(intense electronic music)
(crowd chatters)
- I grew up playing with Hot Wheels,
watching Fast and Furious,
playing Need for Speed: Underground,
you know, all the typical stuff,
but the moment that something clicked
and it all came together,
I was outside my middle school, by the crosswalk,
and I heard a turbocharged car just fly by, just whizz by.
(whipping sound)
And I literally knew, like I need to get a car.
I need to get a turbocharged car.
I fell in love with it.
I'm Dakota, and I drive a 2014 Ford Focus ST.
(bright electronic music)
My first car was an '87 Camaro with a six cylinder.
I didn't keep it long,
because it just wasn't practical for me
to drive it to school in the winter.
It had a fresh new paint job from one of my dad's buddies,
and I really just didn't want to destroy it.
So scrambling quick for a car after I sold that one,
I picked up a PT Cruiser.
Yup, PT Cruiser.
It did the job, and I did some questionable things to it,
ranging from underglow to removing the back seats
and then putting four subwoofers in the car,
to even stick-on hood scoops.
This was my racer phase.
This was me learning.
Nobody in my family was into cars or like modifying cars.
My dad's a mechanic,
and then, my brother is into
restoring old school BMWs and stuff,
but nothing into modifying, nothing, you know, past stock
and just keeping up on regular maintenance.
I learned the hard way.
Not long after owning the PT,
I sold it and picked up a '99 Mustang GT
because I learned I didn't care
about spinning out in the winter.
I just wanted something fun and cool.
Had my fun and sold that for a turbocharged Cobalt SS,
and then this is where I fell in love with
front wheel drive turbocharged cars.
This is the first car I really dug into,
and spent my weekend nights laying under the car,
with jack stands and my buddies
figuring out what we could rip out and replace
and do all the good stuff, you know.
This was the first car I started taking to car shows,
and started meeting people in the community.
Again, hungry for modifying,
I wanted to start again on a new platform.
I sold my assets and I got an Evo 10.
Literally all my checks from work
went into this car, every cent.
Between the car payment, the insurance,
and all the fricking mods I was doing.
I was 19 and literally broke.
All my check went to the car. I didn't care.
That car was my life at the time.
If I wasn't installing parts,
I was in the garage, detailing it.
But with the goods came some of the bads.
I constantly got (silence) for this car.
All I heard every single day was "Daddy's money,"
"His parents bought his car," all that stuff,
which couldn't be farther from the truth.
I'm not one to care what people think generally,
but it just got so toxic.
Getting messages daily,
people I thought were my friends
were talking (silence) behind my back,
and my local car scene just got terrible
and I literally wanted nothing to do with it.
So I made a tough choice and I sold it.
I wanted out of the scene.
I ended up getting a boring base model Impreza
that I wanted to do road trips with.
I ended up selling that because it was super boring.
And I got a Duramax,
just trying to get vehicles
that would keep me out of the car scene.
It wasn't working.
And I realized this and I wanted back into the car scene.
This is why I picked up my Focus ST.
Something about going back to my roots of wrenching
on a four cylinder front wheel drive turbocharged car,
it just got me going.
I knew that was the platform I wanted to get back into.
I wanted something that wasn't going to break the bank,
had a big after-market scene, and was fun to drive.
I went and picked out the exact ST I wanted,
the color, it was bone stock.
It was the ST3 package,
which had all the upgrades
like the Recaro seats, projector headlights.
Immediately I started modifying it,
started making it my own,
and I fell back in love with cars.
I'm on VIP Modular VLS 910 wheels,
Nitto Neogen tires,
and then Air Lift Performance 3P air suspension.
I took out the Recaros and put in some Corbeau seats
so it could fit my big ass a little better.
I have full bolt-ons, custom tuned by Stratified,
tons of carbon fiber goodies,
and then some air flow dynamics,
Canards splitter and diffuser.
My friends and I built this car.
Shout out to Neff, Keith and Gary.
We did it all in my garage on jack stands,
just like my Cobalt SS.
I get asked all the time how I could go
from an Evo 10 to a Focus ST.
It's just what makes me happy.
It's what I needed to get back to my roots.
For a lot of people,
a car is just something that takes us from A to B,
but for us, it's so much more than that.
It's a lifestyle.
I'm glad I got the chance to talk about this car,
because it means a lot to me,
and I might be in the process of picking out something new.
That's all I got.
(upbeat electronic music)