Once upon a time, there was this red Mazda RX-7 from ARIOS Okuyama. The FD3S was built and tune for Time Attack battle.

It looked like this early last year…

Body kit-wise, it sported the ARIOS front bumper with carbon fiber canards, and front splitter was from R-Magic. At the rear, air was cleaned up by the rear canard also from R-Magic. Additional downforce was provided by ARIO GT wing in full carbon fiber. Door was replaced with carbon fiber part, side mirror was from C-West and rear carbon fiber hatch was from ARIO.

This set up enabled them to do a lap of Tsukuba in 58.818 seconds.

The need for speed this FD surely has. One way they thought of achieving better performance is to go wider… a lot W-I-D-E-R.

So at the end of last year, this is how the car looked after a one-of widebody kit was custom made in their garage and installed.

Some parts from the old set up was carried over to the wider track set up. The wheels looked exactly the same which made me guess that it must be using some super thick spacers in there.

After the car was done, they hit the track again and this is how it looks currently..




So the question now is, “Is wider better?”. Well in this case no, or at least not yet. Let me explain.

With such a wide set up, it changed the handling characteristics of the car so currently, the fastest lap time it was able to muster is 1″00.066. Although they were couple of seconds slower than their best record lap, their lap time is slowly dropping. By the time they get accustomed with the new set up, I have no doubt that they can surpass their 58.818 sec. lap record. Their goal is to be in the 57 second and below range and go from there. So I say best of luck to them coz their competitors are doing mid 55 seconds.

If you guys dig FDs, make sure to check out RE-XTREME’s blog for more great examples of well tuned rotary monsters including this Arios Okuyama FD.