A Part of Community

Being as a part of a same-type-same-brand car community. Many information about that sort of car would shared by its members that came from various generations. Sometimes they can gave us so many influences. Even there’s good and there’s bad, but we can chose our own, our own taste. .

Lots of Experiences with Community

Last week, we met Mr Frendzy Purba, the chairman of Toyota Soluna Vios Club. With his 3 years experiences on being a chairman and lots of years of experiences on being a loyal member to several car club, led Mr. Frendzy on a different angle of a car enthusiast. Sure, he came from an older generation that have been into cars. That’s why we can see the style that Mr Frendzy applied on his Toyota Vios was an elegant style.

Roots of Elegance

Many of you wouldn’t know that the elegant style culture was born before the stance cultures. The Elegant Style was typically known when a person modified their car with a catchy paint job, a minimal bodyworks, and a large set of wheels that is bigger than the usual width and diameters then put it in a tight fitment. But somehow, there’s rarely found an Elegant Style cars with a proper fitment at that time. Maybe you will remember a Timor with a set of 18 inch wheels, or a Toyota Kijang with a set of 20 inch wheels and dropped the hell down. You can see this culture on early 2000s. Maybe many people didn’t realize that after the Elegant Style was so hype, we call it ‘stance’ on mid 2000s, then developed to be ‘VIP Style, Bippu, etc’ until now.

Roots of Toyota Vios

Maybe many of you would ask, why is there a ‘Soluna’ badge on his Toyota Vios. Anyway the origin of Toyota Vios was from Toyota Soluna. Originally developed by the Toyota Thailand, finally Toyota Soluna was a big success. Anyway for the next generation of city car-sedan, Toyota needs a new name. But they still want to make Toyota Soluna as its predecessor. So, The Toyota Soluna Vios -name was created. But when it came to Indonesian market, there’s a problem between the imports, because on 1997-1998 Toyota can’t launch Toyota Soluna due to economic crisis. So Toyota Soluna was launched on early 2000s to 2003. But when they need to launch Toyota Soluna Vios, the Toyota Astra Motor needs to remove the ‘Soluna’ badge to refresh the market due to price differences. Anyhow, the Toyota Vios was a big success both on private car (Vios) or Taxi’s (Limo).

Mr Frendzy’s Story

The story between Mr. Frendzy and his Toyota Vios was came in after he got bored with his daily driven Toyota Vios. Many great stories he got with this car. Somehow, he said that this car was quite a great story. Once, he finally succeed to drive his car in a lowered and static condition on a touring to go to Sumatra with the Toyota Soluna Vios Club

Talking about his Toyota Vios G A/T 2004 it was came from creativity alongside with many good ideas starts from face-lifting his Toyota Vios to the facelift version by changing the headlight, tail light, grills, also front bumpers to match the foglamp. Anyway with cool ideas, came a great creativity like putting BMW E30 side markers into his car would make the car look nice. Anyway Mr Frendzy put custom purple with cosmic xirallic paint all over matched with custom add on with iron plate. For bodyworks, he trust DJM Bodyworks.

The Mods

Modifying the interior was a majority for car enthusiast. Almost everyone want to make their cars look different than anyone. Like Mr Frendzy put MB-Tech leather, wood panel, also MOMO Steering wheels into his Toyota Vios.

For rolling stock, he put Work Euroline MH 18×9-10 ET 21-18 with 205/40/R18 Tyres. A good match with a good fitment. Anyway for the fitment-game, he didn’t want to make the car lower, but to put it into a proper look, which is still looks good on a proper height. The result was quite outstanding.

Epilogue

The existence of Mr Frendzy with his Toyota Vios was a proof that elegant style still exist in Indonesia, and many old enthusiast still into it. For us any modifications will stands out as long as it has a proper taste alongside the quality of parts that been put into it.

Cheers,

Wailan Hizkia Rawung