Hi Nic Jonsson here again! I have to start out by apologizing for not writing a blog every week. I really don't have any good excuse for it other than I just felt like I didn't have enough interesting stuff to write about until now.
I just got back from the SEMA Show in Las Vegas where my Kinetic Motorsports group had one of our biggest days in the company's history. We announced a new team we will be presenting in the Grand-Am ST class for 2010 along with our partner, KIA Motors. This has been in the works for about the last 3 months. We have been building the cars but have not been able to talk about it. This project has come together very quickly from initial phone call from KIA to announcing a full works effort for the 2010 season. We had a huge response from the media and people in general. It was a big surprise to most that KIA was going racing and to be honest, it was a big surprise to me and us at Kinetic as well. KIA is not exactly the first car you think of when you're talking about race cars but after getting a little more educated on KIA and the way they do things, I believe all the potential is there for a successful effort in 2010.
The car that KIA has chosen to race is the new KIA Forte Koup which is a competitor to the Honda Civic, Chevy Cobalt, Golf GTI, etc. KIA is looking to change the perception of their brand by going younger and sportier. Everyone knows that KIA builds an inexpensive car but very few understand that KIA also builds a very high quality (and fast) car with their 100,000 mile / 10 year warranty on all their vehicles...now that's confidence! This is something Kinetics hopes to demonstrate on race tracks across the nation and put the Infinity Audio sponsored Kinetic KIA Forte Koup in the winner's circle for 2010!
Besides this very exciting news, I've also been away in Sweden doing some testing with the new Camaro Cup car that I've been involved in developing over the last few months. A couple of my good friends back in Sweden have come up with this new concept of a full tube frame chassis with the Camaro body on it to replace the current Camaro Cup car for 2010. The old car was based on the regular Z28 uni body car and had a few years under its belt. So now they thought it was time to do something different and they nailed it! The car is a lot of fun to drive and it's a proper race car. The car responded well to changes and will be a huge success for sure.
On a personal note, my Son Max is growing like a weed and has started to develop his own little personality and knows exactly what he wants.
Well I will let you go and I will be back with an update in a near future. Take care!
Your friend, Nic