“So You Think You Can STANCE?” Coverage…Part 2 of 2…
Back now with the second half of It’s JDM Yo!!’s “So You Think You Can STANCE” event coverage, brought to you by The Chronicles. When we last left off, the competition had just started and people were gathered along the street and driveway to check out all the “action”. By “action”, I mean cars going up driveways slowly…haha. I know an event like this usually has it’s fair share of supporters, and also it’s share of people that just think that it is out right stupid. To be fair, it’s totally okay to think that it’s completely retarded because there is a growing number of enthusiasts within our vast community that is starting to dislike this whole “stance” movement. Any time you mention anything about low offset wheels and aggressive fitment, you will have a number of people that will detest the idea and show their disappointment with where the scene has shifted. The whole stance/hellaflush/fitment scene has become it’s own subculture now within the community and it doesn’t look to be going anywhere any time soon. It just goes with different people liking different things. There’s no definitive right or wrong because people don’t always like the same thing or share the same ideas as others. Being in the magazine industry opens my eyes to a lot of different styles of tuning and I’ve learned to appreciate them. I don’t necessarily have to agree or like what some enthusiasts are doing nowadays, but I also don’t have to always be vocal about it. If you don’t like the “stance” movement, just take a gander at the photos, read some of my stupid comments, and move on. This site isn’t solely devoted to wheel fitment and if you’ve been around for a lengthy-amount of time on The Chronicles, you know that I like to bring you a variety of things. Now let’s just move on with the photos and knock out part 2 of the “So You Think You Can STANCE?” coverage…if you want to read my thoughts on the event as a whole, I invite you to take a look back at part 1…
Now when we last left off, Milt had just kicked off the competition and did his run through the driveway…
He didn’t look like he had very many issues getting up the driveway…
…but coming down proved to be a little more interesting…
As I said in part 1, I don’t know the criteria for judging or what they were looking for, but on that particular run…Milt Salamanca garnered a score of 27 out of a possible 40…I didn’t even bother catching score after this because I really didn’t know what was going on. We all basically stood there to watch people potentially fuck their shit up…
A TSX narrowly missing the pavement as he was barely angling out…You can see Holly Lee and Tony from It’s JDM Yo!! standing in the middle of the driveway because they were basically the markers used to cut the driveway in half….Guy in the photo with the 49ers gear on is either whistling his favorite tune or over exaggerating his shock…
A strawberry-faced S14 240SX on Leon Hardiritt Ordens getting set to make his run….I thought the competition was a little unfair in that guys with aero or front lips already in need of repair competed against guys whose cars were in better condition…I mean, in terms of willingness to take a chance of breaking something to win, wouldn’t you have less to lose if your shit was already messed up already?…Then again, I don’t know how it was judged or scored so I can’t really say anything, just raising an interesting point….
People gradually started to get more into the event as more cars made their runs…Even Holly Lee was using the camera and trying to get some action shots…Tony for whatever reason, was showing off his hella hyphy THIZZ face circa 2006…
A clean white S2000 on CCW wheels stood next in line to make his attempt…
Antonio from Motormavens.com didn’t seem too impressed….Big Mike on the far left was taking a standing nap…
While I was happy to see that this S2K owner’s fenders weren’t fucked-up, his front lip has probably seen better days after this event…
Next up was the RHD CR-X from Infinit Wheels…
The CR-X’s run was one of the more interesting ones because they chose to drive the car straight up the driveway without angling at all and when it came down, it struggled to get traction and created some tire smoke…
Thanks to drifting, enthusiasts these days are conditioned to cheer and go ape shits anytime there is tire smoke so Infinit Wheels got some dap for creating the smoke show…
Armand with the TRD widebody MR-2 decided to participate/fuck his shit up…If anyone had anything to lose in this competition, it was him. His car is in pretty good condition and I don’t think damaging that kit would really be a good idea but he went for it anyway. During a test run, he mysteriously broke the wing off that he had just recently not replaced EVER, so this will be day 837 of wingless widebody SW20…
It didn’t look too bad as he was making his way down…
…but the more angles he had to make to get out, the more stress it was on his front end…if you look closely, you can see his fender cracking where it meets the sideskirt….
Next up was this S2000 with a CR lip and what looks like F-Zero Blue Volk CE28s…
If you ever wanted to know what a CR front lip would look like if it was driven into the ground with the weight of the car on it, here you go…
If that wasn’t enough scraping for you, here is a BB6 Prelude that also participated…Good to know that he had that plastic lip under his bumper to give the driveway more contact patch…haha…
This EF was one of the more ridiculous competitors of the day…not only was he making sparks under his car as he was exciting the driveway, he also was sparking when the car was driving normally on flat pavement. The guy decided to lower his car so extreme to the point where his car would flip over if he ran into a dime. The owner was also very serious about this competition and constantly asked later if he made it into the later rounds. Being low and fucking up the bottom of the car is serious business…
Last time I checked, IS350s weren’t cheap and neither are the parts made for them…Tell that to this guy’s front lip…
After most of the cars had finished their runs, out of nowhere, people decided to start acting like dipshits and revving their cars or driving really fast as they were leaving the venue to show off and/or mow people down who were spectating. Tony and many of us started to get kind of iffy about keeping the competition on an open street, so Tony and crew told everyone to get back inside where the parking lot was. The highlight of douchebaggery was when a 15 year old kid smoking a cigarette driving an STI his parents bought for him pulled in front of a crowd and started revving. Instead of just waiting for people to disperse, he felt it was a better idea to rev his shitty car at people and ask them to move. He was also accompanied by his other douchebag 15 year old friends who think that mounting two 25mm spacers on each wheel qualifies as “aggressive fitment”. The runner-up for master of douchebaggery was some jackass who was sitting on the passenger side window, hanging out of his car while his friend peeled out and hauled ass down the street. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Apparently these kids thought that they were participating in an event called “So You Think Your Parents Will Want to Visit You In The Hospital When You Are A Brain Dead VEGETABLE?”…
People acting like complete idiots sort of put a damper on the event, even though a majority of it went very well and without any real issues. There was a break during the competition to tally up the scores and see who would advance to the later rounds, but I was pretty set on going home. I had just driven back earlier that morning from my trip to Las Vegas so I wanted to get home to get some much needed rest. Before that though, I made the rounds and finished up the rest of my coverage of cars that were at the event…
Michael Mao’s Acura NSX…
G35 on DPE wheels…
A couple more shots of the Amuse-inspired S2000 from DTM Autobody…
…as well as the KE70 Corolla wagon parked behind it…
JonJon’s supercharged IS350 from Vanguard Collective/It’s JDM Yo!!….
Y34 M45 on air…
Oh this was cool…It’s virtually impossible to see a modified Lexus ES300/Toyota Windom EVER so it was refreshing to see one at the event with a kit and old school Work Equip mesh wheels…These cars are terribly unpopular to modify, because they are basically fancy versions of Camrys, but I’ll always have a soft spot for this car because my parents owned one when I was growing up…The last time I saw one of these ES300s modded was back around the early 2000s when I would spot the same one always cruising through LA. It had a HKS turbo kit and everything, shit was crazy and way ahead of it’s time…
Ryan Delosreyes’ Scion xB on old school Work VS wheels…
The Kouki S14 from part 1 with the crooked intercooler…As a whole, this car wouldn’t look bad if it was all one color…
FC3S RX-7 from the most un-intimidating car crew name ever, Nuisance…
Acura TSX from Low’N Slow on gold-faced CCW Classics…
3rd generation Toyota Celica from Low’N Slow…
Armand’s MR-2, post cracked fender…Aspiring breezies in the background doing hoodrat stuff…so hood that the guy photographing them is standing on the train tracks…
The BB6 Prelude on white-faced Work Equips that competed earlier…front lip scuffed up, but still intact…
The most aggressive S2000 ever to park in front of a dumpster…
Real clean EK with a iridescent hood shield…
Hubert Barnum male modeling on the Ruckus he and his brother built…
One more shot of the 350Z from part one on the SSR Gartmaier wheels…
The Barnum brothers’ Ruckus…draped in orange jizzum…
The IS350 that competed earlier on SSR MS1 wheels…
The S14 that also competed earlier…
DPK David’s EJ1 coupe just before he left…
Keith aka Keychain’s Accord sedan on polished MB Battles…
That’s about it…after that I left so I didn’t really get a chance to see who won the whole thing. I believed after things calmed down for a bit, they went back and finished the competition on the driveway where it started. Overall, a pretty successful event I would have to say…It wasn’t really meant to be anything taken too serious and I think that’s what people left with. At the end of the day, it’s just a couple guys showing off how they get out of driveways in their lowered cars. The meet portion of the event was cool. The diversity was good and wasn’t only limited to just beat-up cars on aggressively-fitted wheels. Congrats to Tony and staff for putting together a good event….
Thanks for looking… Back tomorrow with other stuff…
Oh before I go, I had to post this up. It was on Facebook late last night but I figured I’d post it up here since a lot of you don’t have Facebook accounts…
Haha, the expression on this guy’s face just made it too easy…
“So You Think You Can STANCE?” Coverage…Part 1…
Well this was different…haha. I mean, in terms of just being “different”, this event takes the cake so far. When Tony first came up with the idea to do this whole “Stance” competition, I was really up in the air about it. The whole name is something that we’ve been throwing around as a joke for the last year or so now, but when he decided to dub his event “So You Think You Can Stance?”, trust me, it was met with a collective “what the fuck are you thinking”. Tony is a pretty smart guy though with some pretty innovative ideas…he’s a massive pervert, but still, he is a smart pervert. If you don’t know which Tony I am referring to, I am talking about Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!. He’s always been a great friend and a huge supporter of mine so whenever he comes up with an idea, no matter how out of the box or random it is, I will support him….
