When I departed on my return trip to Japan this Summer, I did so with the goal of reconnecting with friends and colleagues after the two years of travel restrictions. For 5 straight weeks I travelled around the country by car, train, and plane, all with the simple objective of ‘catching up’.
One of the reasons I enjoy visiting Hayashi at his shop, Auto House Solid, anytime I’m in Gunma is that there is always a large variety of tuning cars on hand. Hayashi services a wide range of customers so there is guaranteed to be something interesting in the shop.
At the beginning of my road trip to Mie Prefecture, I decided to make a detour down to the Izu Peninsula to visit my good friend Ando. Ando operates Auto Rescue Izu, a wrecker/tow service in Shizuoka. Over the past 2 years he had built a new shop to house and work on his personal cars.
Last week I made my way down to the Kansai Region of Japan for a few photoshoots I had lined up. Our first stop was at Esprit where I met our friend Sugikou-san. I wanted to photograph his Supra again for 80R because a lot of time has passed since our original shoot at Suzuka Circuit.
Last week we held a small get together at Autopolis International Racing Circuit in the Oita Prefecture of Kyushu. I had 3 photoshoots for 80R scheduled for this particular weekend trip down south, however a few could not make it last minute.
About a week after arriving in Japan, I received a message from my good friend Tsubaki. Since I photographed his S15 for Import Tuner back in 2014, we’ve always made sure to stay in touch as the years pass.
In this video we visit Skyline tuning masters Racing Factory Autobahn, deep in the countryside of Ibaraki. Kawai-san shows us some of the newer builds and I take a walk around the shop.
This past weekend I headed to Nagano to photograph my friend Tsubaki’s new S15 delivery. He had the car fixed and fitted with the new Garage Mak Type 6 front end. While I was there, we take a close look at Amemiya’s 1,000+hp S15 at the shop, and I also took some photographs of our friend Masato’s DIY S13.
A few months ago we introduced the idea of producing a line of carbon goods under NDF Japan Bodyworks that would help expand our current carbon line of goods.
To say that Takumi Hayashi has an affinity for the Toyota AE86 would be a rather dramatic understatement. The peppy, 130ps 4A-GE motor combined with the car’s FR drivetrain became an instant hit with not only himself, but many other tuners in the mid-80’s for that matter. It didn’t take long for the Corolla to be a favorite worldwide, and Japan was no doubt leading the pack in motor sport development of the chassis.
What a day… I hope everyone else had a much better Wednesday than I did. I’m just getting home from a 12 hour work day, with a 2 hour break in between that […]
I’ll dive right into the second part of my Autocon coverage because I don’t really know any other way to do it. Actually, there are quite a few BMW’s in this post; which […]
This past weekend in Los Angeles we had beautiful weather. Somewhat cloudy, probably high 60’s/low 70’s, nice cool breeze; it was gorgeous. Which normally wouldn’t make me think twice, but because this Sunday was […]
So, one of the side projects that I’ve been working on over the past few months is expanding the site to include a very niche line of carbon goods, targeted towards circuit racing and […]
To confirm your suspicions let me just say, yes; this car is made entirely of carbon fiber. A carbon car if you will. This car was built and belongs to Mike from Autokonexion; a shop […]
Under Suzuki doing his thing at Tsukuba. Great shot from JDM Clips ~ visit to see this in action.
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Spoon Sports: a staple of the Honda tuning community. Any time I travel to Japan I make it a point to try and visit Spoon and Type One because, well, it’s Spoon. Aside from Mugen, no other company works closer to Honda than Spoon and the results are amazing. A few weeks ago my friend and I dropped by Type One to see what they had cooking. The day before the Twin Ring race we didn’t expect much, but fortunately they had left a few employees back at the shop to take care of the weekend customers. I’ll save the full ‘Locale’ feature for another day, but I’ve been itching to share these next few photos with you guys. I posted a teaser on the official NDF Facebook page a few weeks ago and you guys went ballistic over it; this is really a cool car. Anyway, when I was walking upstairs I was so intrigued by this one white S2000 that was for sale that an employee was showing to an interested customer, that I didn’t even notice it sitting to the side of the shop. When I finally saw it I could hardly contain myself. The guys at Type One have always been really cool with visitors, so I wasn’t reserved at all with my picture taking. Although it is a customer car, I was laying on the ground, getting behind lifts, and moving stuff out of the way to get better shots of it. I even caught the guy upstairs smirking a little at me – probably thinking why the hell I cared so much about it. Click past the break to see more of Japanese Darth Vader’s S2000.
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Every once in awhile a tuner company will come out with a build that just blows me away. Well, Mugen is more than just a tuning company, and this is more than just a build; but whatever it is, definitely blows me away. The Mugen RR Advanced Concept is an almost 100% carbon bodied Civic RR with an extensive modification list that makes it a formidable track opponent going up against just about anything. Check out more of what makes this beast tick past the break.
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There’s not too much to say about this F-series at Hontune. I’m really not sure who it belongs to, but I was really into it’s aggressive styling. I snagged a few pictures of it, check um’ out past the break.
