Central Japan’s Gunma Prefecture is home to a handful of Japan’s well known tuning shops. There is one in particular, however unique, whose discipline lies in building Mazda Roadsters; a car that, despite it’s nimbleness on track, hasn’t garnered much popularity in the Japanese Time Attack arena. The tuning shop TCS Usui, nestled at the base of Mt. Akagi (go figure), has been in business tuning, selling and procuring Roadsters and various Suzuki Kei cars for some time now. It wasn’t until the owner built this demo car that TCS became known world-wide.
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 […]
. One of those days… So, I’ve been working on the new website for about a week now, and if I’m honest I’d say the progress is slow at best. The general layout is almost […]
. This weekend I took a drive up to Baldwin Park to visit Project G – one of the largest dedicated Miata shops in the Los Angeles area. The owners, Joe and Steve, have built […]
This past weekend the Queen Mary park in Long Beach played host to the second stop in the 2012 Wekfest Tour; Wekfest LA. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year since the show stormed the grounds in 2011; and as I was expecting, the show was unreal. Honestly, if I could choose one show to attend for the entire year, there is no doubt it would be Wekfest – LA specifically. There really is no better venue than the Queen Mary; great weather, beautiful ocean and downtown views, off-shore breezes, shaded grassy areas to relax, and plenty of room for the 300+ cars and the thousands of attendees. The Wek get better at organizing these shows with each event’s passing and for like minded people, their efforts don’t go unnoticed. I’d like to give a big thanks to Kenneth Li, Adam Luong, Geoffrey Nguyen and all the other behind the scenes people at Weksos that make this tour what it is. I had a blast checking out the builds, catching up with familiar faces, and meeting a handful of new people. With that said, I need to work on getting more sleep before these shows. I’ve slipped into the unconscious habit of getting a maximum of 2-3 hours of sleep before any particular Wekfest show I’ve attended. Somehow I managed to arrive a good two hours before media was allowed in; two hours I spent sleeping in the parking lot. With about 30 minutes to 11am, I walked towards the entrance where I saw my buddy Jon. As we were talking Geoffrey came up to say hi. We talked for a few minutes, got my stamp a little early, and I slipped into the fray of glossy metal that is Wekfest. Check out the first part of coverage past the break – hope you enjoy!
Like I had said in my previous post, I hadn’t planned on going to Formula D, and I really didn’t plan on inquiring about a media pass (although from the looks of it I probably should have!). So, to say I was lucky I got in would be an understatement. I didn’t get many great shots of the actual tandem runs because the track was pretty well fenced off and the parts that you could have possibly shot through had huge banners covering it. That, and my zoom lens is a piece of shit. Seriously, worst lens ever. I don’t even know why I bother lugging it around. It’s OK though because I have another new prime on the way – a must for the Super GT & Taikyu races I’ll be shooting soon. Anyway, there was some serious down-time in between rounds so I had some good opportunities to snap the show that was going on in the parking lot. Every year Slammed Society and Fatlace put on a car show concurrent with the Formula D event. I never really bothered with it all the other times I went to Formula D here, but since there was nothing else to do I decided to check it out. There was the usual mix of awesome and not so awesome cars. I did get a chance to meet up with a few people, and make friends with some new faces which was great. Take a closer look at the show past the break.
To say that we’ve come quite a way in pushing the bounds of modification would be an understatement for most. On occasions where influence and creativity converge over time, amazing results can happen; as is the case with the Miata you see here. Cody’s pursuit of building the perfect Roadster has been a long one, and one where Japanese prominence has prevailed in all areas. From the Super Lap styled exterior, to the adequately tuned engine, he’s transformed this NA from a mild mannered sports car into a battle ready track devil. Honestly I can’t even remember how I got to talking with Cody (I think through NDF Facebook), but as soon as I realized that he was the one responsible for this build, I was itching to get my hands on it. We’re both pretty busy guys, but we managed to met up a few weeks later to knock out a quick photoshoot. If you will, please disregard the obscure title reference to the Paul McCartney song for a few minutes and click past the break to see just what this one of a kind Miata is all about.
It’s now been over a week since Wekfest SF and I’m still finding myself pouring over pictures from the event! I think I’ll just combine the few pictures I have left in this post to wrap up the coverage. Typically people start losing interest in shows after the first couple days, but I gotta say, Wekfest traffic hasn’t slowed at all! In fact, I’m still getting almost as many hits per day as when the first part of our coverage dropped. That’s some bay area love right there. Click past the break to see what everyone has been talking about.
Here is some general coverage of the track day/car show at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana. Even though it seemed like the track was dominated by S2000’s, I was pleased to see a wide variety of cars present; especially at the autocross track. Although my preference has always leaned toward Japanese manufacturers, I am a fan of all cars in general. There were many Euro cars that I shot too, but seeing as how this blog is geared toward Japanese performance, I’ll stick to that. Check out more below.
. I can’t believe I haven’t posted this yet. This was taken in Tokyo sometime back in 2007 when CE28’s were just coming onto the scene. I spotted this clean hard-top roadster in front of […]
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