Michael Mao’s Acura NSX on Volk CE28 Genesis…
The whole idea behind this “So You Think You Can Stance” event was very basic in principal…almost too basic. We were to have a pretty aggressively sloped driveway, in which people would sign-up and attempt to show everyone how they could go in and out of the driveway with their slammed/lowered/stanced-out vehicles. The original driveway that was chosen for the competition was over by the Rywire facility. It’s got a pretty big slant to it, but it wasn’t impossible to get up and down. DPK David takes his Civic coupe to work on occasion and has little issues getting in and out and even my Q45 aired down to about 40-50psi with a big kit and get out pretty easily. There are a number of cars that come through the shop and I’ve never really seen anyone have any problems. Being that the venue was also good enough to host a small meet though, Tony decided to use it for the event. What he would do would cone off a large chunk of the driveway, and as the competition progressed, the driveway would become smaller and smaller…
Linda’s Toyota Matrix on VIP Modular wheels from Team Praxis…
How it would be judged would also prove to be pretty interesting…There would be a panel of three guys who would determine the winner…Keith aka Keychain from It’s JDM Yo!!, Noel Barnum from Canibeat, and Yogi from Fatlace. These guys know about all things low so they would be good judges. Yogi I don’t think has ever really had a car that low..his Accord never moved and now he drives a Nissan pick-up, but still, he works for Fatlace/Illest so he encounters his fair share of lowered vehicles. I don’t know what was a point of emphasis for judging, nor do I know what they were looking at…I really didn’t want to know because then I would wonder if they were judging it correctly and with this being a first-time competition, there are a lot of unknowns. Even after the event has come and gone, I still have no real idea of how they judged this. There were so many different types of cars and they all went about going up and down the driveway different…it’s one of those things that can have real open interpretation. In the end, I believe a 1st generation Lexus GS300 won so congrats to the owner. I believe Falken Tires was a co-sponsor of the event and the winner got a set of tires. The other co-sponsor was VIP Modular wheels, which offered a significant discount (20-30% I believe) on a new set of VIP Modular wheels…
350Z on SSR Gartmaier wheels fro Royal Origin…
On the days leading up to the event, Tony realized that there was a chance that the event would be bigger than originally anticipated. I guess he had more than enough responses on social media outlets where he believed the event might be larger than the Rywire parking lot could hold, so he changed the venue entirely. Instead of having it at Rywire, he moved the event over to the city of Santa Fe Springs, inside an industrial section of the city that was quiet and had plenty of space on a Sunday. Overall, I think the event worked out great. The whole idea of it on paper just sounds kind of silly, but man, people fucking love all things “stance”. You can literally throw the word “stance” into any event name or website and there’s a high possibility of it being successful. As much as people love to talk shit about stanced-out cars, it’s become a genre in our community that has become quite popular. I’m a fan of everything as long as it’s done right in my eyes or in moderation. There are some absolutely ridiculous looking cars that showed-up… as with every stance-related event, there are often times when people just try way too fucking hard to be cool and somehow totally fuck up their cars in the process…
VIP Modular booth on display…
If you want my honest opinion of this event, I would kind of relate it to like pro-wrestling and figure skating, but without the excitement of wrestling and without the grace of figure skating…haha, if that makes any sense… I didn’t think that many people would be into the competition side of the event but damn, people were on edge after the first couple cars did their driveway sessions. I think many of us were skeptical but eventually we were also into it and wanted to know who was going to win. I knew that the meet portion of this event would be good because Tony’s events always have good turn-outs. He can bring a good crowd in just by blasting the event on Facebook. The competition was cool, but like I said early on, there’s a lot that needs to go into judging criteria if Tony and crew decide to put another event like this on again in the future…
Lowered cars going up driveways is something that every enthusiast has to go through practically everyday…turning it into a competition just sounds totally absurd…but you know what? It just works…haha. Congrats to Tony and the It’s JDM Yo!! crew for putting on another successful event…
Standard Functions brought out a couple of really nicely-built Ruckus’ for display at the Fatlace booth…
I spotted my favorite car early on in the day…DPK David and I were walking around while I did coverage and stumbled upon an AE86 on HRE wheels…
HREs are not a typical wheel that you see on an AE86…this one might be the first one ever actually…You don’t see these wheels on Corollas of any kind because they are often times worth more than the cars themselves. It’s a high end wheel that belongs on more appropriately high-end automobiles. Anytime you see something like this though, it’s definitely a cool sight…
Turns out that this beautiful creation is actually owned by Mickey Andrade who works at HRE. David and I were a little shocked at first to see a perfectly fit set of HREs on a Corolla but after speaking to him, it all made sense. The car itself was built by John Russakoff from JSPFab in Vista, CA…
John Russakoff’s claim to fame, besides being a talented drifter in Formula D, is performing S2000 F20C swaps on older Toyotas like the AE86. He has a whole kit that is made just for the swap and even has this custom made F20C spark plug wire covers with the Toyota 1600 insignia on them…pretty cool stuff…
I’ve seen this EK with purple Work Meister S1s various times before online…I believe it’s from Northern Cali…
The It’s JDM Yo!! booth with an assortment of the latest It’s JDM Yo!! gear…
The Z33 from above on SSR Gartmaier wheels…
Jay Borcena’s Acura TL on VIP Modular wheels and Accuair suspension…
The guys having a moment…(From left to right: Jay Borcena, Big Mike, Noel Barnum, DPK David, and Noel’s girl Emily…)
Ms. Sheila working the NOS Energy booth…
3GS on Auto Couture wheels…
A good-looking wingless Mitsubishi Evo X on concave Volk TE37s…
JonJon Usaha’s Job Design Lexus IS300 representing It’s JDM Yo/Vanguard Collective…
S2000 from Infinit Wheels sitting on CCWs…
2GS on Work Eurolines, also representing Infinit Wheels…
WRX rolling through with some aggressive blue Work Meister S1s…
Powerhouse Amuse-inspired Honda S2000 on Enkei PF01 from DTM Autobody…
Clean Boso-style Corolla wagon on really clean old school Super Advan Racing wheels…I dig the red interior on this thing…
Keychain cruising up to the event fashionably late…
Noel Barnum taking a seat on his Ruckus to check out the event…
I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason why the intercooler on this S14 is cock-eyed…probably insert a “Because Drift Car” or something stupid here…
Antonio from Motormavens was in charge of MCing the event but also had his camera and massive lens on hand to do some coverage for his site…
This G35 on white-faced Work Meister S1 wheels was just stunning…Shows that you can have a clean set-up on aggressive wheels without making your shit look absurd with haggered fenders…
Yogi from Fatlace/Illest standing the in the middle of the street with a giant “Illest” flag…
A couple hours into the event, it was time to begin the competition and people got together by the driveway in anticipation…
Evo X on green Volk CE28s posted-up on the side of the street…
Here’s an incorrect way to be “stanced-out”….fake TEs, chewed up tires inside and out rocking two gigantic wheel spacers just to be “flush”…What is that shit, like 50mms wider now??…
Jimmy from Team Praxis rolling through before the competition started in his FJ Cruiser…
RHD CR-X from Infinit Wheels lined-up and ready to compete…
Milt from Low N Slow was the first car on hand to try his way up the driveway…he and his crew took the competition seriously and had their team flags and shit all up in Milt’s Z…
Milt’s license plate was a popular topic of mention at the event…
The judges and Antonio huddling-up and discussing the rules…
Milt and his Garson Deep Racing wheels ready to go…
…Judges ready…
…and….
…back tomorrow with part two of the “So You Think You Can Stance?” coverage!…
Stay tuned and thanks for looking!
Tokyo Auto Salon 2012 Coverage…Part 3…The Finale…
We observed the largest internet strike of our history yesterday to fight the SOPA/PIPA Act and from how things look so far, the strike was worthwhile. You can do much more reading about it and the effects the strike had on the country but today we are going to get back into the swing of things. I don’t want imposed my beliefs about stuff that’s not directly related to The Chronicles so feel free to do more reading on the SOPA/PIPA stuff at your own convenience. The site was blacked-out from 8am – 8pm EST so I didn’t get a chance to update with the concluding portion of our Tokyo Auto Salon 2012 coverage. Today we will see the final batch of photos that were provided by our friends over at Tactical Art Japan and I will also include some photos from the parking lot of TAS 2012 that were supplied by Koji Karamata. Part 3 will have more photos from the previous two posts because I felt like it would be better if I just closed out the coverage today instead of extending it an additional day. It would have just been a small amount of photos anyways so there was no point into making a separate post. ..
Gonna kick it off today over at the Project Mu section where they had all of their baller brake set-ups on display…I totally forgot that Project Mu had lug nuts in their product line-up until I saw this photo…
Here’s their new Project Mu Monoblock 4-piston brake calipers… They aren’t coated like the usual Project Mu brakes and have a very distinct “MONO” engraving on the face of the caliper itself…There’s no price tag yet because this shit is probably worth more than the car you’re building…haha…
Subaru STI sedan with-said Project Mu Monoblock brakes….
Over at the Rays Engineering area, you will notice a whole new line-up of Gram Light wheels as well as new Volk Racing wheels…
Rays had this Lexus LF-A on hand with a new set of Gram Light 57Extremes in blue…
You can see the rest of the Gram Light line-up here. I didn’t think that the Gram Light line was all that popular compared to Volks but judging from this display, Rays has invested a lot of money into this particular line…
Mad Mike’s D1 Spec FD3s RX-7 that he will be campaigning in 2012 in Japan…This one also on Gram Light 57Extremes…
Toyota Prius Hybrid Super GT race car…
HKS brought out their wild Toyota Veilfire democar for display at their section… Standing next to the Veilfire is Keisuke Morita, an HKS Sales Engineer that we met last year during the SEMA 2011 show in Las Vegas along with the Tactical Art guys…
They had this hole implemented into the fender where you could peek inside…
…and see their HKS Hipemax III coilover system lit up with bright white LED lighting. Pretty cool idea that you will never see done over here because people aren’t done to put holes in their fenders…
This is the same HKS Supercharged S2000 that was at the SEMA show in 2011…Pretty crazy that they had the car shipped back and forth when they could easily just install another HKS supercharger on a S2000 in the states…
The HKS exhaust system on the S2000…
HKS Hipermax III coilovers…
HKS GT Supercharger for the S2000 off the car and on display…
HKS header with dyno numbers for the AP1…
The new HKS F-CON IS piggyback engine management system…
HKS also debuted their new DMR-150D Direct Multi Recorder system…If you’re interested in what this system is all about, click the link here…
A better shot of the Toyota Veilfire van…
GReddy fixie…
Subaru STI sedan on display for Blitz…
Tokyo Auto Salon 2012 marked the debut of RE Amemiya’s latest FD3s project, dubbed the “Super NA7″…More shots of this wild RX-7 over here on Speedhunters…
The R-Magic RX-7 displayed at the Exedy booth…
FD2 CTR race car from M7 Japan…
Ridiculous looking Toyota Crown Japanese Police cruiser from Car Sense…Say what you will about this car, but it was meant to be off-the-wall ridiculous. It’s just a display vehicle for a shop so I don’t know why people are going so crazy about it online and talking about how it doesn’t function. What the fuck do you think it’s for? It’s not a real police car and hell, it probably doesn’t roll anyway…
Just fucking nuts…
S15 Silvia from Okuyama/Carbing…
Evo X also from Okuyama/Carbing…
One of the most unattractive air boxes I’ve ever seen for any car, haha…
They removed the doors to display the cage and interior…
Endless Porsche Super GT race car looking great with the classic Endless livery…
Pink metallic 2GS from K-Break…
A couple other K-Break VIP cars on display…the sedan to the left is actually a Toyota Celsior with a Toyota Century front end conversion…
K-Break Y33 Nissan Cima…
Appropriate to have a bunch of Japanese dudes in suits standing by the car…
Ferrari 458 Italia race car…
Great detail in this interior, whether you like floral patterns on everything or not…
STI version of the Subaru BRZ…
Subaru BRZ Super GT race car…
Towards the end of the day, Yasutaka Shimomukai from Tactical Art (aka the guy who took these photos) ran into a couple familiar faces. Ken and Adam from Wek’Sos/Wekfest were also in Japan for TAS 2012 and they got together for a photo-op… Oh it’s also Yasutaka’s birthday today as well so a big happy birthday shout-out to him. Super Street magazine is visiting them today and Tactical Art has also organized a little Civic meet over at their shop…
Well, that marks the end of the coverage that was provided by Tactical Art. The photos below are from my other source, Koji Karamata, and are mostly photos that I felt you should see from the show that Yasutaka missed as well as some photos from the parking lot. Judging from the photos I saw, the parking lot at TAS 2012 should have been a show in itself with all the nice cars out there… Anyways, here are the pics…
I didn’t even know Rando Sports was still around but apparently they are and they brought out this new Evo X…
A better shot of the RE Amemiya Super NA7…
Another RE Amemiya beauty with Porsche headlights and custom RE Amemiya aero… I love how they did a gradual fade into the exposed carbon on the hood..Just an amazing looking car. RE Amemiya is just one of those companies that has been quietly killing it throughout the years with amazing product and the world doesn’t know that much about them because they have a very specific demographic (RX-7 owners)…
Another shot of the FD2R from M7 Japan…
GReddy’s BenSopra R35 GT-R…this one has to be the best looking of the three at TAS 2012…I love what they did with the burnt titanium look on the gills behind the front wheel…$40,000 for a aero kit is fucking crazy but man, it drastically changes the look of the GT-R…
Akira Nakai from Rauh Welt debuted his newest Porsche project, deemed the “Spearmint Rhino”…I’m sure it has to be a recent inspiration of his from his trip out to Las Vegas last year…Peep the Fatlace/Illest booth at TAS 2012, Mark is doing it BIG these days…
Now onto some parking lot shots…
Love how simple this Toyota Chaser/Mark II is…I would rock this shit ALL DAY…
Everytime I see a Toyota Celsior built like this it makes me regret owning a Y33 Q45…haha… Man, I love it. If I saw this thing while I was in Japan for TAS, I don’t think I would have gone inside because I’d be staring at this car all day…
I also really liked this Toyota Crown on BBS LMs…
Not sure what these vans are but they look pretty sick…I’ll take either or, don’t matter…
I’d have to do something about the exhausts though…haha but everything else is perfect. I just like how they are all parked perfectly next to eachother. I wonder if they practice this and just go everywhere in perfect symmetry…
This on the other hand, is hideous…cool yes, in a old man creepy way, but totally hideous…
I noticed that in a majority of the photos, there are people sleeping in their cars…The Japanese must be big on afternoon naps, haha. In reality though, preparing for such a huge event like this probably would take a lot out of anyone…
Closing out all three parts of the TAS 2012 coverage of possibly my favorite car of the show, and it wasn’t even inside… This Nissan Skyline 2000GT is on point! Everything about it is just money…
That’s all for today…thanks for looking and I hope you have all enjoyed the overseas coverage of Tokyo Auto Salon 2012…Thanks to Yasutaka Shimomukai from Tactical Art for making it possible!
