Long before this website existed, when I had first started getting into time attack in the mid-2000’s, there was a name I came across often, usually in association with some of the fastest builds of the time. Whether those cars had these parts equipped, or had work done or engines tuned there, Garage Kagotani was a staple amongst the paddock.
To describe the RA-R Spec STi as rare would be somewhat of an understated representation of the chassis. In 2006, Subaru made just 300 units of the specially tuned GD based STi for the Japanese market; that accounts for less than 1% of Impreza’s manufactured in this generation.
M’Technic Hyper Circuit Machine Producer is, well, a rather dramatic name for a tuning shop to say the least; but one glance into the type of cars they produce in-house, and the name suddenly doesn’t seem so theatrical. Mr. Tsuchida has had the support of M’Technic throughout the build of his GDBE Impreza, and while still a young build, contains many of the qualities that the shop holds in high regard.
Despite keeping myself busy with work and travel throughout this Summer, there’s part of me that can’t help but feel like these middle of the year months have just dragged by. In the website’s perspective, time may as well have stopped altogether. I suppose if there’s one downside to running a niche website, it’s that for a good portion of the year not much is going on. Typically I’m able to head out to Japan for a few weeks in between Attack seasons, but this year, much like the last, has been way too busy.
I really have to give credit to the formation of NORUSH, alongside NDF of course, for opening up the doors to relationships I may or may not have had otherwise. In the scheme of things, not much time has passed since Allan, myself, and the rest of the guys were really involved in the street driving. So much has happened since then though, that it seems like it’s been decades.
The last time I talked to Steve in person was at Autocon back in…April, I believe? Anyway, for the 30 or so minutes we chatted, he had mentioned wanting to put his 15″ Watanabes that […]
Continuing on with Hyper Meeting coverage, we’ll head out to the circuit where some of the time attack and races were taking place. HKS’s R35 GT1000 was on hand putting in a couple hot […]
This past weekend Mr. Satsuei was at Tsukuba Circuit to get coverage of Hyper Meeting 2014; an event that offers an extremely wide variety of popular cars, shops and a few events in both […]
One contender in Time Attack not seen often is Taro-san’s GC8; hailing from the Gokigenja squad of cars and built in part by Fiber Garage. A very unique chassis in a sport usually dominated […]
Last week I posted up a shot of this DC2 on the NDF fan page and it seemed like quite a few people enjoyed it. Sekinei was at Tsukuba the other day during an […]
The Varis 86 dropped by Tsukuba last weekend adorned in the new full widebody kit offered by Varis. This aero kit in it’s entirety is pretty amazing; much more aggressive than their Arising line. – […]
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I’m going to try and roll everything else I have left into a third and final, massive leftovers post of AutoCon 2012. I can only imagine how cool it will be – especially since I’m kicking it off with this fantastic coupe on Panasport G7s. As far as the timeline goes, it’s still pretty early in the day, and definitely still in the morning. The show opened to the public at about 12 o’clock, and that’s just around the time I said that I’ve had enough. I was fortunate to have a good jump on the show without too much foot traffic, so I really got a good look at the lot in it’s entirety before the gates opened. The lot was so big though, that I think even if I hadn’t I’d still be able to get some good shots. Recapping the show, I must say the entire roll-in process and media handling was a gigantic improvement over last year. Thanks to the AutoCon staff for another good show and I look forward to seeing this event gain in popularity over the next few years. Take a look past the break for a grip of pics that wrap up my coverage.
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Man, I’ve been traveling a lot lately. I think I’ve flown about 3,000 miles in the past 3 days. Not normal, but I’ve been really busy at work recently. That’s probably the main reason that my coverage is so slow to come out – which I apologize for. I think just about all the other blogs have all but finished posting pics, but I’m lagging. I suppose that’s one of the side effects of doing this all on my own; I don’t have as much time as most people (running an airline is quite time consuming -_-;). With that said, let me quit wasting your time and let’s power through the rest of these photos. I’ll be making one more post after this and I’ll try to get the all edited and ready for upload in the morning. After 3 back to back 4am mornings, I have a feeling I’m going to be sleeping in tomorrow. I’ll start off round 2 with a few shots of this familiar Kouki S14 on Mag Blue Nismo LMGT-4’s – super clean build. Click past the break for more AutoCon 2012.
