#lifeonair: Cody Miles Drives It. Shows It. Tracks it... AND WINS

We’re dropping the mic..and letting Cody Miles tell everyone about his #lifeonair:

I’ve been into cars as long as I can remember, specifically Japanese cars. Growing up with motocross, open land, and an abundance of dirt trails and mountains, my first vehicle was naturally a 2005 Toyota Tacoma. I began working at age 15 and put every penny I had into the truck to transform it into what I thought it should’ve been all along. I had my fun in the dirt with it for years, but my love for JDM cars finally got the best of me in 2010. I kept the Tacoma as a daily, and picked up a Nissan S13 swapped SR20DET rolling chassis. The S13 had several parts missing and I knew it would take a lot of time to get it going again, but I didn’t care because I knew in the end it would all be worth it.

Three years into my drift car build, I felt as if I was satisfied and finished with offroad completely, and wanted to trade the Tacoma for a car. Thanks to hard work and successful career advancements I was finally in a position to search for my dream car, a 2007 Subaru STi. After some searching I picked up exactly what I wanted, an Urban Grey Metallic GD STi. The plan for this car was to keep things mild and drive it as my new daily…. (editor’s note: YEA RIGHT, we’ve all said that)

Things took an unexpected turn when the oil pickup cracked and completely seized, destroying my motor the day after I bought it! So here I am standing on the side of the road at 2am, waiting for a tow truck, gazing upon my broken dream, and near tears. I was sick to my stomach thinking about what I had just done. Luckily, the trusty Tacoma hadn’t sold yet, so it was back in action while my dream car was down for the next four months. With my complete EJ257 long block being trash, I needed to source an engine, which is exactly what I did. I found another STi that supposedly had rear fire damage, and purchased the motor with zero knowledge of what I would find inside of it since I had decided it would be rebuilt before installation anyways. I was now at the cross road of doing an OEM rebuild or building it for strength and more power. Needless to say, forged internals, cams, oversized valves, ported heads, and all the accompanying pieces were ordered and assembled to create a stronger motor ready for more power. Before I went crazy with power, I wanted to get the car feeling more stable and confident. I finished everything from chassis bushings and solid mounts to lateral links, sway bars, roll bar, and a tubular subframe. Handling was feeling better at this point, but it was time to address coilover selection. Upon research, I stumbled across a video of cars ripping around a track on air suspension. Up to this point, I hadn’t even considered air to be an option on a car that I was building to handle well.