Thanks for looking…
Tokyo Auto Salon 2012 Coverage…Part 2…
Back now with part 2 of the 2012 Tokyo Auto Salon coverage… In the first section yesterday, a big chunk of it was Honda-related but in this part today and tomorrow, there will be more of a mixture of different cars. Even from looking at coverage on other sites, I noticed that there isn’t that much Honda content. It’s expected though, the tuning community is so vast over in Japan and Hondas aren’t nearly as popular as Nissans and Toyotas. The coverage today will reflect that though as a majority of the cars at Auto Salon were Nissans, Toyotas, Mitsubishis, etc….
Alright, let’s get on with it…
An overhead shot of another portion of TAS 2012…If you look over to the middle right section, you’ll see the Rando Sports Evo X. It’s still sporting the same colors and overall scheme of the Rando DC2 Integra from years past. I’ll have a photo of it later…
13th generation Toyota Crown from TRUE….if you wanna talk about a vehicle with a long storied heritage, you have to take a look at the Toyota Crown family line…
Toyota Celsior with a Black Pearl Jewelry Line aero kit…What I’ve noticed about the VIP scene over there the last two years is how aggressive the aero is starting to look. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing but I personally am more of a fan of the traditional VIP style. The stuff that is coming out nowadays has all kinds of crazy aggressive lines that don’t really flow with the rest of the car…
E92 BMW M3 with a matte, brushed finish and blue Volk TE37 Super Laps…
Maserati Gran Turismo MC on Hyper Forged wheels…You can tell that there are too many companies making forged wheels these days by seeing all the uncreative names…
Liberty Walk Lamborghini Murcielago sitting on a lift under some dome light metal structure…
A couple of Japanese models hanging out by the Liberty Walk Hummer limo…
Vitt Squalo Lamborghini Murcielago…
Wild, slammed and bagged Hummer H1…also note the fancy Louis Vuitton man purse to the right…
One of my favorite cars of all-time…the Junction Produce Rolls-Royce Phantom…so much overkill but sooooo good, haha…
Junction Produce 2nd gen. Toyota Century limo…In the Toyota lineage, the Century sits at the top above all other Toyotas, including the Lexus line of vehicles. When it comes to being a true “flagship” vehicle, the Century is the king of Toyota’s castle… It’s exterior appearance has remained unchanged throughout the year’s of it’s existence because it’s such an iconic vehicle in the Japanese culture…
Work wheels looked like it had one of the best displays this year over at TAS 2012…
F10 BMW 535i sedan on Work Gnosis HS203 wheels…
The 2012 Work wheels line-up…
I am personally a huge fan of the Work Meister CR01 wheel…this one features a matte carbon face and “Black Alumite” rim…
The new Work Meister M1R in matte black…
Another favorite of mine, the Meister S1R, particularly in this Fein Heit Silver and Bronze Alumite finish…
The talk of TAS 2012 had to be the BenSopra R35 GT-R… There were three of them at the show, the two you see here along with a red one that was a part of GReddy’s display…I have a shot of the GReddy one from another source but I’ll post it up later…I wish I had seen more photos of the white BenSpora car though. From what I’ve seen the GReddy one looks the best by far…
Artis Honda Odyssey with an intense paint job…
Another Artis-painted masterpiece was this 60 Chevy Impala…Pretty crazy to see one of these built to this level over in Japan. I remember when I was over in Japan about a decade ago and spotted some lowriders cruising around and they were beautifully done…
The brushed metal-look blended into the black paint is just crazy….
Check out this Fit…the brushed metal work looks so intense that the Japanese guy was touching it to see if it was real…
Well, this is a little awkward…While I would like to believe that this Japanese men are all huddle around the Toyota Camry and taking photos of the Asanti wheels and big brake kit, I can’t help but think of all the perverse things these guys are thinking of doing with their cameras while under this girl’s skirt…I’m a glass half full type of guy but I’ve seen some Japanese porn and whatever they are looking at in this photo is probably censored in scrambled blocks…
While that was going on, the Tactical Art guys were checking out these custom sound system set-ups…
Being that this is their normal every day field of work, it’s good to check out the competition…
Back over at the upskirt party, the model now seems to be bent over on the hood of the car while the guys continue to film whatever is going on behind her…
Beet Racing Spirits custom Honda CB motorcycle…
Orange R31 Nissan Skyline on TEs…
Auto Veloce Ferrari 458 Italia…
Maserati Quattroporte from Fairy Design Inc. from Kyoto, Japan…
GoldRush Mercedes SLS AMG featuring Art Factory Japan graphics…
Subaru BRZ in stock form…
BMW E36 M3 from G-Corporation and what looks to be Wedsport wheels…
GRX130 Toyota Mark X from ST Garage featuring their Axcent aero kit and sitting on some Wedsport SA60Ms…
S15 Silvia from Cockpit Tatebayashi…
R34 Skyline GT-R also from Cockpit…
Not really sure what this was but it looks uncomfortable…
Nissan Leaf Nismo RC all-electric race car with a carbon fiber body…
Motul Autech R35 Super GT race car in the Nissan section with full display and all…
FD3S RX-7 from T-Get Works…
Phoenix’s Power SPL R35 GT-R…
…sitting on 20-inch gold-faced BBS LMs…
From the spec-sheet, it’s basically all Trust engine components, SARD fuel upgrades, Alcon brakes, and the motor makes 770PS, which is just around 759 horsepower…
Another R35 GT-R from Phoenix’s Power, this one a little simpler but also on BBS wheels…
Speaking of BBS wheels, they also had a full display at TAS 2012…If you notice at the bottom, you’ll see that it says “Made by WASHI BEAM”… Washi Beam is actually a Japanese company that manufactures all of BBS’ magnesium and aluminum wheels. The original BBS company is German but all their forged wheels are made in Japan by Washi Beam. BBS actually went under back in 2007 and were bought out by another company, but the general public wasn’t really affected by the move because BBS has always been a customer of Washi Beam and they continued to produce BBS wheels to this very day…I often see Euro guys complaining that Japanese car enthusiasts are “biting their style” by rocking BBS wheels, well…for all intents and purposes, BBS wheels are Japanese, haha…Even the wheels used for Formula One and for all these OEM applications, whether they be BMW, or any other company… it’s all made in Japan… Next time somebody tries to be internet tough guy and bitch about Hondas with BBS wheels on them, tell them to look up “Washi Beam”…
That’s all for today…back with part 3 tomorrow…
Tokyo Auto Salon 2012 Coverage…Part 1…
As you all know, I wasn’t able to make the trip out to Japan this year for the annual Tokyo Auto Salon event. I was really strapped for cash towards the end of the year so it just wasn’t possible for me to make such a big trip out in the beginning of the year. I fully intend on going in 2013 though so I hope this show is still as strong as it was this year. I didn’t intend on really doing any coverage of the event either since I wasn’t there, but luckily for me and you, Yasutaka Shimomukai from Tactical Art made the trip out and was kind enough to take some photos for me. He’s about an hour or so away from the TAS show so I have to thank him for providing these shots. I mean, he didn’t go just to take photos for me but I didn’t expect him to take as many photos as he did. There is a huge mix of content in the coming parts so expect to see more than just Honda stuff…
From what I’ve seen of coverage online of the TAS 2012, I think I’m correct in saying that their automotive “scene” is going in a completely different direction from what we are doing here in the states. While we are over here doing heavy custom fabrication and focusing more on time attack and road racing, they are focusing more on wild, custom paint, and more luxury-themed vehicles. They have been building performance cars for years and doing time attack stuff so it’s easy to see why they have progressed into a different style of tuning. We are still focused on achieving that “race car look” so a lot of the stuff that you see us doing over here in the U.S. reflects that. Even our show cars are themed to look like race cars and many of our cars even pull double-duty and do both. We have our luxury, VIP-style cars but that scene is nowhere near as progressive as the rest of the automotive tuning community. Many people are still stuck on that whole “stance” deal and trying to be “hellaflush” or stanced-out or whatever and don’t focus on building complete cars. Over in Japan, they are also into the stance-look as well but that’s more of an underground thing and not anywhere near as popular as it is in America. Their VIP builds are starting to get more and more over-the-top but even still, they are very well-rounded. From simple observation, it just seems that they are more into the high-end, exotic, luxury look now more-so than ever before. It’s definitely cool to see how things are done over there though because they are always a couple steps ahead of us in a lot of ways. The culture started over there after all so we are often times playing catch-up to what they are doing over there. Whether or not we are going to eventually be as into the high-end stuff as they are remains to be seen. For now, all we can do is sit back and enjoy the crazy stuff that they are producing over in Japan…
One thing I am happy to see is how strong Rays Engineering has stayed throughout the years. Advan as well…these companies were in it early on and through all the years of knock-offs and having their wheels reproduced by other companies, they have remained at the forefront of the industry and their popularity has not wavered one bit. It’s awesome to see how many vehicles at the event are sitting on Volk Racing wheels, Gram Lights, Advan Racing wheels, etc. I hope things stay this way in coming future too. Both companies offer great wheels and it’s great to see them succeed. I don’t know why but to this very day I still find myself smiling when I see a non-Japanese car with some TE37s on them…
Anyways, on with the coverage. There are a couple cars that I have seen from other online coverage that Yasutaka missed but that’s alright. Understandably, it was an incredible busy event so it’s very easy to miss some cars just because there were so many people floating around in front of the cars. It’s kind of like SEMA, where you have to be there an extended amount of time just to be able to get the right shot of the car that you want. From what I understand, he only went for one day so he couldn’t possibly have gotten everything there at TAS 2012. I have another source for photos so if there is something that I really think deserves to be mentioned, I will follow up later with some more shots. With that said, a HUGE thanks goes out to Yasutaka and the Tactical Art crew for making this possible… Now…photos…
A very nice Nissan Y51 Fuga posted up outside in the parking lot of TAS 2012…
Much like the U.S. SEMA shows, females were few and far between…
A couple overhead shots of what a section of TAS 2012 looked like…
Wurde Porsche Panamera… “Wurde” stands for dignity in German I believe and this is actually a Japanese tuning company that creates aerokits and exhaust systems for Porsches…
T&E Vertex R35 GT-R….I knew they had a front lip for the R35 for awhile now but the carbon fenders and that added piece at the end of the bumper makes me think that those may be widened fenders…Hard to tell because this is the only photo I’ve seen of it so far…
The Sense Brand Celsior is kind of booty-looking but I thought I’d show you guys some photos of the exhaust systems that they are producing for VIP cars….