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I’m sure by now between the roll in post, and other blogs, you’ve all gotten a taste of what AutoCon 2012 has to offer – so let’s just jump right into this. I’m admittedly not the biggest fan of car shows in general, but the thing I like the most about these annual shows is the chance to see various cars transform from the previous year, as well as getting the opportunity to see totally new and fresh builds for the first time. It’s also a great opportunity to meet people within the industry. I always make it a point to introduce myself to a few new people during each show. Not only to make new friends, but to get insight into new feature cars and stories; I can thank a lot of good material just from random introductions. I can honestly say that it is easy to see the growth of NDF simply by the reaction of others when I drop the blog’s name. I went from virtually no one knowing what Narita Dog Fight was and getting blank stares, to a good percentage of people who support it – and that’s cool to me. Alright, enough reminiscing – click past the break to see part 1 of Auto Connection 2012 coverage. It’s worth noting that I’ve been out of town all day, and will continue to be for the remainder of the week. So if the coverage is slow to post, I apologize.
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When I started the drive out to Arcadia for AutoCon yesterday morning, I had been under the strange impression that media will-call was at 9am; where I got that impression and why I thought it was perfectly normal I’m still not sure. When I got to the site and saw about 400 cars waiting to be rolled in I kind of figured I had some misinformation. Well, there was nothing else to do really so I thought I’d make the most of it though and start snapping away. The route into the Santa Anita grounds is through an underground route under an overpass to the Westfield mall that’s across from the park. So I just posted up under the shade of the bridge, and did my best to avoid the already intense inland heat. I talked to Justin from AutoCon when I saw him pass through and he had no problems with me starting early. I’m typically late to car shows, so this was kind of cool for me. The roll-in process was much smoother than last year, and it seems they were much better staffed this year. Grab a cup of coffee and click past the break for the first of many Auto Connection 2012 posts.
. Super GT Round 2 | Fuji Speedway – Oyama, Japan | Subaru BRZ GT300 .
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In two weeks the Super GT teams will make their way over to Malaysia for the third Round of the series that takes place at Sepang International Circuit. So, that means I have two more weeks to show you coverage of the Fuji race! Just kidding; I have a few more shots of the race left, so I’ll throw them into this post. I also have some cool shots from qualifying that I’ll sprinkle around throughout the rest of the week. Judging by the traffic, it seems like you guys are enjoying this series. It’s really a unique race with some awesome cars – for me it was really enjoyable to watch, photograph, and now share. Hope you are enjoying it – click past the break for more .
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One of the cool things about going to a race event in Japan, is all the other things that come along with it. Good food, merchandise and car part vendors, free goodies, concerts, and the paddock and pit areas. Super GT had it all and then some. In the vendor area of Fuji Speedway, Yokohama had a fairly large booth set up with a couple display cars. One of the cars was this red FT-86 sitting on a matte black set of Advan RG-D’s. I thought it was a really clean example of what the FT-86 can look like with the simplest of modifications. Click past the break for a full shot.
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We continue the coverage of Super GT Round 2 from about the middle of the race. By now I had wandered myself around the better half of the track and started making my way back to the paddock area to get something to eat. While doing so, I managed to miss the massive crash of the Art Taste Porsche driven by Tim Bergmeister that ended up sending him to the hospital. I’m not sure if he had a puncture in one of his tires that threw him off, or if it was a driver error, but the accident was pretty horrific. This delayed the race for a good 30 minutes while they cleaned up and got the car off-track. It didn’t take long though for the GT cars to start up at full throttle again. Click past the break to check out more racing action from Fuji Speedway.
. Super Taikyu – not the most popular of series, but exciting in it’s own atmosphere, and one I’ve grown quite fond of. It would be a stretch to say that many people know about […]
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After two straight weeks of work, I finally managed to squeeze in a much needed day off. This past Wednesday I had plans to shoot my friends Z32 but, due to a scheduling conflict, had to cancel. Not being one to waste a day off, I sat down and thought of some other things to shoot for the website. I had remembered someone telling me last month that COBB Tuning had opened a new facility in Southern California; I had also remembered reading about an open house for their grand opening. Well, after I had looked into it, I realized their grand opening had already past on the 22nd. No big deal, I figured I’d go ahead and stop by because I had plans on going that direction anyway – and I’m glad that I did. The brand new, 10,000 square foot facility that COBB Tuning inhabits is extremely nice. Upon my arrival I introduced myself to Ronnie, one of the cool dudes in charge of sales & marketing, and they gladly showed me around the facility. Check out more past the break.
