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CARB CERTIFIED. YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT. I SAID IT.

I have been one of the Product Development Engineers here at CorkSport for roughly nine months. During that time, I have helped complete projects that were already in the works before I was here, completed projects on my own, and have started projects that are still in the development process. One project that I have been working on (other than physical part development) since I started here has been getting some of our parts California Air Resource Board (CARB) approved. After nine long months, I can now check that off my to-do list (at least for a few of our parts).

Our 2010-up Mazdaspeed 3 Short Ram Intake (SRI), 2007-2009 Mazdaspeed 3 SRI, 2006-2007 Mazdaspeed 6 SRI, and our 2007-up CX-7 SRI will now be CARB certified. This is the full intake kit that consists of the filter, MAF housing, silicone couplers, and turbo inlet pipe (TIP) as shown in the picture below. In the next few weeks we will be receiving a legal Executive Order (EO) number assigned to these intake packages. That EO number will be affixed to the intake system which will designate it as CARB approved (50-state legal).

If you already have our intake system for one of these vehicles, DO NOT WORRY! No, we can’t legally send you a sticker to put on your intake, but when you go in to the smog check station, they will look up our intake and verify that you have the same intake system on your vehicle.

The process of getting a performance part CARB certified is lengthy and time consuming, but we feel that making parts that are legal in all 50 states is very important.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

– Jake

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Getting What You Want – When there is a Problem

Our friend Kelly is back this week with a little Thanksgiving cheer:

Given the time of year and the frustration many of us have experienced when calling a company for help I thought I would offer up some tips to help you navigate your way through any phone call to any company for any customer service issue.

My background: I’ve spent years of my life in retail for such companies as Eddie Bauer, the Limited Corporation, several upscale small boutiques in various ski resorts, years of call center hell for The Nautilus Group, Client Service for Dunn and Bradstreet, and for the past 5 years CorkSport.

First: Catch your breath and determine what you want to get out of the call before you dial. We would all like everything for free and magically fixed yesterday, but most likely the person you get on the other end of the phone does not have the power to make it so. If you keep your request reasonable you are more likely to be successful and limit your time on the phone.

Golden Rule! I can’t tell you how important this is. If you treat people kindly and respectfully you are far more likely to get what you expected or even more. Trust me, many people don’t remember to be kind and the JERKS of the world may get satisfaction, but they also generally end up as the water cooler gossip, their files get flagged and generally will be treated poorly every time they call. They are also forced to make multiple phone calls, and will get hung-up at least once by someone who has had enough crap from people who are rude and disrespectful. Be polite! Your Mama was right. Manners will take you far, plus its just common courtesy.

Smile and remain calm, if you’re calm and realistic the process will go much easier for both parties. Once again if you’re nasty, you will get treated accordingly.

Use the person’s name. People like to hear their name. It’s one of those things that signify that the other person is listening and willing to have open communication.

Never make the person on the other end of the phone feel like they are personally responsible for screwing you over and wrecking your day. The representative answering the phone most likely had little to do with your purchase. Also, with big multi-national corporations you may encounter a call center representative who’s from another country, so they won’t have a clue about your local Best Buy or who that a-hole sales guy you dealt with is. They are their to help clean-up the mess and try to turn around your experience.

So remember this holiday season and beyond, be nice and good things will come your way.

I’ll try hard to follow my own advice and feel free to contact me if we’ve failed to meet your expectations.

– Kelly

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A Transparent Pipeline? Brilliant!

Here at CorkSport, we recently held a focus group to help understand what we can do better as a company. One of the things that were shown to be important to you, the customer, is to be more transparent in regards to what products we are currently working on and what you can expect to see released for sale in the near future. This post will be about some of the new products we have coming down the line, but our knowledgebase is your one-stop place for FAQs, testimonials, install instructions, and new product development.

In trying to expand our product line, we are looking into branching out into some new types of products that we don’t currently offer such as the mudflaps in the picture below. We are going to be coming out with a set of mudflaps with our logo embossed, laser etched or screen printed onto the back of them. They will be made of high quality polyurethane and will hopefully be available for several Mazda models. They will utilize stock mounting locations and come with everything needed for installation.

We will be releasing our CorkSport Short Ram Intake kit for the Mazda 2 in the next week or two. This will utilize a redesigned MAF housing specifically designed for the 2 and shows gains of 5-6 ft-lbs of torque and 3-4.5 hp.