Check out the exhaust on this other Celsior. Twisted pipes and the cut-outs in the rear bumper are some things that you will never see over here…I’m almost curious and wonder how it sounds…
Restored ’70s-era Kawasaki H2 750 Mach IV…
LXF Design Toyota/Lexus LS600…
…and the most uninterested model EVER….nothing says “come check out the LXF Design LS600″ than a girl with a face that says “get me the fuck out of here”…
T&E Vertex 2JZ-swapped widebody E92 BMW…
Oh this was a novel idea…Many of you scouring online for TAS coverage has probably already seen this but it was a very cool idea. This as you know, is the new Toyota 86. Well, instead of having two different 86s representing two rival tire companies, they decided to put two different liveries on each side, one side representing Falken Tire, and the other side…
…representing Dunlop Tires… They put a make-shift wall up to make it look like a half-cut of an 86 on each side and it’s a something that only the Japanese would think of to do…
Really like the new Rays Gram Light wheel and center cap…I don’t know the exact model because it’s new but it’s probably 57-something because that seems to be the name trend with the Gram Light line…Endless brakes are looking awfully good too…
Direzza not only has tires, they also offer forged wheels…The older ones were made by Speed Star Racing (SSR) but I’m not 100% sure about these new ones…
The Mugen CR-Z RR Concept that I posted up late last week… this is actually one of two, the other is a lime greenish color with slightly different aero…
Mugen brakes and the latest Mugen wheel, a 19-inch forged wheel tentatively named “Mugen LS-Mesh”…haha…
The rear of the RR Concept…Note the center-exit exhaust and how it will differ from the other CR-Z RR Concept…
The other CR-Z RR…
As stated, the other center exit exhaust…rumor has it that this exhaust variation can also be used as a tow hitch for the Mugen Trailer RR…That rumor of course, was created by your’s truly at this exact moment…
The Rotrex-type Mugen Supercharged CR-Z engine with Mugen air box…
A closer look at the Mugen airbox for the CR-Z RR…
Mugen F1 car sitting pretty…
As Loi from Sportcar Motion would say “Aero are serious”…
Bossy Repsol bike…
Honda HSV-010 GT aka the NSX they should have made instead of the current concept they are considering…
Love how menacing the front of the HSV looks…
Mugen Honda CR-Z…making the world a better place with new, non-attractive Mugen wheels…
Rear-wheel drive, battery-powered, Honda EV-STER concept…
From the future concept to the distant past in the form of the original Honda roadster, the S600…
Japanese patrons shopping for some Honda Goods…
Honda N-Box Flash Box….
Raybrig Honda NSX Super GT car…
The “Raven”, which looks to be a Mark IV Toyota Supra with a 350Z Veilside front bumper, Lambo-style doors, and BMW F10 5-series headlights…Quoth the Raven “I’m fucking on fire right now”….
The Nitto Tires booth…
Wild chop-top Subaru STI from Car Service Hiro…
TWS Forged…
Lexus LF-A in the TWS Forged booth…
Toyota G-Sports Mark X Concept…
Toyota Celsior from Glanz…I wish Yasutaka would have gotten a closer look and taken some shots of the interior of this thing because it looks pretty interesting…
Pregia Tissimo Daihatsu Mira…
An example what I was referring to at the beginning of this post about the custom paint work that seems to be popular in Japan…
Weber Sports Mazda RX-8…I like the custom paint work in the a-pillar and roof…
“Itasha” themed Audi S5 coupe with Lambo doors and some models that kind of creep me out…Batman agrees…
That’s all for today… Check back tomorrow for part 2 of the 2012 Tokyo Auto Salon coverage…
Thanks for looking…
Mugen CR-Z RR from TAS 2012…
Man, I’ve just been scouring the net the last night or so in anticipation of finding new photos from Tokyo Auto Salon 2012. This year’s even looks amazing from the photos I have seen so far and it really makes me wish that I was out there with the hoard of other Americans that seem to have gone out to Japan this year. I have Yasutaka Shimomukai from Tactical Art over there helping me take photos but in the mean time, here is one of the Honda highlights from TAS 2012 so far. I’m sure there is more to come but this is just what I have been able to squander from looking through Flickr from my bookmarked pages. This photos are from “Tnoma” and he did a great job of getting the newly introduced Mugen CR-Z RR in detail… I’ve attached a link to Mayday Garage because David Do and Danh Phan are over there covering the event right now and their style of coverage is a lot like how I do mine…meaning that they are very indepth and cover everything that is going on, including some stuff that’s outside of the event. Japan is a really cool place, if you haven’t been there before, you should definitely try to make it out there one of these days. For now, luckily, we have a couple of friends over there doing a great job of covering the event for us here in the states…
The photos are pretty self-explanatory but if you are wondering, this is the Mugen CR-Z RR Concept that has a motor equipped with a Mugen-designed supercharger…There is a shot of the motor but off the car. Who knows if this thing even runs at this point or if it was like the NSX RR where it didn’t even have an engine inside of it…
Photos aren’t the best but let’s face it, even if I was there the photos would not be all that great, haha…
Good to know that Mugen’s wheels are starting to look more modern and appropriate with the times…While I get the new Mugen stripe on the side of the car and how it flows with the natural line of the door, I don’t get why they put the stripe on the hood… Looks like a contemporary artsy version of a Drumstick ice cream cone…
What’s up fancy and elaborate interior?….
Love the front fenders and the lines of entire kit…
Center-exit exhaust flowing seamlessly with the bumper…
The money shot… Mugen supercharged with carbon air box and all…
Meanwhile, Mayday Garage is killing it and doing way more shit than me! Peep the two links below for the best coverage so far… The first link will take you to day one of their coverage, second one is a super cool behind-the-scenes look of them having dinner and partying inside the Rauh Welt facility with Akira Nakai from RWB….
Click here for Mayday Garage’s Preview of Tokyo Auto Salon 2012…
Got damn I’m missing out!!
X5 Nagoya Coverage…
Man, I wish I was in Japan right now…While everyone is busy sitting at the airport and waiting to board their flights to Japan for the upcoming Tokyo Auto Salon event, I’m leaving my bags unpacked because I don’t have the resources to get there, haha. Kinda lame because I honestly thought that by this point, I’d be making the trip out to the mecca of Japanese automotive tuning, but hey, that’s just how things work sometimes. Maybe next year or a couple years down the road I’ll finally be able to get there. In the meantime, I’ll just be like many of you, sitting at home behind a computer screen waiting to see coverage of TAS 2012. When I do go I’d really like to make a big trip out of it and see all the things I’ve always wanted to see but that’s all a pipe dream right now. I went once in 2001 but that was just to visit with my family and totally not car-related. Ah well, enough of the bitterness, let’s move on…
I have just a small update for you guys today. I’m still working on some stuff but I really want to get all these orders out and get some more product ready for the rest of this year. There just doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day lately but I’m glad that there is work rolling in again so that I can get back on “the grind”. As far as work goes, there are a lot of good cars being featured in mags in the upcoming months so be on the look out for that. I myself am in awe of some of the cars that are being sent my way to do stories on. They say print is slowly going to fade away in the coming years but man, with the type of content that magazines like Honda Tuning, Super Street, and Import Tuner are producing, it’s going to be hard to deny that print is still a very important force within our community…
Anyways, the photos today are just a couple of random photos that the Tactical Art guys sent me from the X5 Nagoya event from a couple months before. X5 is basically like the equivalent of Hot Import Nights over here..there are a ton of like DUB-style vehicles and lowrider stuff, with a very small showing of pure Japanese performance builds. They love the American lifestyle and that’s why shows like X5 are popular over there. I’m not going to spend time showing you guys stuff you don’t want to see, like donk’d out Tahoes and shit. I’m just going to put up whatever Honda content they sent me that I felt was relative to what you guys want to see. I know that we are all not on the XXR bandwagon and a majority of us could give two shits about their crappy wheels, but take the photos in stride. The Tactical Art guys are selling these wheels over there beacuse again, many Japanese enthusiasts love the American style of tuning and what they see many times when they go online are photos of cars with bike racks and knock-off wheels. They have taken a liking to the style so they want to reproduce that look over there. We may not agree with it but I’m sure there are also a ton of things that they don’t necessarily agree with when it comes to stuff that we do to our cars so it’s hard to really knock them for it. They just don’t know that much about wheel companies like XXR and just want that “look”. For the X5 show, much to our dismay, the guys rolled out with their complete XXR line-up. None of these wheels are permanent so like I said, just take the photos in stride…
On with the photos…Thanks once again to the Tactical Art guys for providing these photos…
The Tactical Art line-up for the day…
Whenever I see photos of DC5 Honda Integras from Japan, they are usually decked-out in full race form so it’s refreshing to see one that is a little more simple and much more suited for street cruising…
This four-door Civic looked pretty good and is another good Japanese representation of the “USDM style”… Air Walker bumper, custom BBS RS wheels, and black Recaro seats….It’s a good look. I think our buddy Tetsuya Yamaguichi from USDM Jam is familiar with this car because I’ve seen this car pop up at a lot of his events….