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I figured that with all the hype surrounding the Toyota 86 and the Subaru BRZ, that people would get tired of hearing about it pretty quickly. Turns out I was right. When Subaru announced its intentions to compete in the GT300 class of Super GT next year with the BRZ chassis, the hype exploded all over again. For good reason; it’s a work of art. Not only is it aesthetically pleasing to look at, but every piece of aerodynamics on this car serves a function. That’s the beauty of Super GT. I waited for a few weeks to post our coverage to see what kind of response I’d get after the buzz subsided. Click past the break for JDM Clips take on the BRZ GT300.
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So, I finally made the quick trip over to the LA Convention Center to attend the LA Auto Show. While it’s always great to see each manufacturers take on the cutting edge of automotive engineering, I really came to see one car; the Subaru BRZ STi Concept. Of all the automotive topics discussed recently, Toyota’s predecessor to the now iconic AE86 has been the hottest. Will it be Toyota or Scion? What is the actual model name? Turbocharged or naturally aspirated? Will it use Subaru’s flat Boxer engine? For quite awhile, consumers and fans were left in the dark, but finally some light is being shed on the details. Check out some more shots of Subaru’s new member of the STi family past the break.
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OK, so this STi technically isn’t a rally car; it’s actually a race car. However, I figured with Subaru’s ties to the WRC being so strong, I’d include it in the bunch. One of the coolest things about the Megaweb Festa was that show-goers could take turns riding shotty in all the rally spec cars – all smiles there I’m sure. If I had the opportunity I’d probably pretend to be the navigator, but I’d give all the directions in English so the Japanese drivers wouldn’t understand. They’d probably just get distracted and agitated at me – muhahaha. Check out some shots below the break.
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It’s been so long since this event I almost didn’t want to finish posting up the last of my shots. I didn’t want them to go to waste though so, while the epoxy dries on my carbon sunroof delete project, here are the last 40 or so shots of Wekfest in Long Beach. Think of it as a trip back in time; just not that far back in time.
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The stragglers. Leftover pictures that didn’t make it into an event post. This is what you’ll get with the final It’s JDM Yo! event post. Seriously, these events are getting so big that it’s near impossible to methodically post every car that was in attendance. It’s too bad too because some really good builds go unnoticed sometimes. Anyway, I’ve been working mad 12 hour shifts at work and haven’t had anytime to dedicate to the site in awhile. I wanted to finish up with the final pictures before I go out of town once again. With that said, on with the pics.
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Welcome back to the second part of the It’s JDM Yo! meet coverage. The sites traffic has been way up recently, I’d like to thank everyone who checks the site regularly. I’ll be getting some merchandise together soon too, so everyone that’s been interested in it, hold on just a little longer! Anyway, after we checked out what was in the outside lot, we ventured into the main warehouse building. They put up a DJ in almost every room in the warehouse, playing different music. I thought that was pretty sweet. Check out the pics past the break.
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Alright, let me just start out by saying that this meet turned out to be way bigger than I had expected. I had originally planned to stop by real quick, say hello to a few people, snap some shots and jam to Aliso Viejo to the Tamiya RC track. Despite my attempts to hurry, we ended up staying for about 2 hours. The layout of the meet was really cool, with multiple doors leading to new warehouses; all packed full of self-built cars. Some were track inspired, many were heavily VIP influenced, all were cool in their own right. I didn’t have my 28mm with me, so the majority of these were taken with my 50mm – forgive the lack of full car shots, but at a meet like this, and the lenses I had, it was all but impossible to snatch a frame without anyone getting in the way. Click past the break to see the first of the coverage.
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I have a feeling this last installment is going to be filled with R35 goodness. Mine’s, Endless, HKS, Option; they all had GT-R’s on display, and they were all fantastic. For a closer look at the Mine’s built GT-R pictured above, check out Taka’s video @ JDM Clips. This thing is pushing out near 800hp. Although this may be the last ‘walk around’ TAS post, I’ll have a few more specific shots coming soon however. It’s kind of sad to see it come to an end. Click past the break to see more of the final coverage post from Tokyo Auto Salon.
