions of both Midnight Club and Need For Speed where some parts didn’t fit certain cars properly or parts of the kit just disappeared behind others.

Audio

Yet another game with rap brap brap music, turned it off straight away and started streaming my own music from my iMac. The sounds from the cars are quite good, and certainly change between mods. Upgrading the engine and supercharging it definately makes a lot nicer sound than a stock one, including the simply awesome sound of the air being rammed through the engine The sounds from the crashes go a bit strange when topping 140mp/h and you are going so fast you just bounce off the lamp posts rather than stopping dead like usual.

Gameplay

Very difficult to get used to, but there hasn’t been any decent racing games out for a while so i’m very used to playing FIFA 09 at the moment, which is why i suppose it was difficult to get used to. Once you get the feel of the way the cars drive, it gets pretty easy, don’t overspend on visuals and upgrade the engine, suspension and brakes as much as you can and you pretty much can’t lose, but its fun nonetheless. I haven’t played online properly yet, but i have done a “quick cruise” with my brother which was quite fun, something i hear the new Need For Speed is also bringing.

Overall

The game is pretty good, if you like your racing/modding games i’d advise to buy it. The only thing that lets it down is the crap music but its pretty easy to overcome that problem with your own, or just turn it off completely and listen to the engines To finish off, here are pics of the two cars i have thus far