There you are, driving your box truck into Tokyo at 4 a.m. The fish market opens at 5 a.m. and you're running late. The road is empty, save for the occasional cop car and scattered trucks. Spotting an intense blue and white flicker miles behind, you wipe the sleep out of your eyes to make sure they're not deceiving you. No sooner can you open them than the pressure wave sends the truck rocking back and forth. You glimpse taillights and can see a wide gold figure disappear into a tunnel. You've just been blitzed by the legendary Top Secret Supra.
OK, so the chances are slim that you'll actually find yourself in the above situation. Is it more likely for a twin-turbocharged widebody in Top Secret Gold to pass you while driving up I-95 in Maryland? Actually, yes. Jung Park's '04 Infiniti G35 started out like all G35s in the area do - as a $35,000 way to say: "I just got out of college and have a real job now." But Park's G35 didn't suffer the yuppie fate for long. He was a man on a mission, aiming to win every car show he competed in. He wanted to bring the legend of twin-turbocharged Top Secret cars to the East Coast.
Park wanted a one-step solution for the build, so he handed the keys to James Evans of JE Import Performance in Baltimore (www.jeimportperformance.com). JE Import has built more successful street cars than we can count, and is able to handle every aspect of the build process, so all Park had to do was leave it in Evans' capable hands and pick it up a few months later.
The ambitious project started with GReddy's twin-turbo kit, which includes dual TD05's and the SUS header-type manifolds necessary to mount them. Twin GReddy Type-S external wastegates dictate boost pressure, while a singular Type-RS blow-off valve hisses off the extra air when the throttle plate suddenly closes. When it's not closed, incoming air is chilled by GReddy's three-row, Type 23 front-mount intercooler. Since the turbochargers were inhaling through GReddy stuff, JE Import saw only fit to use a GReddy exhaust to give the engine a good place to throw flames.
The stock intake manifold does a poor job of allowing equal amounts of air into each cylinder and is a restrictive piece to begin with, especially under boost. So it was discarded in favor of a custom modified and fully polished setup from Speed Force Racing in San Diego before being bolted to the engine. A Sikky Thermalnator intake gasket, which is designed to block heat, was sandwiched in between them. The beautiful and incredibly complex solution sits, believe it or not, atop an engine that has never been opened. The stock pieces sit inside, untouched and unmodified.
While it's great news that the stock internals can handle the claimed 450 hp that this G35 twists out, there was no question that the stock fuel system would need to be junked. In its place are RC Injectors and a Sikky Mfg. fuel return system. An HKS Twin Power ignition system ensures all that gas explodes when it's in the cylinders. An oil cooler from GReddy keeps engine temperatures reasonable under the substantially increased load. Finally, a GReddy e-Manage and Profec-B Spec 2 have the job of ensuring that the engine doesn't explode - both were tuned by James Evans himself.
The stuff that sticks Park's G35 to the road is so Japanese that it sounds more like places to visit in Tokyo than parts of suspension you'd fit. The Top Secret coilovers feature modified Aragosta dampers with Swift springs and a Roberuta electronic height adjustment system. To better help the new suspension do its job, an Ikeya Formula front reinforcement bar was installed alongside a GT-Spec four-point mid-chassis reinforcement brace and a Cusco strut-tower bar. Finishing off the job of chassis control are A-arms and anti-roll bars from Cusco.