Manda 'MEW' Marza

Manda’s love for cars began at an early age, starting with American muscle. Her dad, who is an avid Shelby Mustang collector, taught her that a proper car needs to have a V8 and burn rubber. He believed cars need to be driven hard, sound good, and occasionally scare the shit out of you. Unfortunately, Manda was never allowed to drive one of those glistening collector cars and had
to settle for white-knuckle experiences from the passenger seat.

It wasn’t until college where Manda learned performance driving from her boyfriend on his JDM cars. She first learned how to drive a manual on a Nissan 370Z with an aftermarket flywheel, which resulted in constant burnt clutch fumes and cringed faces. Luckily, learning on a difficult manual let her command the clutch on Subaru STI’s and Mitsubishi Evo’s with ease. The sound from downsized and often turbocharged engines took some getting used to, but the STI in particular had and probably will always remain one of her all-time favorite cars. JDM cars had unmatched responsiveness and a certain level of rawness that reminded her of those old Shelby cars in her dad’s garage.

It’s hard to choose a favorite car when your dad has accumulated a collection of old and valuable cars in his garage. But it’s less difficult when one of those cars is a 1969 Shelby GT500. Naturally, it was the centerpiece of his garage and it was true first automotive love for Manda’s after college. Having learned manual on some of the most difficult production cars, she was finally allowed to slip behind the wheel of one of the most coveted American car’s in existence. It’s muscular lines, intimidating sounds and complete rawness of the car captivates her every time she turned the ignition. That is until the transmission caught on fire, at no fault of her own of course!

Between the great chassis, incredible power and comfortable cabin, Manda chose the M3’s engine and its unique sound as her favorite thing. The low-rev rumble is unique, and the aggressive noise produced at high-revs is simply to die for, especially with her modified exhaust system. This is definitely a masculine car, particularly in modified form, and no one expects to see a girl climb out of the driver’s side. The bigger the shock on people’s faces, the greater the fun.

Manda enjoys driving on Southern California’s canyon roads. It is a densely populated region, but in between the tight cities are some of the greatest roads in the state, provided you know where to find them. The highways far north above Orange County or north east above San Diego have perfectly smooth roads with next to zero traffic.

Being constantly surrounded by so many great cars your whole life creates a lot of unique and awesome car memories, but some stand out more than others. After some thought, Manda told us the story of her practicing donuts in her first RWD car in a closed off stadium parking lot until it was a regular weekend activity in high school. Her dad took the car to Discount Tire a month after getting new tires fuming mad due to extremely uneven tire wear. Of course, he never suspected anything from sweet Manda and thought it was a faulty alignment job – still not knowing to this day that she tried to miserably recreate scenes from Tokyo drift every weekend until her car couldn’t take it anymore.

Now Manda takes things more seriously. Her mods focus on function over form, she is enrolling in driving schools and wants to regularly participate in track days at the famous race tracks of California. What’s next after her M3? She doesn’t see herself getting rid of the M3 anytime soon, but she does see either a 987 Porsche Boxster Spyder or a R35 GTR in her future.