At the first sign of trouble, Clark Kent stepped into a phone booth and magically transformed into a flying superhero, fighting crime and saving the universe from unspeakable destruction. Afterwards, he would change back into his four-square tie and black-rimmed glasses and jump into the arms of his babe Lois, partying the whole night through-drinking, smoking, flipping over parked cars, and doing whatever else superheroes do to relax after a long day at work.
Nick Olsen of ?, Calif., isn't a superhero. In fact, he's not even close. Being a member of the cell phone/pager generation, he has probably never even seen the inside of a phone booth. Still, he does bear some resemblance to the Man Of Steel-or at least his car does. After starting out life as a mild-mannered, normally aspirated, automatic Eclipse RS, Nick's car jumped into a virtual phone booth and came out bigger, stronger, faster, and ready to tear up the streets of Northern California.
The first step of the transformation came in the form of Nick's realization that he wanted a large trophy to proclaim the glory of his car. (Hey, Superman had a pair of Underoos named after him-a trophy doesn't seem like too much to a ask, right?) He figured that the only way to get a trophy would be to go where no man had gone before, that place where Eclipse doors open up like the doors on the Lamborghini Countach. I don't know where that is, but it sure looks like he went there. The custom door treatment was completed by Nick and his friends in the racing crew Gridline, cleaning up the mess made by the three other shops that attempted the modification. After the door installation, the car had to re-painted from its original chameleon paint job to the Candy Purple that you see in the pictures above. Thanks to Image Auto Body and the House Of Color, the car now has twelve coats of purpleness to cover the previously damaged paint.
Accenting the sculpted body are side vents from a Mustang and custom fabricated fender flares. The aggressive front bumper catches more than its fair share of bees and june bugs on the freeway, while the massive rear GT-style wing substitutes for the flowing red super cape. Speaking of super, the rear brake lights were hot-glued and bubble-gummed on after being removed from the tail end of a Supra. Twin GReddy mufflers shoot out of the back end and complete the look that keeps the heads turning.
One doesn't need x-ray vision to see under the hood of this Eclipse. That is achieved by looking through the custom Plexiglas-and-steel hood. Superman had his "S"-Nick's Eclipse has his custom Diamond Star cutout. You see, you don't need to be the son of Jor-El or any guy from the planet Krypton to see the custom Rev-Hard manifold glowing red-hot under boost conditions or to catch sight of the ever-popular Turbonetics T3/T4 turbocharger spinning wildly out of control to the tune of 10psi. It's all right there in full Technicolor glory.
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