Appearance package!!

Once the ICE project has been sorted out, it was time for a facelift. I had a hard time looking through all the bodykits available for my ride,as there were more than a few available. To be perfectly honest, this one below is my favourite.Followed closely by this one:
The unbelievably exorbitant price of the Mazdaspeed kit worked enormously against me going for it. That coupled with the fact that I have no place to store an extra bumper makes the Au-tobahn kit very appealing. And that was what I ordered. Order was placed sometime in the mid of September. I've just received word that the kit has arrived and I'll probably be picking it up this weekend. More real life pics will follow as soon I have these parts painted and fixed.

I also ordered the billet grille from gomiata, an ebay vendor. That took slightly more than 2 weeks to arrive, and I was anxiously awaiting its arrival the whole time. Indeed, I was not disappointed with the product. Here are some pics:
The package arrived securely packed with bubblewrap as well as some paper stuffing. On first feel, the grille feels very solid to the touch and very well-made. Its strange that the instructions that accompanied the grille was by Robert's Autosports instead of gomiata. The instructions, by the way, is the only thing I feel can be improved in this package. The grille comes with custom fittings and its not exactly easy to find out how these go in with the aid of the instructions, as there are no pictures at all, just words. Its not exactly hard to figure out, but I think some step-by-step pictures would have been nice.

Here's some pics of it installed.

I think the grille accentuates the car superbly. Although I do think it could be more secure if it actually replaces the stock black plastic cover, instead of attaching on top of it. It does have a bit of that Aston Martin feel, and I do admit that's one of the reasons I went for it in the first place. However, i think its far more subdued, quite different from this picture below.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Damd kit looks fantastic, but its just a bit over the top for my taste. I do think there are a few of these running around our little island though I have not personally had the opportunity of seeing one up close in the flesh.

Next up would be footwear. Its basically a tossup between these two.

On the left is the GC-010E by Prodrive and the other rim is the SA-67R by Weds Sports. Just looking at these two pictures will show some hint of my requirements. I wanted something that's gunmetal/grey, matt and multi-spoked. I liked the Weds design, it reminds me a lot of the stock wheel from the facelifted RX-8, which I think is one of the nicest looking stock rim out there.
Not hard to see why, is it?

The Prodrive however, has a timeless design. There are a few similar variants out there, from OZ's ultraleggara to Volk's CE-28NF. But there's just something about the Prodrive that makes it a little bit different. Its a mystifying thing that I can't quite place. Its also a forged monoblock , as compared to the Wed's casted piece, so that was another plus point.

Rims came on a good day, bright and sunny.
Was excited when I got the call from the wheel shop that my rims are in the house. Headed on down and my heart skipped a beat when I saw four Prodrive boxes stacked in a corner. I ordered 18x8, so I was anxious to know how heavy the wheels are. I was relieved to find that they weren't as heavy as I thought. I didn't weight the rims, but they felt lighter than they looked. A check online seems to suggest they are weighing in at about 8kg a piece, which I think isn't too bad for an 18" rim.

Some more pics.

As for rubbers, I was looking for Yokohama S-Drive or something along the lines. I wasn't considering high performance tires like the Neova AD07 or the Toyo T1Rs as that was not my objective. I wouldn't have went for 18 if this was the case. In the midst of doing my research, I found myself looking at another option, the Firenza st-08.
Kinda easy to figure out why. Look harder at the picture if you still don't get it. Apparently there was a lawsuit by Yokohama to stop the sale of st-08s in Japan due to this picture above. Now, I'm not sure if the similar threading is more or less it, but I guess the compound shouldn't be too far off if Yokohama bothered to file a lawsuit against Sumo. In any case, the price difference is quite impressive so it was a no-brainer decision for me. Now only time will tell if these serve me well.