Next on the list is a license plate relocation bracket that will fill out just about all of the newer Mazda vehicles that we currently don’t offer a plate relocation kit for. The picture below shows that kit on our Mazda 2. The kit includes a smoked Lexan plate with our new logo milled in. It also includes locking screws to help reduce the risk of someone stealing your license plate.

Finally, our amazingly popular Aluminum Skidplate for the 2010+ Mazda/Mazdaspeed 3 will soon be available for the 2004-2009 Mazda 3 and 2007-2009 MazdaSpeed 3. This upgrade from the factory undertray offers a removable oil filter cover that does not require you to take off the entire skidplate to change your oil. It also offers added protection and increased ground clearance compared to the factory undertray.

These are just a few of the products that we have coming down the pipeline in the near future. Be sure to keep checking our knowledgebase for updates and new product postings.

Jake

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The Super 20

I normally don’t just write about show cars that are seen in a SEMA booth by themselves for my blog posts. Mx-5s are not a normal focus of mine either. In the Mazdaspeed booth at the SEMA show was a good looking Mx5. The MX-5 had fender extensions to give it a wide body look and an eye catching paint and graphic scheme with the Super 20 logos. Under the hood are a Cosworth supercharger, Mazdaspeed header, and a Mazdaspeed Japan front tower brace. Again you think so what; it is just a SEMA show car.

What I found interesting is the history on this car. I spoke with a Mazda insider who said this car was built to test the feasibility of releasing a supercharged MX-5 in the showroom. If the economy was better this could be a reality. This is really a “what if” statement but cars like this have become a reality before, which is what really interested me.

If you know your Mazda history another car like this one actually became a production vehicle. The 2003 Mazdaspeed Protégé was released. It was a Protégé built in Japan and shipped to the North America to have a turbo kit installed at the port before delivery to dealers. Mazda collaborated with Callaway to provide the turbo charging expertise. The same thing could have happened with the Super 20 and Cosworth.

Unfortunately with the product life cycle of the MX-5 ending in the next few years we will not see this car ever released. This is one of those cars that could have been and should have been.

– Derrick

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SEMA 2010

I had three 3 days to take in SEMA this year. I estimate that I probably I walked around 40 miles (it felt that way by Thursday afternoon at least). The aisles were busier this year with people and exhibitors when compared to 2009. The most common vehicles shown at SEMA were Camaros and Mustangs, new and old, tons of them everywhere.

The vehicle which I think had the strongest showing besides the usual muscle cars was the Ford Fiesta. I saw at least 15 or these cars which had been modified in one way or another with various themes. I expect to see more and more of these on the road over the next few years. Most of the themes shown on the Fiesta were more lifestyle oriented over sheer performance. Ford did have some trick rally ready parts available for the Fiesta if you wanted to go off road your car.

One car I expected to see more of was the Chevy Volt. I saw only one, and that was in the Chevy booth. For a car which GM has been touting for 3 years you would expect a few pre-production cars to be seen around the show. My thought is they are pulling another GM move and it will be several more years until they finally get the car into production. The car looks great in person even though I would never own one.

Weird item of the show was the Green Hornet car for the upcoming movie. The car was in the Royal Purple booth. It made for an odd combo of missiles, machine guns and lubricants.

I was disappointed this year though with the showing of Mazdas, I was expecting more. There was not one Mazdaspeed 3 or any other Mazdaspeed Mazda at the show. There were two nice Mazda 3s in the Mazdaspeed booth, one time attack car which started life as a world challenge car and a great concept vehicle turbocharged Mazda 3 sedan which was also shown at last years SEMA show.

Also shown in the Mazdaspeed booth was a Rolex 24 hour winning RX8 with a devious body scheme. The left side and the rear was the FXDD car and the other side of the car was in the Castrol Dark Grey.

There were four Mazda 2s at the show. Two were in the Mazda booth, one in the H&R suspension booth and the 4th in the booth across from the Mazdaspeed booth. All of the Mazda 2s at the show were equipped with European bumpers and two had the European market lighting. The lip kits on several of the cars are designed for the euro bumpers so they do not work with North American market vehicles but they do look good. I spoke with the company who produced the kits and they are working on them for North American cars. The roll cage and race car prep on the grey Mazda 2 was done by AWR racing out of California and it looked good. It makes me want to tear out the interior of my car and go racing.

If I was to compare the show overall to last year it was better. There were plenty of new ideas, great looking cars, and people to meet with all week. Maybe next year we can see more Mazdas at the show.

– Derrick

If you are looking for more pictures of cars from the SEMA show check out the CorkSport Facebook page.