The bay is shaved and tucked as well…It still retains the air conditioning, power steering, and the brake lines and fuel lines look untouched but not a bad job overall…
A clean white EG on another set of BBS RS wheels…
A little odd to see a company like Spoon Sports at an event like this but they had a big display and everything. The had their CR-Z, Fit and even an old school E-AT Civic…
It’s probably more of just a display vehicle for them now but they have kept this thing in amazing condition…
Check out the passenger side-exit exhaust…
Oh and I know some of you were asking for on-board videos of the Tactical Art guys from their track day at Nakayama Circuit (from the previous post)…well the only video that has surfaced so far from them is a on-board video from Ryotaro Nakao, who had the gutted-out white EG with the Chargespeed seat and Takata harnesses… I don’t know if you guys can view this if you don’t have Facebook, but check the link and see if it’ll work for you. For those who do have Facebook, it may work for you or if not, try logging in first, trust me, it’s safe…
Click here for Ryotaro Nakao’s lap at Nakayama Circuit…
That’s all for today, I hope all you guys that made it to Tokyo Auto Salon have a wonderful time… I’ll have an eye out for content from Flickr and various sources…Have a good one everybody…
Exclusive Content: Tactical Art Japan…Track day at Nakayama Circuit Coverage…
Wouldn’t it have been great if I had actually been in the Okayama Prefecture in Japan, taking all these photos and covering stuff like this for you guys? Haha…some day I’ll make it to Japan and believe me, the coverage will be absolutely amazing. For now, we will just have to play a game of “make believe” and pretend that I was at the Nakayama Circuit covering one of Tactical Art and friends’ track days. It was cold and I probably didn’t get enough sleep the night before for whatever reason, maybe because I was following these guys around….In reality, I really do have coverage of this event though, and it comes courtesy of the guys from Tactical Art. Hopefully this isn’t your first day here on The Chronicles and you’ve become well-acquainted with who and what Tactical Art is. It’s pretty early so I’m not going to try and explain it to you guys so if you would like to find out more, simply search this site or go on Google and type in the search terms “Tactical Art Japan Chronicles” and I guarantee you will find something….
Anyways, this actually took place back in late November, but Mr. Yasutaka Shimomukai wasn’t able to get the photos over to me until just last week. With the new year and consistent business over at Tactical Art, it’s been difficult to keep the lines of communication open. Out of the blue, he emailed me to just to say what’s up and sent me a giant chunk of photos that he had collected from the past two months. I think it’s great that we have been able to keep the lines of communication open because we are both fans of one another and now I have a way of bringing you some pretty cool stuff that’s going on over there that no one else in the U.S. can. What I mean by that is that you may see cool automotive content from Japan, but often times it’s the bigger, more well-known events. The Tactical Art guys tend to do their own thing and attend smaller track events whenever there is one going on so they help to bring us a completely new perspective of the Japanese Honda community. I like their enthusiasm and you can really tell that they want to learn more about how we do things here in America. I mean, the feeling is mutual of course, because we are all very excited to see what is going on in Japan…
This track event that they attended took place at the Nakayama Circuit. It’s a track that isn’t too far away from them and as it turns out, Nakayama Circuit is actually very well-known. It was built in 1970 and was one of the four original racetracks to be approved by the JAF (Japan Automotive Federation) for competition. The other three are tracks that you are probably more familiar with; Suzuka Circuit, Fuji Speedway, and Tsukuba Circuit. If you have played any motorsports-related video games like Forza or Gran Turismo, than you will definitely be familiar with those names. Unlike the three more well-known tracks though, the Nakayama Circuit has aged a lot over time and actually lost it’s JAF approval around 1989. You can tell in the later photos that the track has some age. It’s just used for smaller, private track events now and that’s why you will only see a small grouping of vehicles in the photos. I have to thank 7Tune for providing me with the info on Nakayama Circuit, otherwise I’d just be making up a bunch of bullshit and telling you how speedboats and unicorns race here for gold, or some shit, haha…
Before we begin, I don’t have any actual race footage because it was not provided to me. Maybe they didn’t get a chance to upload them yet, or maybe they just don’t have them. From the photos, I saw that they did have cameras and camera mounts on the cage of some of their cars but again, I didn’t receive anything. If for whatever reason you feel like your day isn’t complete because you didn’t get to see videos of them racing around the track, uhh, I don’t know, how about you just learn to move on and make a sandwich or something. We are lucky enough to have these photos today so we can’t really complain or ask for more. I think it was really nice of them to pack all these photos together in their original formats and upload them to a file-sharing site for me to download. The file was almost 500MB and there were two files, so you can already imagine how long it took for me to download these. After I got them, I went through and picked out what I felt were the best ones too and processed them and sized them correctly to meet the format of this site. They aren’t photographers nor do they claim to be, so I had to discard a lot of the blurry images and what not. They got more than enough photos though and I think they came out pretty good. I don’t know if they took these photos strictly for their own personal blog, because they only use a couple of the images, or if they took them just for me to post up here. From the amount that I got, I can only guess that they intended for me to use them and for that, I have to give them a huge thank you. I love seeing stuff from other parts of the world, especially from Japan, so it is not even a chore for me to get these up for you guys today. Alright, enough with the long intros, let’s get to the photos…
Inside the Tactical Art facility, where they were prepping for the day’s adventure at Nakayama Circuit…
Atuki Tubouti, owner of Tactical Art, making final preparations on his EG6…
A quick look at the rest of the facility…Not too big in size but more than enough room to store their cars and do audio installs, which is what they normally do on a day-to-day basis…
Yasutaka Shimomukai’s EG Civic with the ride height adjusted for track-use…You can see in the background that Atuki’s EG is being loaded onto a trailer…
A look at the outside of the shop…Once the car was loaded-up, Yasutaka hopped into his EG and they headed down to the Nakayama Circuit…
Love the aggressive Volk TE37s on this white Civic…
Atuki-san making adjustments to the suspension…
You can see in the background how the walls and buildings how the age of this track…
The interior and fiberglass dashboard of Atuki’s EG…
One of their buddies brought out his EG for the day as well…
Not much done to this Civic…it has some aftermarket fenders that have been pushed out even further to clear the meaty tires and low offset XXR wheels…
His Civic is bare bones with nothing other than a solo, old racing bucket with Takata harnesses on it…
Atuki’s Civic ready for action…
…as was Yasutaka’s EG…
All the competitors standing in line to get the rules and paperwork for the event…
Another one of their friends helping out and making sure everything is secure…
Tire change on an EJ1 coupe…
Another pair of EG-chassis Civics sitting across from them in the paddock area…
This EG has some pretty aggressive aero and I always see it in photos with them at track days…
Note the mirrors, hood, clear corners, and the fender work required to get those meaty ass TE37s under there…
Schedule for the day…
A look under the hood of the Defunkt Racing Civic reveals massive ducting driving air into the ITBs…
Check out the aggressive front fender treatment necessary to house those 225/45-16 Advan A050 tires and 16×9 SSR SP3 Professors…
Rear shot of Yasutaka’s EG, bumper holes and all…
His interior…
Another glance at Atuki’s interior, notice the cut out doors?…
Check out this wild Integra that was there…The rear fender work is nuts, especially with the gas tank lid and everything being reshaped. The front fenders have been widened and cut towards the bottom, almost resembling a Japanese Super GT type of look…This thing is wild…Looks like it has a non-staggered set of 17×9 TE37SLs too…Plenty of tire and traction all the way around…
An AE86 Corolla Levin coupe with SSR MK2s…
Another EG….check out the orange Recaro seats, might be something that Rywire Ryan might want to look into for his ITR build…
Interesting rear bumper treatment on this EF hatchback…I can’t help it, but everytime I see the graphics on the side of this car, it reminds me of Bruce from Family Guy…
Haha…I’m sure even you casual Family guy fans will understand what I’m saying. The moment you read what the car said you were probably already thinking it…
Center-exit exhaust… Spy the Integra in the back heading out to the track from the paddock area…really wish they would have gotten some photos of that thing out there…
The name of this vehicle escapes me right now...Ohh Nooo….Honda Today 2-door perhaps?…
Stock-body Nissan S15 Silvia with WEDSports…
FD2 Civic Type R on Advan RS…
Yasutaka chucking the deuce…
Peep his canard set-up…
Dialed and ready to go…
Hanging out while they wait their turn…
Shimomukai grabbing some vending machine coffee while waiting…They don’t give us that many options in the U.S. because we as a society are indecisive and would take forever to decide on what we wanted. And judging by how U.S. vending machines work, half the time you would never get your drink anyway because the fucking thing would break…If you’re wondering, 150yen is just under $2.00 U.S…
The FD2 R heading out…
One more shot of Atuki’s EG6 before it heads out for a beating…
I personally liked this shot a lot…
Yasutaka in his EG6…seeing that giant “Tactical Art” decal splashed on the side of his car reminds me that I have to send a batch of Chronicles stickers out to them….He said he wanted to run my site’s URL on the side of his car but my machine can’t cut anything nearly that huge…awesome idea though, haha…that’d be crazy to see…
Lining up in the staging area…
Only “track footage” that was usable…I’ll have to ask them if they got an on-board video…
A couple shots of them returning to the paddock area after they were finished with their session…
That’s pretty much it… I hope you guys enjoyed it. It’s always cool to see something different and to see how other countries do it. Thanks for looking and thanks to the guys from Tactical Art for providing us coverage of their adventures…
Exclusive Content…Unpublished Photos From Import Alliance Summer 2011…
