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.
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.
A couple scattered shots of a few of Rie’s sets at Nikko Circuit. The 500ps RB26 has no problems getting her ER34 sideways. Staging for another run.
“People can’t be just tied together. They have to connect. Otherwise, they’ll find themselves bound hand and foot.” A quote (from the Japanese movie NANA) that holds true in most cases; especially when referring to […]
I first encountered the ATTKD street-spec R34 on our way to Battle Evome last February; we had stopped to grab some coffee at 711 and in the parking lot was the entire ATTKD entourage, including […]
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A few years ago, if you were to have asked someone stateside if they knew what Auto Gallery Yokohama was, you’d probably get a blank stare. Or perhaps someone would say that it’s an automotive museum in Yokohama; which, per se, wouldn’t be a bad guess. Bottom line is that no one would know who they were or what they did. Actually, around 3 years ago, even I wouldn’t have known much about them. My first exposure to their now iconic battle-spec R32 was in an Option magazine a few years back. It was a panning shot of the Skyline blazing down the straight of Fuji Speedway. Since then, the just about every part of the car has gone through a massive amount of changes. The bottom line remains the same though; to be the fastest. And in many ways AG-Y has succeeded in doing so. The car constantly breaks records at Fuji and holds respectable times around Tsukuba. For a private company, there is no doubt it holds it’s own in a fight against the big dogs (see what I did there? – NDF!). I recently stopped by Auto Gallery Yokohama’s garage to see for myself the car that I’ve been dreaming about for years and get an up close and personal look at it’s heart. Click past the break for more.
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OK, I’ve been putting this off for too long. AutoCon can wait – it’s time for Nismo Festival coverage! Held at Fuji Speedway annually, Nismo festival is the mecca of all things Nissan and, really, there couldn’t be a better venue! On clear days, like this, Fuji-san is a visually dominating feature. However, Nismo did their best to offer a variety of street and race cars to distract you from the great mountain view. The highlight of this year’s festival had to be the motor sports ‘garage sale’ that Nismo put together. Offering various wheels, and body parts from Super GT cars at extremely low prices – great for home decoration and collecting! Imagine taking home a pair of Mag Volk wheels from a Super GT machine for $10 each! How awesome of a coffee table would that make? Anyway, click past the break for volume 1 of the coverage!
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On to round 2 of the JCCS coverage. Like I mentioned in the previous post, engine swaps are all to common at this show; and this coupe is no exception. This is Steve’s car. Steve drove 2,000 miles from Alberta, Canada to show at Long Beach. This is the way I like to see cars; put to use! As if that wasn’t special enough, Steve had something out of the ordinary at the disposal of his right foot. How does 260 ft/lb.’s of torque sound? Yup, a 4.0 liter, V8 taken from a LS400 sits in place of the stock engine. I got to talk to Steve for a little bit, and to my surprise, he said that the first generation UZ engine fit rather easily in the bay.
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