2013 Chevrolet Sonic RS - Funkdafied
Why Yes, Our Sonic Is Packing a Lot of Funk In Its Trunk
Model:Hayle Cayaga @haylebaby
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Coming up with a unique theme for a car build is tough. Unless you truly have an unlimited budget to work with, you are quite limited in what you can do. In our case, we had just enough to run wild with...sort of. Last summer, Chevy gave us a Sonic RS hatch to do whatever we felt would be "Super Street" in our eyes—we immediately brainstormed on what that would be. But we weren't alone; our Wolf Pack brethren atImport TunerandModifiedwere also given a Sonic of their own. Both took expected but respective themes—the "all go everything" race-prepped hatch byModifiedand a more VIP/light performance style LZ sedan fromImport Tuner. So that got us thinking: yes, we can do a bit of the same but what if we dug deeper into our other interests? The answer was both in our hands and blasting from our computer speakers. We would turn ours into a mobile hot spot.
If you ever find yourself in the company of any SS editor, you'll quickly discover two things: they are always on their iPhone (every 30 seconds on Instagram) and they are constantly listening to music. Sam's cubicle is similar to the hard electro main stage you'd find at EDC, Matty's is some sort of weird trap music hole and Jonathan's is some R&B mix from the mid '90s; needless to say, it's an eclectic variation of music at any given time. What if we could give our Sonic the technology to allow us to stay connected and give it a proper audio setup that someone like Diplo would be proud of? That's when we called Mike Vu at MV Designz for his expertise in crafting a custom build of this caliber.
Along with our basic ideas, Mike also came up with more than a handful of other suggestions to help play up the technology factor of our car. Rather than simply plug in a wireless router and call it a day, we decided to turn the rear passenger area into a multimedia control center. Mounted to the headrests of our Recaro Sportster seats, we're now able to control (via Apple iPads) a series of Vivotek cameras: two facing the front passengers, one facing the rear, another that raises up from the roof for a 360-degree panoramic view and one to view our DJ setup. Say what? Pop the rear trunk and you not only see the entire Pioneer car audio sub/amp display but all the DJ gear to control the party, such as a DJM-900 NEXUS mixer and a pair of CDJ900s. But wait—that's not all! The Sonic is indeed Wi-Fi-enabled, so aside from the iPads, approved users can connect and socialize from their own devices, or you can tune in to any one of the on-board cameras to see what we're up to (find more info at sonic-powered.com). We've also installed a few LG HD video projectors to play back any video or live feed from any of the cameras. There's a custom rear console with one that projects onto a special window film for playback, another that actually projects onto a larger wall (if so desired) and one that's hidden within the rear hatch lid.
