Yes its a Kia. 2004 Kia Rio RX-V Convenience bought in 2005. I needed an economical vehicle for everyday driving and the Kia fit the bill. Unfortunately I couldn't stand looking at the thing so I started to mod it.

I started modding the car by adding Solar Gard's Quantum window tint. It has a great mirror type finish on the outside but doesn't reduce vision at night on the inside. I also added my custom gutter guard grill and lower intake along with dual Fiamm horns so people know I am there.

Next came some Eibach Pro-Kit springs that gave the car a 1.5" drop and greatly improved handling when coupled with the www.kfxperformace.com strut tower brace. After the springs came the 15x6.5 light weight wheels with P195/55R15 Falken ZE512 rubber. I then custom fabbed a 2.5" Short Ram Intake with a Ractive cone and relocated MAF to fit under the strut brace. Recently I had KVR Performance fill my stock struts with Koni Yellows.

The last major mod I did was to add the factory body styling kit. I installed it myself and the fit was near perfect and only took about 3 hours including the rear wing. The car gets alot of looks now. I just wish there was a factory piece for the rear. I also added the factory vent shades around the windows.

These are some custom gauge faces that I made for $5.00 with a 1mm thick transparent white binder, transparency film and crazy glue from Staples. The hard part was getting the needles back to the right place. Had a bored cop with a radar gun help me with the speedo.

I signed up for a performance driving school through a local motorsports club and got totally hooked into a SOLO II race series. There are different venues where the events take place, but they are mostly in arena parking lots with a cone marked course. Average times for runs are 60 seconds. There are four classes A, B, C and D. At the last track day (my second day out) I got 4th in my class 'D' and was faster than the 1st place car in class 'C'. I was even faster than alot of mustangs and subaru's (Impreza and Legacy) and dead even with the two S2000's that run there. The other drivers are very helpful and can't believe the performance of my Kia. Considering you rarely get out of second gear on the very technical course the top speed of your car means nothing, it is mostly about driver skill and vehicle handling.

Custom ghetto camera mount so I can watch my runs and learn from my mistakes. I had an idea of what kind of driver I was in my head but when I got on the track I realized I just sucked so watching the video really helps.