Most car owners have a singular goal in mind when building up their rides. It might be to win awards. Or to sound bitchin'. Or to stand out from the crowd. Whatever it is, it's usually a pretty selfish and gratifying labor of love. They do it for themselves, and there's not a damn thing wrong with that. When Bill Montgomery started the transformation of this 2004 Mazda3, however, he didn't do it for his own kicks; he's a marketing director for International Allstars and wanted to take it to car shows and high school expos (such as the Prime Motivation program on the west coast), so that it would serve as a good example for the up-and-coming generation of car audio fans.City Born
Montgomery's passion for in-car entertainment started when he worked as an installer for Circuit City many years ago. He had an idea of what he wanted, but it wasn't until he spoke with Eric Holdaway at SpeakerWorks that the design was fleshed out with the extent of fabrication and placement of products determined.
A Total Eclipse Of A Car
The heart of the Mazda3's system is Eclipse's sophisticated single-DIN CD8455 source unit with area shot mapping. It's mounted in the factory location in the custom dash made of fiberglass and painted. The head unit looks like a natural extension of the car, with the black and red colors of the overall dash matching the rest of the vehicle's hot color scheme. An Eclipse DV3101 DVD player lies snugly just underneath it. Additional processing wasn't necessary, as the crossovers in the CD8455 provide ample adjustment.
Speak Up
Bringing the front stage sound to life are Eclipse's SC8254 5 1/4" component speakers. The Speaker Work's crew cut out some metal from the doors for a custom fit and placed damping material behind each speaker to reduce any resonance. The crossovers for the components reside in the doors.
Everyone involved agreed on keeping both front and rear speakers behind the factory grilles. The grilles were highlighted with red trim rings and the door panels were covered in ultra-cool, ultra-velvety suede, with the Eclipse logo proudly showing itself off.