Model: Hayle Cayaga @haylebaby

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 at Import Tuner and Modified were also given a Sonic of their own. Both took expected but respective themes—the “”””all go everything”””” race-prepped hatch by Modified and a more VIP/light performance style LZ sedan from Import 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.
2014 chevrolet sonic RS hayle cayaga 02 Photo 2/8 | 2013 Chevrolet Sonic RS – Funkdafied

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.
2014 chevrolet sonic RS monitor 03 Photo 3/8 | 2013 Chevrolet Sonic RS – Funkdafied

Now, with all these high-tech goodies on board, we couldn’t just leave it stock otherwise, so we went for simple mods that we knew would hit hard. At stock height, the Sonic is pretty meh but after fitting on a custom Air Lift air suspension kit, slamming it down to the ground changed our minds immediately. Even better are the finned 19″””” Rotiform IND wheels, which came about more accidentally than planned but we’re more than thrilled with how these look. For just a bit of extra power, we had GM’s own Performance division hook us up with one of their direct replacement exhaust systems. We do plan on upgrading the engine a little more down the road with perhaps an intercooler, intake or a meth injection kit.

Though it might seem like this car is the odd sibling of the three, it actually turned out to be quite fun. We’ve thrown parties with it (catch our videos on YouTube) and best of all, at least for us, we can use it to satisfy our social media hunger pains.