Misleading title is misleading…to be perfectly honest. These photos are actually a mix of published/unpublished shots from Import Alliance 2011 that I shot while I was out in Nashville, TN for Honda Tuning and Super Street magazine. I thought it would be a good time to finally release these since we are nearing year’s end and I’ve been looking back at 2011 while thinking about which moments were my favorites. I can honestly sit here and say that the Import Alliance meet was one of the highlights of my 2011. Just to be able to see a completely new selection of builds and visiting a new place made for a great experience. Today we get the opportunity to look back with some never-before-seen photos that I shot while there. I want to say maybe 50% of these actually made it to print while the rest didn’t make the cut. They didn’t make the cut because the cars weren’t interesting or anything, we were just limited in the amount of space we could use for event coverage and that’s why you will see these images for the first time today. While I was out there, I took almost 1000 photos and hopefully you had a chance to see the coverage that I did from that event. If not, I suggest you head down to the bottom of this page and search for the IA 2011 mini-series of coverage. If you find that too difficult, simply go to Google or whatever fucking search engine you prefer and type in “import alliance 2011 chronicles” and it’ll probably pop up. Since I spent so much time earlier in the year typing up the coverage, I won’t provide captions for these photos today. If you want to know who or what appears in these photos, check out my coverage because there are similar shots, albeit from different angles, of what you are looking for. I went ahead and included the shots that were published because I honestly feel that many of you sometimes just overlook the event coverage section in the magazines and skip right to the main features. If that’s the case, then all of these will be viewed for the first time for you guys/gals. There were also a couple cars that I maybe took one shot of, and then I ended up sending it in for publishing so the cars might not have made it into The Chronicles coverage of the event. So if you were looking for your car in my coverage and thought I was an asshole for ignoring your car or overlooking it, then there is a small chance you may see it here today. Even if you do, I am still an asshole, so everybody wins. Anyways, on with the photos…you guys should have seen enough coverage of this event this year to know what cars these are so captions probably aren’t necessary. I got a shit ton of work to finish up before New Year’s so I am off to take a fucking nap now before I get back to work. Enjoy… shout-out to everyone outside the west coast, I haven’t forgotten about you guys…
Click here to view the original story on Import Alliance Summer 2011 from Honda Tuning magazine…
Click here to view the original story on Import Alliance Summer 2011 from Super Street magazine…
Photos below…
Thanks for looking…
Norm Reeves Honda 2011 Car Show/Toy Drive Coverage…Part 2 of 2…
Happy Thursday all…the holidays are fast approaching so I hope you can read this generic comment I have about Christmas and shopping and what not. Anyways, back now with part 2 of the annual Norm Reeves Honda Car Show/Toy Drive coverage. Just two parts to this series of coverage because there weren’t that many cars there and I think I covered most of the ones that caught my eye. One of you guys commented and asked where the del Sol coverage was and I apologize. Apparently I missed out on the del Sols so maybe I’ll catch you guys at the next event. The only del Sol that caught my eye was the one with the crazy Lambo doors and I try not to take too many photos of high-end exotics because they don’t fit my demographic so I didn’t photograph it. With that said, let’s get going with the second and final portion of the Norm Reeves coverage…
Let’s kick it off with some photos of the Bisimoto Engineering 2012 Honda Civic Si coupe…I hope you guys enjoy this build because you’ll be seeing a lot more of it on the cover of the upcoming issue of Super Street magazine…
Many of you won’t notice, a few of you will, but I’ve seen some comments on various forums where they raised the issue with the angle of how the turbocharger was mounted on the K24z7. Yes, Bisi was aware of the issue after the manifold was fabricated but with SEMA going on, he didn’t get a chance to assess the situation. Since SEMA, adjustments have been made with the manifold and now the angle of the turbo has been corrected…
Rywire Ryan’s NSX weekend toy on freshly powdercoated Regamaster EVOs…
After going through my photos from that day, I realized that I had not taken any photos of the exterior of ATS Anh’s Integra Type R….This is the only shot I have of anything related to the exterior aesthetics but trust me, it looks just about the same as it has the majority of the year. He did sell his Mugen Gen. II wing recently though so he’s been rocking the wingless ITR look. The car has been down at ASC Speed Metal for the last couple months getting some new additions to the bay and I’ll show you some pics of it right now…
An overview of the bay from both angles… you’ll notice right away that the teal-coated ITB horns are gone and there are a couple new additions. The front strut/shock tower bar has been re-done as well…
Custom engine breather unit made by ASC, color-matched to the same teal that exists in the bay…
Custom oil catch can also made by ASC…
ASC emblem on the strut bar…
Polished ITB horns…
…and a shot of Anh’s wheel and brake set-up…
A couple shots of DPK David’s EJ1 coupe…
After I finished walking around inside, I took a glance out the door and noticed that it had started to rain… People still stuck around though and didn’t let the downpour affect them…
I don’t really know what the deal with the blue tape on the corner of the bumpers was, but I really liked how this Honda Fit looked…The color and aero set-up just flowed really well with the wheels…
Volk TE37s have always been a popular choice among our crowd, but it’s not that often that you run into a set of TE37 Cup wheels…
Another shot of the JDM EF2 conversion on this white Civic 4-door…
Both CR-Zs stuck around even though it continued to rain…
Man, this is a blast from the past…Haven’t heard the name “Cyber Racing” in quite some time. If you don’t know, Cyber Racing is probably one of the original Honda car crews from back in the early 90s. I think it was around 1988 when it all started. Tony Fuchs and a couple others started that group and were drag racing before there were any corporate sponsors, internet forums, anything “online” in essence…Pretty wild to see that they are still being represented…They were known back in the day as one of the first “11-second” car clubs in our community…oh how times have changed…
I don’t know why, maybe because of the rain, but I decided to head back inside to take some more detail shots of Bisi’s 2012 Civic…
AEM’s high output ignition coils being represented on the Golden Eagle intake manifold of Bisi’s Civic…
Bisi’s Turbonetics 72mm mid-frame turbocharger….
I walked back outside and snapped another photo of the Bisimoto Honda Civic Wagon…
The crowd was by no means large, but there was definitely a steady group of enthusiasts walking around…
Michael Mao’s Taitec JGTC 2000-type front bumper…
His brother, Bay Mao’s Honda S2000 on custom Mugen M7…
A couple more of the Basis CR-Z on Spoon Sports CR93 wheels…
Umm… Jagged S2000 fender – 1, Nitto NT01 tire – 0….
Jerry-Built turbocharged FG2 Civic coupe…
Accord coupe with a massive Volk wheel and tire combo…
Acura RSX from Royal Origin…
Acura TSX with some Enkei RPF1s…
Saw this dude wiping his car down after the rain stopped and he mentioned that he drove all the way down from San Luis Obispo for the Norm Reeves meet…some real dedication right there…
Spotted this beauty parked across the street during the meet…owner was probably there to visit some of his friends from Japanese Nostalgic Car magazine, which had a booth at the show…
Oh I couldn’t end the coverage without displaying some of the more interesting Hondas at the meet….these guys took the saying “racks on racks on racks” to a whole new level…One dude had a motorcycle, the other a Gyno-chair, madness I tell you, madness….
That pretty much wraps it up for the coverage… after the raffle and awards for the show were announced, we gathered up our belongings and took off to go grab some lunch…
I don’t know if you guys are at all interested, but I included a desktop image for you guys….the shot was pretty random but I liked how it came out so I turned it into a 1080P-sized wallpaper…
Thanks for looking…
Norm Reeves Honda 2011 Car Show/Toy Drive Coverage…Part 1…
Norm Reeves Honda does one of these car show/toy drives annually and we have made it a point to head out there for the last couple years now to support them. I even went to the event a couple years back during the California wildfires and there were literally ashes falling from the sky. It’s not a big event by any means, but it’s for a good cause. That and it’s not often that a car dealership shows support to the aftermarket Honda/Acura community. Norm Reeves Honda has always been active in our community so it’s only right that we show them equal love…
There isn’t really much to say about the 2011 event that hasn’t been said before in the previous years. Nothing crazy happened, which is actually a good thing, because things have been so hectic lately that it was good to go to an event that was just laid back. The show featured a similar set-up from years past; show up, park, donate a toy or canned good, and enjoy the car show. There’s also a car show competition that goes with the event and they’ve been generous every year with some pretty big trophies. The only really notable thing about this event compared to the previous years is that this year, the car show was held in a different lot. It’s usually done in the Norm Reeves Honda dealership lot, but this year, it was a couple miles down at their used car lot. I don’t know how I feel about the area surrounding the used car lot, but I think I actually preferred this location. It seemed like there was more room and the entire lot was devoted to just the show itself. Over at the original Norm Reeves Honda lot, there are usually new cars parked next to the event and there are usually a bunch of car salesmen walking around or standing around and gawking. This lot, I think, just works out better for the show. They didn’t have to worry about disturbing walk-in customers who just wanted to look at new cars, and there didn’t seem as if there was a real rush to end it so that Norm Reeves Honda could resume normal business. In any case, that’s not anything we really need to be concerned about so I’ll just move on to the photos…
It was mostly overcast throughout the morning and it even started raining an hour or so into the show, so the photos almost look as if it were two different events but trust me, it was all taken within a couple hours time…
Stanced-out EF from a new crew with the latest and greatest crew name: “LOW LIFE CROOKS”…I fucking swear, you can’t even make that shit up. You know how to attract more attention towards your modified vehicle? Put a 3-foot banner on your windshield that states that you may possibly be a LOW LIFE CROOK…come on….kids these days… Maybe I should start driving my Q45 around with a banner that says “UNSUSPECTING DRUG DEALER”….haha…
Olive green-toned DC2 on some refinished, cream white old school Volk mesh wheels…
Acura RSX from Royal Origin on some Enkei RPF1…
BB6 Prelude on gold Volk SF-Challenges…
Red EG Civic on some gray SSR Type-X wheels…
EM1 on white Mugen NR…
Michael Mao, who owns the red NSX you’ve all been seeing lately, has a brother who messes around with Hondas too and this is his S2000…
Eddie Diaz’s Acura TSX…
Teddy Timoteo’s Civic on Volk Racing SE37K with a Mugen front lip and ARC rear wing…
DC2 Integra with a R conversion and Work Equip 03s…
Yellow S2000 on some 5Zigen FN-01R wheels…never really been much of a fan of those wheels but they seem to remain pretty popular…bay has the kevlar Password: JDM intake on it…
S200o on BBS LM…
White on white S2000 on Volk TE37s…
Honda CR-Z from Basis sitting on the brand new Spoon Sports CR93 wheel…I’ll be honest, I can’t say I really cared for these wheels, especially considering how iconic the Sw388 is in our community but in person, they don’t look that bad at all. Maybe it’s because the only examples I saw of it previously online were from Spoon and they were either dark blue or that retched yellow they love to use…. Still don’t know if they are worth the money though considering they are just cast aluminum…
Honda CR-Z with a JDP Engineering front lip and carbon grille piece on Volk Racing GT-Ns…
Jerry-built turbo Civic drag car…
Tan Nguyen’s ASM-equipped S2000 with Technocraft bucket seats…Technocraft is a branch of Password: JDM that develops products for more high-end vehicles like Lamborghinis and what not…
He probably doesn’t care too much for whoever his passenger is because his seat is padded and the passenger side is basically just carbon fiber…
Michael Mao’s Acura NSX…
…sitting on some aggressive Volk Racing TE37s…
Bisimoto Engineering’s turbocharged Shuttle…
S2000 with a J’s Racing (or “J’s Racing-style”) front bumper…
4-door Civic on old school Volk Group AVs….
EG 4-door Civic on Work Carving Stark IIs…
Really clean right-hand drive Honda CR-X with Mugen RnRs…
EP3 Civic with a Buddy Club kit on what looks to be MB Battle wheels…
Another clean 4-door Civic, but the owner of this one is faking the funk with some Rota C10 wheels and Mugen MF10L stickers…*tsk* *tsk*….
