In our annual pilgrimage to the East Coast, we attended the All Mazda Meet at Orange County Chopper this year on April 21st. The event was organized by Storm who works at OCC and drives a Mazdaspeed 3 (thanks Storm!).
This year had a record turnout of people with 262 Mazdas and 496 people signed up. The OCC parking lot and a chunk of the adjacent Hilton parking lot were full the entire day along with the overflow parking in the grass at OCC. You can get a good idea of the crowd size with the line to get the good bags.
We saw a wide range of cars in attendance this year but the most popular by far was the 2010+ Mazdaspeed 3’s. They were the singles largest group of Mazda model which attended overall.
Enough talking for now, here are the pictures…
Domii’s Mazda 2 repping in the CorkSport display
I hear the A-team theme playing in my head when I look at this Mazdaspeed 3
69,000 original miles on this Rx2 and it looked great!
At the end of the day CorkSport had two awards to give away. The first was the CorkSport choice award (Unicorn trophy) which was given to Kevin F who has a great looking 2012 white Mazdaspeed 3.
The second award we gave away for the CorkSport Senior Citizens Award which was given to Steve K. Check out the video of the award presentation below,
Big thanks to Storm for putting on the show again this year and to all of you who showed up to the event and we got to meet.
Another year is coming to a close and I was thinking back on the events we attended this year. We really put on some miles traveling around the US to Mazda enthusiast events from Miami Florida to Los Angeles California and many places in-between.
We started off 2011 with a bang by going to the Sno Drift Rally in Michigan at the invitation of Thayer Mazda of Michigan. They sponsored the event and went all out by supplying a hospitality tent for anyone who wanted to warm up. Thayer also built a green light car for the event. They used a 2010 Mazdaspeed 3 outfitted with the CorkSport 80mm Cat back, Short Ram Intake, and Aluminum Skid Tray. It was great to see a Mazda dealer get involved on the level they did.
The next event at the Epic Florida Meet in sunny Miami, Florida, was a big contrast from the subzero temps endured during the Sno Drift rally. Lou Bachrodt Mazda hosted the event which was put together by the SFLA Mazda Crew. It was a great event with Mazda’s that ranged from a pristine Rx2 to 2011 Mazdaspeed 3’s and lots of great people and true Mazda enthusiasts to talk with about their cars.
In May we flew to Newburgh New York to attend the OCC All Mazda Meet for a third year. We hosted a focus group to get to know our customers in the northeast better and get feedback from our customers about some of our new ideas and products. Despite a brief rain shower the event was great with a big turnout of Mazdas from all over.
In July we headed to Monroe Washington to attend the Formula D event, with our Rx8 and 2010 Mazdaspeed 3, to hang out with 10,000 other drift fans for a weekend of burning rubber. The amount of attendance at the event was great and the parking lot was a car show by itself. We saw lots of great Mazdas and met tons of enthusiasts which drove all makes and models. We did our best to convince the fans Mazdas are the best.
August came around and we headed off to the MOCC sponsored Mazfest at the Autoclub Speedway for an entire day of autocrossing and a car show. There were plenty of Mazda race cars brought out for the event along with a wide range of street cars. There were a few track mishaps including a Mazdaspeed 3 which got some damage to its bumper. Big thanks to the CorkSport customers who loaned us their vehicle to display in our booth for the day.
September brought up the Mazdas NW End of Summer Bash which was held on a sunny September day at CorkSport and included a dyno day, Mazda car show, and BBQ. It is always fun to see the Mazdas that show up at our events. The NW has quite the collection of Mazdas that are not daily driven. Big thanks to Mazdas NW for putting on the show.
The most recent event we attended was the Epic East Coast Mazda Meet at the Tail of the Dragon in North Carolina. If you ever want to get your twisties on in your Mazda, this is the place to go. I would have loved to bring some of the CorkSport vehicles to this event to tear it up with the rest of the attendees. The whole event spanned 5 days. CorkSport came out east for Saturday’s festivities that included a car show, a run on the tail of the dragon, and a Halloween BBQ.
If you want to see more pictures from the events you can view albums from each event on our CorkSport Facebook page.
Are you hosting or planning on an event in 2012? Let us know, we are always interested in what events are going on in the Mazda community and you never know, we just might show up.
The holiday shopping season is officially underway and to show our appreciation to our customers for their support and dedication throughout the year, we have rolled out NOT ONE but TWO promotions during the month of November!
We already reward our customers for shopping with CorkSport by providing 5% back in the form of rewards points to be used on any future purchase on CorkSport.com, but for the month of November, we have sweetened the pot! Purchase anything from CorkSport.com from November 5- November 30, 2011 and DOUBLE YOUR REWARDS POINTS. That’s right, all month long – 10% back when you purchase from CorkSport.com.
Now here’s where we really blow your mind! TODAY ONLY we have an 11/11/11 sale that gets you 11% off any CorkSport brand product you purchase on corksport.com! To receive your 11% discount, simply use coupon code ELEVEN11 during your checkout to get the discount applied to your order.
11% + DOUBLE REWARDS POINTS…that’s essentially 21% off CorkSport brand products all day long!
Some of you may be asking yourself, should I wait until CorkSport does a black Friday sale? Don’t wait CorkSport fans, our 11/11/11 sale will be the only one day sale of the month so take advantage today to get the best deal of the year!
Many of you may already have a laundry list of CorkSport products that you have been waiting to purchase, but some of you might be asking yourself right about now, “what’s new at CorkSport?” and I am here to tell you that we have something for everyone!
Today, we are officially rolling out our new black oxide hose clamps for the CorkSport Power Series Short Ram Intake. Now you can black out your intake and give your engine a stealth look with CorkSport’s black oxide T-bolt clamps for no additional charge. You asked, we answered, what more can we say.
