The culmination of in-house designed and engineered components, and lessons learned, for us to be able to build this car has been a long and winding hill climb; number 46 now marks the beginning of a new chapter for the shop.
Azulito, or “Little Blue”, lived most of its life in Portugal. It came to us gently restored, with my favorite A-series engine, the charming little 998. In its place, we’ve put in a Honda D16 engine, mounted on our in-house subframe.
The rebuilt Honda engine comes to us expertly built by Ocean Wong at Chikara Motorsport.
Together, we’ve worked on every part of the recipe to put together an engine that sings a song like the naturally aspirated cars we loved as kids: Jenvey Heritage Individual throttle bodies, our in house developed 4 to 2 to 1 exhaust manifold, bespoke Wiseco pistons, bespoke connecting rods, the list goes on.
Ocean starts by measuring absolutely everything, blue printing the engine before assembly. Spending the hours to measure every tolerance and ensuring everything is perfectly balanced allows the engine to spin up to redline effortlessly. This level of detail is something that not every engine builder will go through, but we feel is paramount to the overall package.
Every nut and bolt is OEM, which we then vapor blast and zinc plate. The block and case are powerwashed, cycled in a hot tank, vapor blasted to a better-than-new finish using our favorite (but very costly) ceramic blast media, and finally cleaned using an industrial-sized ultrasonic hot tank.. Ocean’s fastidiousness is no joke, and I’d like to think his way of working has rubbed off on us as well.
The subframe is based around reusing the core part of the original subframe to retain the suspension geometry, we then create a structure around it to cradle the D16 engine. The newest version provides a mounting location for our custom made 3 core sidedraft radiators, and new AC set up.
We have designed this subframe for compatibility with OEM style rubber engine mounts for better than stock NVH levels. To create the best shift feel possible, we’ve developed a cable shift conversion, which is what gives us that precise shift gate feel through the RPM range and different engine loads.
Speaking of NVH and ride quality, we’re running our bespoke monotube dampers developed and built in partnership with Bilstein UK. The interior is prepped with sound-deadening and then shaped with foam to create a flat floor prior to the underlay and German square weave carpet.
Now that we have driving feel down and have given it a Honda powered soul with an ITB soundtrack, the car needs to satisfy the visual and olfactoral senses.
I think visual design should come to you like a story, it should have beats to it as your eyes move around. The central oval dash is the first beat when you open the door. It floats away from the car, defying expectations; which echoes what a Honda swapped mini does. The next beat is the color scape, then the restraint in applying stitching, the patina, the smell.
Custom Creations operated by Derek Friesen, literally and metaphorically situated between a golf club and a biker bar, have been the perfect partner in helping us put together the interiors of our cars. Again, attention to details; the two little straps on the top of the seats took many iterations to get it perfectly rested on the shoulders. The leather and fabric were chosen and applied with the simplicity of a cafe racer motorcycle in mind.
The execution is why we keep working with local experts. We want to create something that seems effortlessly put together and effortlessly itself. More importantly for the next owner and caretaker of Azulito, something they can truly enjoy in stillness and in speed.
