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So yesterday, I take the wifey and kid to the Stillen open house for their 350/G35 day. We arrived sometime in the early afternoon, and were greeted by a barage of over-eager Stillen salespeople trying to get us to register with them. Of course, them not knowing who I was (and my history with Stillen), I'm suprised they didn't hold up the sign of the cross and throw Holy water at me. But nonetheless, I signed a ficticious name on their mailing list in order to get the free free grub from the event. So I we're looking around to see if there were any familiar Z32 faces to chat with, and came across a few wondering around. So we all got together and checked out car for car the Stillen mods they had and asking ourselves why on earth would they settle for this (the mod they had). And from what I overheard from a salesperson to a poential customer was that their new supercharger puts out an unbelievable 60...count'em....60 horsepower. And the salesguy was trying his best to hype up this product so much, I though to myself "this guy probably has no guilt for what he's saying when he sleeps at night". And on top of that, he also mentioned the cost and labor time which is $3750 (or so) for the supercharger, and 10 hours worth of labor (give or take a few hours), which I think their labor costs are around $75 an hour. That, plus the fact that they're going to add on for miscellaneous parts and their "specialty" adaptors, will probably come out to more than what you'd expect to pay. And to add insult to injury, they were having a "supercharger seminar" to show the customers how they're made. All being narrated by the SAME marketing manager that gave me hell when I tried so "nicely" to settle my disagreement with. Guess they didn't think I'd fight back and win...Ha-Ha!!. But what made it worse (at least for the company image), was the fact that Mr. Steve (Millen) wasn't even up on the podeum giving any speeches or introductions. Maybe that might be a clue as to why customers are dropping off guys. Anyway, instead of me going on and on about their logic on things, going up there to pick up a part for a friend of mine while he was out of town was my logic for going up there. Now getting back to the parts they had for the 350 and G35, they were really pushing the new supercharger they had. Of course it would require you to cut an 8" by 20" inch hole in the center of your hood, but hey, for 60 extra horses, wouldn't you do it? And of course, in order to cover that "mistake", you'd have to only feel obligated to get their "hood bubble"...Also sold in carbon fiber I might add. They also had a few body kits designed by Kaminari, which clearly over-accentuated the overall car design (nasty in my opinion). I had to give them credit for selling the hell out of Volk wheels they had on display, however, the several Stillen 350z cars they had equiped with Volks weren't lowered. And some of them were running 18's with tires large enough to remind you of your father's street rod. Nonetheless, there really wasn't much to look at there. I think there was a total of around 40 cars there if that. Now on to my face to face confrontation with the man himself.
Just as we were leaving, I was checking out the "carbon-foeber" (yes foeber) interior pieces they had for the center panel, and the other carbon-foeber pieces they had in the engine compartment of their prized 350 company car (fully equipped with 19" TE37s, a supercharger, and a few other hi-flow engine pieces), when Steve himself came over and looked at me with disgust without saying anything for about 30 seconds. There weren't any other peopel surrounding car except me, my friend and one other guy. Then without any acknowledgement to us, except for excuse me, he slammed the hood of the 350 (enough to turn a few heads), got in the car and drove it off back to their dyno. The look on his face was so priceless, because you could see that he really didn't want me there....... Ah, memories to last a lifetime.
"I haven't had the reason or opportunity to be aggressively creative until now... So who's next?" -- Iceman/Uncanny X-Men #300
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