The last few years has brought us some sad news from across the pond. Some of the most well-known performance brands are either having difficulties or going under like ARC, Tracy Sports, HKS USA, etc. while some are lucky to survive. It doesn’t help that many manufactures are in the same boat, Toyota doesn’t have any main stream sports car anymore (thank goodness FRS/GT86), there are no longer any Type R models in the Honda line up and the Mitsubishi Evolution has been discontinued.

Along with this went down some great JDM focused performance parts stores and most of what’s left is still struggling. In this difficult time, there is one particular shop in Toronto that pulled through and became stronger – Speedstar. Being one of the oldest and well known JDM shops in Ontario, Speedstar is seen by outsiders as an S2000 specialized shop. This is because of all the amazing builds and showcases of S2000 that Speedstar has their hands on and not to mention the S2000 race car equipped with full J’s Racing aero used to participate in many races in the past years. All the work on the race car was done in house including installation, inspection, alignment, setup and tune, only fabrication work like the roll cage was outsourced.

By participating and winning a few races in the Canadian Touring Car Championship and other series, the Speedstar racing team has gained the knowledge and advantage they desired to properly address the needs of their customers in the performance section. When asked why the S2000 platform was chosen by the team and shop to be specialized in, the answer was “Nimble and Light Cornering Monster” and I could not agree more! There is no better way to describe the S2000 chassis, it is truly a driver’s car.

Speedstar has always stayed true to genuine JDM parts, seeing a gap in the supply of Japanese performance parts for local needs they decided to make their own container shipments straight from Japan and continue to do so until today. Being focused on quality in both parts and customer service has made Speedstar become one of the strongest JDM performance shops in Canada and now they have opened up their line of products to USA/Euro based brands as well in order to cater to the growing amount of euro car customers.

If you have seen the current Speedstar facility, it almost seems like an auto dealership with a waiting room, drive-through garage, service counter, showroom, alignment machine and many hoists. The shop is usually packed, especially on weekends and it is like a JDM car show in there every day! You will see cars from NSX, S2000, M3 to Porsche. They are no longer a JDM dedicated shop and have expanded their operations to Euro sports as well. Could you imagine they started helping customers at the beginning from the back of their sales shop with just floor jacks and basic tools! Dedication and focus on customer priority and service quality has brought them to where they are now. The goal was simple, let your customers be happy by helping them to enjoy what they purchase right away.

Even though the modified market seems weak, the Speedstar crew has faith that modifying cars is a trend that will never die. Even though sports car options are very limited now and most are well equipped from factory, the urge to customize your own ride for your own pleasure will always be there. Be it a high end sports coupe or your daily beater, people will still want to add their own flavour of enjoyment. Also, lots of sports cars from the last decade are now readily available in the used car market, so it would be much easier to obtain as your second car for purely track and weekend enjoyment purposes. Having the sports car winter stored also means you can do more modification to it without worries. As hybrid sports machines mature in technology, they will become more mainstream and more options will be available just as they are in Asia right now. It is only a matter of time before the influence comes State side and engine swap in platforms like the Honda CRZ seems quite popular as well. There will always be a future for modified cars!

Now I will let the pictures speak for themselves, and for you to take a look at what the Speedstar team has to offer!