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.
Back in November I had attended Super Lap Battle at Buttonwillow, not to cover the event, but more or less just to hang out with friends and chat about racing. It’s nice to reserve my local events for spectating and socializing rather than work, however there were a few cars in attendance I wanted to grab a couple photos of.
Take a walk through the paddock of Suzuka Circuit the day before, and the day of Attack Suzuka last weekend. There was an intimate amount of cars for this half day event, which ensured the heavy hitters had plenty of track time.
During the Option Fuji Superlap, the Supra meisters from the Tokyo based Material Auto Factory had the most prominent display of JZA80’s in attendance. Some were competing in the main event, others competed in the Hiper Challenge, and some were on display at their booth. I had highlighted Tatsuo’s Supra in our previous coverage, and a viewer had spotted another of their cars in the background that had piqued their interest.
Esprit has always been a shop that prides itself on building cars of all varieties. Regardless of the make or model, they will take a customers idea, or a demo car, and make it into something that excels in both performance and aesthetics. So when Sugimori Takuya propsoed the idea to build a JZA80 strictly to attack Suzuka Circuit, the shop embraced the challenge with open arms. The end result is a 2900 pound, 800 horsepower power house that runs 2’04.4’s at Mie’s home track.
Senkichi has modified his JZA80 specifically to handle the variety of turns at Tsukuba. Each modification that he chose was specifically tailored for TC2000. The engine’s drive-train has been upgraded and the bottom end built to handle the extra boost from the T78 turbine. Transmission gearing has been modified to put the car in the exact power range needed for each turn. Check out the results below.
Well, I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend. It feels like I was away for quite a long time; sorry for the lack of updates. I’ll pick up from the break with the last […]
Well, I suppose I’ll just dive into the second part of the NDF Winter Cafe; my apologies on the wait, work has been pretty busy since I returned (If you missed it, check out […]
Head on over to the wallpaper page to grab a hi-res shot of these two MKIII Supra’s tunnel blasting through Kawasaki K6 Line – Yokohama, Kanagawa. Bayside Heroes x Narita Dog Fight
Can you think of a better way to watch the Super GT race than camping with your car on the infield of Fuji Speedway? I sure can’t!
One night in Yokohama, my friend and I went out to dinner to a restaurant in LaLa Port; a giant shopping center near Kamoi station. If you remember my last post about Advance, you’ll […]
My good friend Nao, who owns Garage Fun, also organizes a 90’s meet every once in awhile on the skirts of Tokyo. Last time I went, much to my liking, he had charged up the […]
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of visiting a shop that I have had on my list for quite some time; Advance Flatout. I’ve known about this shop and it’s involvement in […]
One of the most keen cars at the 90’s Cafe this past week at Heiwajima PA, actually belongs to the organizer of the event; Yokoyama-san of Garage Fun. Aside from the obviously tasteful aesthetics, […]
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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.