Drive a Mazda 2 and thinking about suspension tuning? Great, because we just released the CorkSport Mazda 2 Front Sway Bar! It has been designed and tuned to compliment the CorkSport Mazda 2 Rear Torsion Bar and if you purchase the two as a kit you get an additional 10% off. That means you get 21% off your purchase and 10% back to spend later.
The CorkSport team has been on the road this week first sponsoring and attending the 5th annual EECMM (Epic East Coast Mazda Meet) held in Robbinsville, NC (think Tail of the Dragon) and then onto Las Vegas for the SEMA (specialty Equipment Market Association) show where more than 100,000 attendees and 2000 exhibitors met for four days at the largest annual automotive gathering and car show.
Appropriately named, EECMM was truly an epic event. Mazda enthusiasts from all over the east met up in Robbinsville, NC for five full days of cruising stretches of the famous Hwy 129, deals gap, a car show with awards and plenty of raffle prizes and evenings of BBQ’s and parties at the smoky mountain mansion with no shortage of good times had by all.
If you are not already familiar, the Tail of the Dragon is an 11 mile stretch with 318 curves and is America’s number one sports car road. The nearby Cherohala Skyway is another 60 miles of scenic mountain highway for the driving enthusiast to enjoy a more leisurely ride with it’s long, sweeping corners and scenic views.
CorkSport spent Saturday with the Epic crew. The car show featured about 60 cars and CorkSport was on hand with giveaways for the all of the attendees. Following the show the group went out for a ride on the Tail of the Dragon run while CorkSport prepared back at the mansion for a focus group. We then sat down with a group of customers and got the unique opportunity to gain feedback on what we are doing that works and what we can do to improve our products and services for the Mazda community. We stayed for some of the evening’s festivities, but had to run so we could catch an early flight out and onto Las Vegas the following morning.
What a great group of people and awesome event! If you haven’t made it to EECMM yet, you need to go! Keep posted on 2012’s event and stay connected on the EECMM facebook page.
Back to the other side of the country, SEMA kicked off on Monday.
Mazda had the MX-5 Spyder on display at this year’s show. This Lighterweight version of the Miata ditches the heavier retractable roof and in its place had a single-panel bikini soft top made by Haartz. Weight savings came in other forms as well with a light weight lithium ion racing battery and light weight Advan RS wheels. It got a the 2.0 liter 4-cylinder turbo enabled biofuel engine which promotes the greener direction Mazda is moving in.
As promised, the concept Mazda 2 turbo was also on display at the show with a Speed3 263-horsepwer turbocharged, direct-injected MZR 2.3 Liter engine under the hood.
If you can’t wait for the Mazdaspeed2 to go into full production, the concept car built by Autobarn for the one lap of America race is available for purchase for an astounding ticket price of $94,999.
The booth also had a slightly less modded Mazda2 tuned by 3dCarbon, a MX-5 Super 20 custom and a classic Cosmo on display.
Flat-finished paint was all the rage at this year’s show and was embraced by hotrods and custom cars alike. The level of flatness/gloss ranged in scale from matte to reduced sheen and was available in every color from pearl white to bright orange.
There was a lot to be seen at this show. It could not possibly all be covered in this post, but an honorable mention extends to the new Lamborghini LP700-4 Aventador in the Pirelli booth. It has a v12 engine and can achieve 700 HP and top speeds of 270 mph. It was hard to resist falling in love with it!
The show continues today with Derrick still in attendance who I am sure will follow this post with some thoughts of his own from the show.
It’s been a long week, but it is always great to get out and and get to know our customers better, put faces to names, and find out what’s going on in the community.
Gwynne –
SEMA & EECMM 2011 – Mazda Events and Car Shows East to West! September 13th, 2018CorkSport
The Oregon Region SCCA Solo Director stopped by CorkSport this week and during our discussion, he brought up the topic of the national event and contingency awards that he and the other driver for his car had won. I missed the national tour event this year from other obligations, but it got me thinking, “what if I had competed and won my class.”
So I hopped on the computer and took a look at the SCCA national webpage to see what contingencies are offered to the winners of the National Solo tour.
#1 Mazdaspeed. Mazda pays out $200 for first and $100 for second for any Mazda who is registered with their program.
#2 Kumho. I am currently running #2 Kumho EXS tires on the CorkSport Mazda 2 and Kuhmo pays out big time if you win especially in the street tire classes. First place pays out $600 in product credit, second place is $400 in product credit and third place is $300. The tire size I use is 205/50/15 which goes for around $90 a tire. Even third place would almost pay for a set of new tires.
If you wanted to give it a shot in the Pro-Solo event (the Pro Solo event was the weekend after the national solo tour) there is even more available if you can get a class win.
#1 Mazdaspeed. Mazda pays out $200 for first and $100 for second for any Mazda who is registered with their program for a class win. If you go on the challenge they bump it up to $400 for a win and $200 for second place.
#2 Kumho. Kumho pays out the same for the street tire classes as the national solo win. For the challenge first place pays out $300 in product credit, second place is $200 in product credit and third place is $150.
#3 Hawk Performance. Hawk gives out $100 per class win and $100 for the challenge win.
So hypothetically if I could pull off a class win for two weekends of racing it would add up to a total of $2500 in products. Not too shabby for having a great time driving around cones. I am fortunate that the events are only 2 hours away for me. Some of the competitors I saw in the entry list came from as far as Texas.
Remember, even if you think you might try to attend a national event, make sure you register with the contingency sponsor before the event. Some require registering at the beginning of the year so read the fine print.
