Careful, it bites

Words by Iain Kelly Photos by Mark Pakula

Low, loud and meaner than a junkyard dog, this South Australian S15 is going to start kicking heads both here and abroad.

While you have to be different to want to modify a car, there are varying levels of “uniqueness” that each person brings to the scene. I mean, it’s not the act of a cold, calculatingly logical person to invest tens of thousands of dollars into a means of transport, making it more expensive to run and making it far more uncomfortable and too powerful to drive on the street.

Theo and George Spartalis are not ordinary, and their cars are certainly far from average, often seamlessly integrating show quality build finish to hardcore race-style performance engineering. Both of these very special brothers shine on like crazy diamonds in the coalface that is the tuning scene and this wild S15 is Theo’s opus, his toy, his pride and joy. Rather than keeping it placid with big rims, dumped stance, some styling efforts and around 250kW at the wheels, the Spartalis brothers took their inspiration from the most hardcore drag and circuit racing Silvias in Japan.

Theo made a pilgrimage to Japan a few years back, where the sight of the HKS Kyushu S15 running 10.4 on drag radials and using an SR20 pulled the strings in his mind, while it was witnessing the GT300-class C-West S15 JGTC racers (now Super GT) that stamped those formative lustful ideas and dreams into a cold, hard, wanton desire to build his own SR20DET-powered S15, something that could run a number at the drags or blast an enthralling lap out at a local circuit.

To achieve this, he scored himself a 2001-vintage Spec R S15 Silvia import and set about building a car that bridged JGTC circuit influence with some drag racing hardware and a pinch of road car smarts. At first, having spent well over $120,000 and three months in construction, it was a capable all rounder with over 400kW at the treads from its highly engineered SR20 (without nitrous), though it soon copped evolutionary upgrades to assist in its chase for a time slip and the world record for fastest SR20 on radial tyres.

At the start of the original build, Theo wanted the car to blend JGTC and drag styles into a road car and then take it from track to strip to street. However, his desire to run a fast time overcame the short-term circuit aspirations and any shred of road usage for the car, and so it slowly turned more into a strip-focused monster, though Theo reckons it can be re-tuned to smash lap records fairly easily and cheaply.