This Civic also has Mugen MF10Ls, except these are actually legitimate Mugen wheels,..Bay looks decent, would probably look much better if he had a different fuel set-up…this build deserves a thumbs-up because he has a Chronicles sticker on, haha…
EF Civic sedan with a JDM EF2 front end conversion and SSR mesh wheels…really clean 4-door overall, I’m a fan…
Oh man, this Civic looks like something straight out of the early 2000s…That’s not necessarily a bad thing though, especially if you were around back then and saw this style in it’s prime…Stillen front half bumper, shaved door handles and moldings, custom paint, and 17-inch Racing Hart Type-Cs…even has the Racing Hart windshield banner. This is early 2000s-period correct, haha…I wouldn’t be surprised if this is one of those builds that was completed back then and was just left in storage…
Oh I should mention that there was a portion of the Norm Reeves Honda show that was indoors. It’s a car dealership lot so there was a showroom that they made full use of for the event. It helped to have space for everyone when it started to rain outside…
Jimbo’s BB6 Prelude on gold Volk CE28…
A couple shots of DPK JP’s Civic because I’m not sure how much longer he plans to keep this car around…I heard that he was thinking about parting the car out or selling it…It’s been in this state for a couple years now and I don’t think he has much time to re-do the car or even bother to mess with it anymore. It almost makes sense to get rid of it…maybe then he’ll be motivated to try and start another build or something…
The guy that owns this yellow EG Civic is actually one of the car coordinators for the Fast and the Furious movie series…This Civic was actually in the funeral scene after Michelle Rodriguez dies or doesn’t die, or whatever the fuck they plan to do to her character because she’s apparently back in the next movie. I stopped to chat with the dude for a minute and he seems like a nice guy. He told me that they were filming both the 6th and 7th movie at the same time. I wanted to ask him why there weren’t any imports in the movies anymore but I almost feel that it’s better that there aren’t any, haha….keep the heat off of the import crowd, you know? That and a Civic can’t pull a bank safe all over Brazil and survive hundreds of explosions… His Civic is pretty clean though…it has some stuff that I personally wouldn’t do to that car but fuck it, it ain’t my car…The white lettering on the tires is also obnoxiously large. Would have been cleaner if he just highlighted the original logos on the tire…
Jay Borcena’s Acura TL on VIP Modular wheels…This guy has been everywhere lately, haha…popping up in every single event coverage that I do…
Anyways, that’s all for today…back with more tomorrow. There’s just two parts to the coverage so don’t worry about your computer being overloaded with photos…
Thanks for looking…
Autocon 2011 Coverage…Part 4…The Conclusion…
Time to close out the Autocon 2011 coverage with a bang…Today we will be taking a look at the remaining cars of the event. I felt that Autocon was a great success and with a more knowledgeable and more organized staff, it’ll be even better in 2012. With that said, let’s get to the photos…
In case you missed the previous parts, here are the links that will take you them…
If Ly Say with the red TSX owned a Subaru STI, I imagine it would look exactly like this one from Royal Origin because they both share a similar color and wheel set-up…it’s definitely a good look…
Mazda 3 from Royal Origin on Rotiform TMBs…
Another Mazda 3 from Royal Origin, this one with Work Emitz wheels and fender flares…
Gerald Reyes’ Acura Integra on Work Equip 03…
Chivas’ sunburst orange EM1 on Sprint Hart CP-R…
White 2nd gen. IS on Junction Produce Scaras…
Keychain aka Keith from It’s JDM Yo!!! recently got his lip kit on his Accord sedan repainted and the car is looking fresh…
FG2 Civic coupe on Work Equips…
Instant Gentleman S14 coupe with MMR wheels…
Yellow 1st gen. Lexus IS on Rotiform NUE…
Black 2GS with way too much fitment…fenders just look absolutely haggered…fucking terrible looking…Just.Awful…
This LS430 on the other hand, looks exceptionally good…
S13 convertible on some AME Tracers with a gold roll bar and pink steering wheel…
Liked the cement grey tone on this BMW…
Liberty Walk Lamborghini Murcielago from Japan…
Brandon Burke’s slammed and static S13 coupe on SSR Professor SP1…
A pair of Subaru Legacy wagons…
Lloyd Morales’ Vertex-kitted Kouki S14 coupe…
Loved the color combo and the red overall on this Hyundai Genesis…They’re just great looking cars in general just slammed on some wheels…
White on black two-tone Chevy Camaro on Rotiform wheels…
Tjin Edition Ford Explorer….
Tjin Edition Chevy Camaro…
Tjin Edition Chevy Cruz…
Clean BB6 Prelude with gold Volk Racing CE28Ns…
Ranz Motorsports Mazda RX-4 with 2JZ-GE swap and retro-fitted Lexus IS300 dashboard… To read more on this wild RX-4, click here…. or here….
Ranz Motorsports 1st gen. Toyota Celica aka “The Dark Knight” featuring a Honda S2000 F20C powerplant…To read more about this build, click here….
Ernie’s timeless 1st gen. Acura Integra on classic SSR EX-C Neo…
Porsche Panamera representing Heavy Hitters on DPE wheels…
G-Power twin-supercharged yellow BMW M5 on HRE wheels aka “Sabine”…Many non-BMW guys like me don’t know much about this car but there’s actually quite a bit of extensive work done to this thing. Even the rear quarters have been widened but the lines are so subtle, it’s hard to notice…check out the build-thread here, trust me, it’s pretty sick…
Custom widebody BMW M5 by Ranz Motorsports aka “Gunther”….This Lamborghini-white M5 features a catalog of Radenergie parts and wheels and rocks 355-series tires in the rear…nuts…if you want more info on “Gunther”, peep it here…
Chevy Camaro with a Extreme Dimensions kit, Vortech-supercharged on USW forged wheels…didn’t even have to Google shit to figure that out like the Beemers above…haha…
Ryan Deguzman’s FD3S RX-7….
R-Rydes’ custom widebody G35 with Kenstyle aero, Vortech-supercharged, and 21-inch Modsport S1 3-piece forged wheels…
Varis-kitted EVO on AME Tracers…I think this might be the first time I’ve ever been to an event where there was more than one set of AME Tracers…One of the most slept on wheels EVER…
No idea who this is but I was more concerned with what the dude behind her was up to…just mildly creepy looking, that’s all…
FC3S RX-7 from the crew “Nuisance”…they were parked to some other crew that called themselves “Aminorannoyance”…
I really wanted to get a closer look at this EVO since it looked like it had a nice collection of parts on it, but I couldn’t get close enough since all the cars in this section were invading eachother’s personal space…
After Jamarri Whiteside from Auto Concept Elite defeated the Chrysler 300Camaro at “Ye Old Hot Import Nights in LA Conventionshire”, a new challenger appeared for the next duel, in the mystical purple form of a Chevy Malibu with a Cadillac CTS-V front end…The epic battle was Swift and Elite….in the end, I have no idea who won because it was cold as shit and I left early…
JonJon’s supercharged VIP IS350 on WED’s Kranze Vishunu…
One more shot of Michael Mao’s Acura NSX on TE37s…
…as well as another shot of Wilson’s Carlsson E-Class Benz on BBS wheels…
A couple more of Big Mike’s Prelude and its new look…
Andrew Lim’s beautifully-built Toyota Supra on DPE wheels…
Gonna close out the Autocon 2011 coverage with a shot of Alisa Ali Marie posing next to Andrew’s gold Supra…
Well, that’s about it…4 parts, over 200 photos,…it doesn’t get any more in-depth than that…Hope you guys enjoyed it… Thanks for looking. Make sure to check out the previous three parts if you missed them…
Autocon 2011 Coverage…Part 3…
Back now with part 3 of the ongoing Autocon 2011 coverage…today, our focus will be turned away from all the randomness and girls at the event and directed more towards the cars of Autocon. As I stated in part 2, this was the point of time during the show when I finally got up off my ass and decided to cover the cars. The sun was blazing throughout they day so I felt it would be best that I waited until it started to set before doing car coverage. The photos today will reflect that and you’ll see the drastic change in the time of day compared to the previous two posts… I tried to get everything that caught my eye but obviously I missed some cars. It’s virtually impossible for me to get every single car there. Main reason being I don’t like certain cars, haha. If I missed you though, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I don’t enjoy your build…I might have just missed it or at that time you and your friends were standing there talking and didn’t get out of the way for the shot…I don’t know…I had a very limited amount of time to cover all the cars so if I didn’t have the opportunity to get a good shot, I wouldn’t have tried to take one. It’s simple as that. Please don’t post up asking if I got a shot of your car or not, that’s just embarrassing…If you don’t see it here, I didn’t get it… Anyways, let’s move on with the photos…
Let’s open it up with a couple shots of some vehicles from the crew “Royal Flush”…
Royal Flush’s LS400 on some very aggressive Leon Hardiritt Ordens…
The rears are a little too aggressive for my taste but it’s cool to see that he’s getting the most use out of his tires by flipping them…
Turbocharged EK Civic from Royal Flush with a Civic Domani/Isuzu Gemini front end conversion and BBS wheels…
2GS from the same crew on some deep dish Euroline wheels…
G50 Infiniti Q45 from Supastar with Nissan President conversion…
This LS400 belongs to a guy known as “Turbo Tim”…the rear AME Shallen AXs were actually once my front set that I traded away to him for his fronts since he thought they were too aggressive for his LS…
Oh, I can’t believe I forgot to post this up in last night’s coverage. I think I was too busy looking up one of the girl’s names or something for the post and accidentally skipped this. I understand that there are a lot of girls out there that are trying to be import models and what not, but seriously…there are some that just shouldn’t. I feel like an asshole for having to post up this photo, but I wanted to be honest with you guys and show you some of the girls that well, aren’t that “camera-friendly”….
Hmm…Yeah, I don’t know…I’m gonna leave this alone and just let the photo speak for itself…Another strange thing about this section of the model lounge was that there was a little boy handing out flyers for her and her friends. I hope it wasn’t her son or something…
Moving on…
Milt’s 350Z from Low n Slow on Garson Deep Racing wheels…
Infiniti G35 on some SSR MS1 wheels…
3rd-generation Toyota Celica with a 1JZ swap I believe…I couldn’t really tell because there was a pow-wow going on in front of the car…
Jay Borcena’s Acura TL on VIP Modular wheels from Team Praxis…
Linda’s Matrix also on VIP Modular wheels, also from Team Praxis…
2GS with what looks to be a Job Design aero kit and VIP Modular wheels…
F50 Q45/Cima with, you guessed it….VIP Modular wheels…
White Nissan 370Z with Amuse kit and Venaci? wheels..
