Ruben Correia aka @ruben__pkid

Still playing with cars. They just go faster.

RUBEN CORREIA

Reuben’s been playing with cars since he was a kid. Between his two garages he has a ’95 Honda Civic that he races, a cherry red Nissan GTR as his daily driver and a Mini Cooper that will soon outrace both of those.

 

short time ago, I met Ruben Correia in what I consider the fastest introduction ever. Sure we had chatted on the phone a couple of times, exchanged a few messages and I had just stood in his garage chatting with him for a half hour, but I feel he was holding out until he had me buckled into the passenger seat of his Nissan GT-R. 

“Have you every been in a really fast car?”

“Yeah, yeah…”

“I mean, like, really powerful.”

I glance at the modified gauges on the dash of the GT-R and stammered, “well, it was a long time…”

A growl from the engine, and silence from me as I’m pushed back into my seat. Blurry cars are moving past us and in a few seconds we’ve slowed back down—we have pole position at the light. 

“…ago,” I finally spit out to finish my sentence. 

My pilot looks over at me grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Any idea how fast we were going back there? 

“Uhhh, fast?”

“130… and that was only second gear,” he laughs somewhat maniacally.

That’s the intro and no words were necessary to convey the message, “Hi, I’m Ruben, adrenaline junkie.” Just three, very fast seconds. 

If you met him pre moving to Canada in 2007 he’s Ruben Correia… If you knew him after he landed in Toronto, he’s Ruben the Portuguese Kid… and if you met him on YouTube, he’s @ruben__pkid. 

By now you’ve figured out that Ruben likes very fast cars. He loves driving them, and he loves making them faster than they were built to be.

For most of us, the power under the hood of whatever car we own is more than sufficient. It gets us from point A to point B slightly quicker than the posted speed limit. If all stars align—traffic is flowing well, we’re running late, and we’re feeling extra frisky—we may set that cruise control at 125 km/h and pray that in the event of a speed trap, the guy in front of us gets nailed instead (thank you, Waze).

But then, there are those who thirst for excitement. You’ll occasionally hear one pass you on the highway when your cruise is set to 130. “WTF was that?” 

Before you raise your fist in rage and blame the Fast & Furious franchise, remember that street racing has been around for 80 years.

[Note: The Fast & Furious franchise can be blamed for tricking kids into believing that bolting a ridiculous aluminum kite to the back of their mom’s 2015 Hyundai Sonata will make it go faster.]

A short history lesson: Modifying cars for speed began post-WWII by soldiers returning to the US. They were brimming with mechanical skills and used to the adrenaline of war. Without access to private racing locations, these young enthusiasts began organizing informal races on public roads—deserted stretches of highways and industrial areas became their racetracks. The 1950s and 1960s saw a significant rise in street racing culture, fuelled by the popularity of muscle cars like the Ford Mustang and Chevrolet Camaro. By the 90s, Japanese cars, like the Toyota Supra, became legends of the asphalt. The culture evolved, and many drivers, like Ruben, prefer to lay rubber on the track rather than the roads, but the essence remained the same – a passion for speed and a love for the community.

So, how does one get into modding cars and racing? “I worked in a body shop for a short while. That’s where I got the bug. One of my colleagues had a Honda, like the one I have now, and he raced. I went out with him one time, and that was it. Every time I see his car I think, this is the car that made me get into this.” Choose your friends wisely, kids.

With that first taste of racing, and a combination of grit and passion, Ruben set to work on his first project—a classic 1972 Austin Mini which he purchased in 2015. “It all started with that Mini,” Ruben points to a poster of a red Mini hanging on his wall. “I wanted to do mods—put in a Honda engine. People told me I was crazy. It was too much work. And that was a problem. Who was going to do the work? I didn’t know anything about car mechanics—zero. So, I learned on the job. I backed the car into this garage and brought in the Honda engine. When my father-in-law showed up one day, he looked at the engine, looked at the Mini, then looked at me and told me I was crazy—it would never fit. So I told him it has to fit. If nobody has done it, I’ll be the first.” Ruben was dead set on making that old Mini move fast.

A slew of custom parts, mods, cuts to the engine bay and endless determination ensured the new engine finally fit. Then Ruben looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! And evening passed and morning came, and he started planning another—enter a 1995 Honda Civic. Decalled with his now famous Ruben PKid logo and the Portuguese escudo [shield], this is the car that brought him fame. He found the shell for sale online in 2019, purchased it sight unseen, and spent months working on the car, fine-tuning every detail. The result was an award-winning 650 hp machine—to date, the two cars have brought home over 20 trophies for Ruben.

Unfortunately for the Mini, its days were numbered—the 1.6-litre VTEC engine with an aftermarket turbo charger made it a bit scary. “That old mini had over 400 horsepower [hp]. It never scared me until it did. After my son was born, I took it to the track, and that thing started to rattle at 180 or 190 km/h. I thought, you have to go. This Honda does a 9.9 second quarter mile—speed is no problem.” With the Mini shipped off to a new home, the empty space in the garage needed to be filled—so he picked up Nissan GT-R which he uses as his daily driver! “Ya, it cleaned out my wallet,” he laughs, “but I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and I don’t use drugs… this is my vice.”

He turns his attention to the Honda, “I’m going to swap the engine… give it 1100 hp. Right now it’s track ready… and it’s street legal. It has insurance, seatbelts… but I don’t speed in this,” he laughs. 

Even though he can use the Honda to pick up groceries or drive his 6-year-old to school, the true test of Ruben’s creations comes at the drag strip. Here, he competes against seasoned racers, many of whom have extensive mechanical backgrounds, sponsors, and professional support. Despite those odds, Ruben consistently holds his own during those few blurry, adrenaline-fuelled seconds.

With the Honda sitting in the garage awaiting its next trip to the track and the Nissan GT-R parked on the road [not to mention a Sea-Doo to fulfill his aquatic speed needs], you’d think that Ruben had enough horsepower accumulated to satisfy his fetish. But no… there’s more. A few kilometres from his home, tucked away in another garage, is another car. Behind the door sits a collection of car parts and tools surrounding a very inconspicuous-looking Mini Cooper. “This is what they call a sleeper. When this pulls up, nobody will know the power it has. It looks like a normal car.”

In typical PKid fashion, everything is custom. “We have to make a 2.4-litre Honda engine fit in this Mini, so nothing is plug and play. The gearbox is from a Honda CRV. Brian [his friend who’s at the garage working on his own project—an early 90s Japanese delivery truck] put it all together. First and second gears are from an Acura TSX. Third, fourth, and fifth are from a CRV, and the final drive is from an Acura RSX.”

When the all-wheel-drive Franken-Mini is complete, it will boast 800 hp… which I’m told is the same as the GT-R, so very, very fast.

As we leave the garage, I can’t help but wonder if his wife is okay with his hobby. “I’ve always been like this… I guess she doesn’t have much of a choice,” he laughs. In that case, what’s the next project? “I always say—this is my last one,” he laughs. “Let me finish the Mini, and we’ll see.”

WORDS: DAVID GANHÃO
PHOTOS: HELDER MATIAS

 

Ruben Correia aka @ruben__pkid
Ruben Correia aka @ruben__pkid
Ruben Correia aka @ruben__pkid
Ruben Correia aka @ruben__pkid
Ruben Correia aka @ruben__pkid
Ruben Correia aka @ruben__pkid
Ruben Correia aka @ruben__pkid
Ruben Correia aka @ruben__pkid
Ruben Correia aka @ruben__pkid

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