Cafe Technic: Our Summer Cars and Coffee
Performance Technic
If this is your first time hearing of Cafe Technic, let us summarize: it’s a casual, two hour meet that we host here at the shop during the summer months. This year is the first that we’ve run the event, and it usually takes place on a Saturday morning. It isn’t limited to BMWs, it’s family and pet friendly, and you can choose to park your car in our lot, or just show up to hang out. Our July meet took place this past Saturday the 30th, and it was a hit.
For this event, we decided to do something a bit different: we hosted a choice number of display cars inside the shop. This display, like everything else with the meet, was not BMW specific. The vehicles we chose to display were a mix of car community friends among our staff, and a couple of our own PTech builds. Situated on the shop floor was Johnny’s Nissan R32 Skyline GTR, Hootie’s hillclimb BMW 2002 tii Touring, Shafique’s S54 Felony Form E36, the SE46 racecar, and Toan’s pristine Datsun 240z. We felt that having a variety of cars to show would create a more diverse atmosphere. While we are a bespoke BMW specialist, we also have great appreciation for tasteful and unique builds across any make or model.
Johnny’s GTR and Toan’s 240z were shown together on one side of the shop. Johnny purchased his GTR earlier this year from International Vehicle Importers at their LA location. This R32 generation GTR is special in several ways, but most notable are its rare color (known as TH1) and the fact that it is 100% CARB compliant/California legal; the first in the Bay Area! Johnny’s car was also the first to actually drive away from the IVI parking lot. Seeing as many of these cars do not become California legal, IVI cannot allow them to drive away from their location. These cars must be trailered, whether it’s within California or out of state. The cost of a GTR of course increases when it comes to making the vehicle CA legal, but the benefits are enormous. Johnny explored the process and completed everything necessary to legitimize the R32, so now he can be seen driving it all over the Bay Area!
The first generation Z car behind the Skyline belongs to Datsun enthusiast and father of two, Toan Nguyen. This isn't his first Z, nor do we think it will be his last. Powered by a turbo L28, this Z remains nostalgic to its roots. It’s an excellent example of a clean resto-mod.
If you follow our blog and other social media, you’ll most likely recognize the orange Touring from our last feature. The S14 powered tii made the trip from San Francisco to display in the shop. Having the 02 present gave everyone who read the story a chance to see the car in person. Reading about a build online and seeing it for yourself can be two different experiences, but in this case, Hootie’s Touring is even better in person.
Plenty of other cars showed up for the meet, some pulling in even before the 10AM start time. A great array of everything from 2002s, E36 and E46 M3s, all the way up to the F8X chassis came out. Our immediate parking lot filled up with cars in almost no time, but we managed to shuffle and make room for as many vehicles as we could.
Our shop Touring project was on display outside alongside Greg's M4. We just had our Touring ceramic coated by Jason at CarzWerk, and we're very excited to see how it holds up to daily use. (Our full write up on this car is coming in the next couple of weeks.)
We are very grateful for the support we receive from our wonderful customers, family, and friends. We enjoy hosting these events because it gives us the chance to socialize with our customers outside of a work environment. With so many fantastic cars that show up, both street and track oriented, it makes demonstrating what we do here at PTech effortless to explain.
Jerome's Dinan equipped Frozen F80 also made an appearance. He has come a long way with this car since it first rolled into our shop.
We look forward to our future Cafe Technic meets, and hope to see even more of you at our next one in September! We have yet to decide on a date, but it will be shared across our social media as soon as we are able to plan it. If you attended this time, do you have any thoughts on the cars we displayed?