C360R's parent company, Compass360 Brand Communications, recently completed the design and development of a new website for one of our sponsors, Burry Signs.

Long-time supporters of our race team, Burry Signs offers comprehensive signage options to the clients, who include the Home Depot, McDonalds and many others. Their customer-focus and attention to detail has been appreciated by our team, who is featured in the "Vehicles" section of the new website. Thanks especially to Carmen, who often pulls a rabbit out of her hat for us when we need some last-minute decals!

Labels: events

Three of our team drivers will be in attendance at this weekend's Canadian Motorsports Expo in Toronto. Team Principal Karl Thomson will be joined by Matt Pritiko and Travis Walker at the autograph session at 7:00pm Saturday night.

Thomson is also one of the expo's guest speakers: he's going to be talking about motorsports marketing, how sponsors can use the sport to connect with fans, engage their customers, and how a weekend at the track can be a great business-building opportunity.

Thomson's talk will take place at the International Centre, at 6:00pm Friday January 16th.

More details are available at http://www.canadianmotorsportsexpo.com.

Labels: events

Earlier this week one of Compass360 Racing's new Grand-Am KONI Challenge Civic Si's was on display as part of the "Career Day" activities at Lincoln Alexander Secondary School in Brampton, a suburb of Toronto. This school is interesting because it places a very strong emphasis on the trades. For example, it has an amazing wood-working shop. More importantly for us, it has a highly-respected automotive program, which we were on hand to support.

Our bright-orange Honda was situated strategically at the entrance to the school, and although the temperature was a less-than-balmy 4 degrees C (about 38F), we had a constant crowd of students talking to us. They were curious to learn about the KONI series, and were amazed to see how we take a normal street car and turn it into a racer. 

The kids asked a lot of great questions, especially about the extent of the modifications we make, how we get the weight out of the car, what kind of data acquisition we can get and how the drivers and engineer work with that to improve performance.

Amusingly, one of the questions was about the large cylinder that sits in the passenger footwell: "Is that nitrous?" they'd query. When we told them our races are between three and six hours in length, and that the average nitrous blast only lasts a few seconds, it became clear this staple of the street race crowd wouldn't be of much benefit in a KONI Challenge event, and that the fire-suppression system of which it's a part is much more useful (if, admittedly, somewhat less exciting).



These kind of events are an important part of the C360R program. They give us an opportunity to introduce road racing to a group of fans that often think of motorsport in terms of NASCAR on ovals, IRL street courses and the far-away world of Formula One. The funny thing is, once these kids understand the essence of "street stock" racing, they become really excited. Indeed, our Civic Si's represent the racing evolution of the very cars they aspire to own.

And that's exactly what our kind of racing is all about. 

Thanks to the wonderful faculty at Lincoln Alexander for inviting us and to the hundreds of students who will be following our team, and the KONI Challenge, in 2009.

Labels: events, gablog

Our Team Principal Karl Thomson was honored to speak to the students of Malvern Collegiate in Toronto today. These young adults are remarkably knowledgeable about racing, cars, branding and marketing, and Thomson was impressed with their interest.

"These kids are the new fans of road racing on this continent," he said. "They're savvy, understand how marketing works, and are very brand-aware." Indeed, much of the discussion was on automotive brands, including Honda, Acura and Porsche, and how they establish permanent bonds with their enthusiasts worldwide.

"We're proud to be ambassadors of the Honda and Acura brands," remarked Thomson. "When you see how strongly this next generation relates to motorsports, it's really quite exciting. These new fans simply love street stock racing!"

Indeed, we're hoping to see a bunch of Malvern students at Mosport for the Father's Day race.

Labels: events

Our new KONI Challenge car took its first laps today at a test session at Mosport. Our Honda Civic Si performed well and Crew Chief Ray Lee was pleased with the progress made. "I'm proud this team's ability to make a brand new car competitive out of the box," he said. "Of course, we've got lots of fine-tuning to do, but we're where we wanted to be."

Here are some photos from today:


The crew making some minor adjustments.


Travis Walker gets ready to take the Civic for its first time on track.

Labels: events

Karl Thomson, Creative Director and Managing Partner of Compass360, will be presenting some of the firm's recent design work to the Type Club of Toronto at their first meeting of 2008 on Feb 26th at the Arts and Letters Club.

Karl's talk, titled "Type-R: Good Design and Racing Cars" promises to be a fun romp through some of Compass360's recent marketing communications projects for a wide range of clients, mixed with thoughts on branding and the challenges in bringing a high level of design to motorsports (an area not generally well-regarded for its understanding of the value of good graphic design).

Labels: events

The Compass360 Acura RSX-S was the star attraction at Lincoln Alexander Secondary School's annual Career Day on November 27th. Phil and Karl Thomson were on hand to talk to the students and faculty about Grand American, the KONI Challenge and showroom stock racing.

"This is the kind of event that we really enjoy," noted Phil. "Getting young people excited about racing by showing them how 'stock' our cars are is a great way to grow the KONI series fan base."

By all accounts a great success, the team was asked to return again next year.

Labels: events