I was wondering what was casting a shadow on some of my photos and then I turned around and saw the doors on this 300ZX…
Well-built AE86 with ITBs and RS Watanabe wheels…
Teddy’s white EK now minus the First Molding front lip…
Mark’s 4-door DB8 Integra….I like this car on the black 949Racing wheels he usually has on them…I LOVE the polished CP-Rs on this car. It changes the whole look of the car…
Saw this RSX drive by us during roll-in in the morning…not a bad looking car, but there’s definitely a lot going on…
Corolla wagon on some old school Advan Racing wheels…
Hyundai Genesis on some gold Enkei RPF1…
3-Series BMW coupe on some Work Brombacher wheels…
My old buddy David Nguyen’s GS400…You newer kids probably don’t know him but he used to have a silver widebody MR-2 on Blitz wheels back in the day…
…a lot like this one because they were both TRD widebody kits and neither had a rear wing…Day 622, wing status: Uncertain….
350Z from Royal Origin…I’ve never known cream-colored wheels to work with a silver car, but some people like their cucumbers pickled…wait, what?….
This color combo works really well though…red on bronze wheels and gloss black faces…
BB6 Prelude on Work Equip wheels…
Absolutely loved this track-ready BMW 335i sedan…license plate even says “BRN2TRK”…
I’m also a huge fan of this Nimbus Grey BMW on custom bronze finish BBS LMs…beautiful…
Mini Cooper from Auto Concept Elite…
Hot pink/magenta Infiniti G35 coupe from Import Fashion on gold-faced Leon Hardiritt Ordens…
Widebody R35 GT-R that you guys should all be pretty familiar with by now from Auto Concept Elite….
Jamarri Whiteside’s award-winning Subaru STI back to it’s usual half flying stance…
Jose Romo’s Audi A3 from 1UP…
Everyone that feels out of place at this show please raise their hands!!…
Hammered Lexus SC300 parked next to cars that were about to take flight…
VIPStylecars member “Blitz”s Q45 is turning out to be one of my favorite overall builds of the year…
I also really like this IS on SSR Professor SP1 wheels…I’ve always like the fact how the GS and IS can pull off that sport and VIP look simultaneously…On this car, it’s executed just right…
Behind this flag pole is actually a very nice Lexus GS400…
Good execution of VIP novelty items inside the GS…
The trunk also looks good with the wood floors…
BMW F10 535i with End.CC front carbon lip and rear diffuser…Wheels are BBS LM-R…It’s hard to see in this photo but it also has a custom yellow Brembo GT brake kit…
Right next to it was a 335i on Advan TCIIs…
Gonna cut it off here today with this clean Mazda MX-5 Miata on what I hope are legit, real deal, Hayashi Streets…Even if not, it made for a nice photo…sunflare and everything is legit too…haha…
Alright, back with the final conclusion of Autocon 2011 coverage tomorrow…hopefully…
Autocon 2011 Coverage…Part 2….
Back now with part 2 of the Autocon 2011 coverage….today will be slightly different in that I plan to run more photos today than in part 1. I was in a bit of a rush yesterday so I didn’t get to put as many photos up as I planned but I’m about 95% finished with all the photos from the event and I have a better idea of how many I need to toss up per day to keep the different parts divided proportionally. The first half of it will continue to be like it was yesterday though and consist of random stuff that I observed during the day. I was hanging out at the booth with May and a couple others for a huge chunk of the day at Autocon 2011 and I didn’t plan on shooting until later on in the day. Reasoning behind this is because the sun was casting such a harsh light on the cars the whole day and everything would just look blown out in the coverage. Photos look better towards the end of the day when the sun is coming down anyway so if you’re looking for your car here, wait towards the end or wait until the following posts come. You’ll know when a majority of the car coverage is coming, believe me… Now, on with the photos from the first half of the day…
BEST. OPENING. PHOTO. EVER…Haha…while Autocon did feature some very well-built cars of all makes and models, there were a couple of these that were floating around…I mean, I’m not saying that “MUFASA 8″ is not built with the best of intentions and to the highest caliber, but it just doesn’t fit the style of the show, I guess you can say. The CR-X leaves a little bit more to be desired…especially considering the idea that the owner might be trying to fix his “Lambo” door and prevent it from slowly sliding downward and closing on it’s own…It’s just really odd to see him pull up with these other Dodge Chargers and what not…haha. It even had a Batman theme and the owner was wearing a Batman shirt… Imagine if every car had doors like this, Everybody would be opening their doors into each other and all their door dings would be on the bottom of the door, haha. That and if you tried to close your door at the same time as the guy next to you, the doors would like, scissor into each other and get stuck…
The only thing that’s really comparable to Batman is that they share similar facial expressions in this photo….haha…
Hot pink/magenta Infiniti G35 on gold-plated Leon Hardiritt Ordens from Import Fashion…
It’s JDM Yo!! had stacks on stacks on stacks of NOS Energy drinks to distribute, free of charge, to everyone at Autocon 2011…There were only two flavors available and not surprisingly, people complained about getting free shit and demanding other flavors…“Do you have the sugar free one?” No motherfucker, I don’t even know what flavors these are. I got purple and I got green, pick one. What do they taste like? Umm, it fucking taste purple and the other one tastes like GREEN…
Bryant Nguyen’s Acura TSX on SSR Professor SP3….
A pair of matching M3s on CCWs…
Really liked this yellow FD3s on bronze Volk Racing TE37s…Random but the owner that drives that Nissan Sentra next to him calls himself “The King”…He is the king of Nissan Sentras.
Mildly lowered Audi A3 on BBS CK wheels…sarcastic comment is sarcastic…
This MK2 VW Golf GTI had to be one of my favorite builds at Autocon 2011…I love the simplicity of it, the color, and the old school BBS mesh wheels…Also like the way he colored in the Falken logo on the tire. Great attention to minor details…
This isn’t supposed to be “Tiffany Blue” right?… Nicely assembled xB, I’m a fan, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken multiple photos of it…
A shot of JonJon’s WED’s Kranze Vishunu and his neo-chrome Endless brake calipers…
JonJon’s wheel invading his wheel well’s personal space…
What’s up copyright infringement? I actually attempted to go on “Hellaflushstuff.com” to see what it was all about and it wasn’t even a functioning site…that and this chick was lookin at me like I was crazy…Apparently when you’re hellaflushstuff, it means you need to have a Jumpman-style logo but the bitch ain’t dunking shit…She’s just flying through the air spread eagle…
Models from the model lounge section next to us were busy grabbing NOS drinks all day to give out to perverts…Somebody should tell this girl that she has a plexiglass sign with “It’s JDM Yo!!” stickers stuck to her head…
I was about to message Tony on Facebook to find out the name of this model for this caption, but when I got to his page, I saw her posting on his wall…Her name is Trinity Dang….I now know the purpose of Facebook…
My favorite Mercedes Benz from the SEMA 2011 show ended up coming down all the way from Norcal for this event and it ended up parking with us as well…I love everything about this build…
Big Mike, his beard, and Neil Tjin took a moment to exchange pleasantries….Meanwhile, horrified Batman can be heard screaming in the background: “They have an educational website about Urinary Tract Infections?!!”…
Big Mike’s new look featuring his Chargespeed front lip…We had a discussion about whether or not he should modify his bumpers in a way to delete the front turn signals and leave just an opening there…I said he shouldn’t but he seems pretty keen on the idea…
I am happy to see that he paint-matched his valve cover though…I normally don’t like color-matched valve covers, but in this case, it works…I don’t always drink beer either, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis…
Nitty Beat walking by the booth after grabbing some food from the food trucks outside…I’m sure that’s the same face he made later that night when he went home to SD to take a massive food truck dump…
The adult in me thinks that smoking is bad for you…the kid in me thinks that it’s funny that the tattoo on her arm says “Wang”…haha…her name is actually “Lily Zenna Wang” so the tat makes sense. I’m just giving her a shitty time because she didn’t have very nice things to say about the model lounge that Tony and crew set-up all morning and almost seemed demanding…
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to take a photo of Julie Mai at Autocon, but I did catch her tying this kid’s shoelace, which I and everyone around thought was pretty cool…it was cool until I seen this kid walking around to like 3-4 different models and getting them to tie his shoes…The dudes that this kid was with were walking around using him as a baiting chip to get girls to go over to their cars to take pictures…stay classy car enthusiast!..
OHH….are you guys ready to see Amy Fay like you’ve NEVER seen her before on the internet???? Well peep game…
Get ready because this is one of those rare, once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunities…
Here is the back of Amy Fay’s head. She’s on the right by the way…haha. Amy Fay was at the It’s JDM Yo!! booth with her signed posters and what not and she received quite the reception when she arrived… Guys were coming over left and right to take pictures of her. I am probably in a majority of them. I went to go get food at the Dogzilla food truck and when I got back, everyone was trying to get a picture of her. I on the other hand, wanted to enjoy my food so I just ate at the table behind her…So if you are looking at photos of her and you see an attractive asian dude eating a hot dog in the background, it’s me…
Another shot of Lily Zenna Wang…
Man, Autocon 2011 brought out a fine crop of creepy fucking perverts….This little guy was posted up in front of the model lounge area exactly how you see him in this photo for a good 20 minutes. He was doing his creepy thing and peeking over the table at the models and made the models super uncomfortable… Eventually, one of the models got so creeped out that she called one of the security guys to come over and they made him leave. He didn’t though and just stood up, walked to the other side of the lounge and stared at the girls some more…
On a lighter note, here’s some photos of Ela Pasion…
Here’s the same creepy pervert taking a picture with Ela…
Titla McBoob was in the house…good to see she’s getting work consistently at different events. I think she’s been at almost every major event this year…
Ms. Holly Lee doing her thing and who also later won the Autocon 2011 Spokesmodel Search Award…
Cara Skye, who I committed an epic photo bomb on at HIN, chuckin the deuce up for me in this photo…
Big Mike chatting with Robert Chew from Falken Tire and his girlfriend Yuri…Robert did not want to be photographed, haha…
Norman and Sloppy from AS1…
DPK David and Preston Dawson from Function&Form Autolife…
Pretty fucking random shot of Jamarri Whiteside’s purple SSR Professor SP3 wheel…Didn’t know it had stickers on the lip….
Gabby Jeanne modeling for Auto Concept Elite…
I liked this shot of DPK David’s front wheel…
…also liked his new Skunk2 low-profile valve cover hardware…
Christine Vu liked it so much she ripped the bottom half of her shirt off…
Thanks to Sunny from Franklin Autobody for providing heel-safe paint…
At this point, I hung out at the booth for a while and put my camera away. Maybe an hour or so passed when the sun was about to set and that’s when I set out on a mission to walk the entire show and get as many cars that caught my eye as I possibly could. It was a race against the sun but I’m happy with how the photos came out…
Bryant Nguyen’s Acura TSX once again, on SSR Professor SP3s….
Ly Say’s beautifully done Acura TSX on Work Meister S1Rs….
Lexus 2GS on some newly released Work VS-MS wheels…
Christian Ruvalcaba’s “El Smurf” Civic coupe…I didn’t name it that…
Jackson Wong from DTM Autobody’s S2000 on black Enkei PF01…
1GS from Platinum VIP with a Job Design kit that was originally meant for a Lexus LS I believe…
Love this LS430 on WED’s Kranze Bazreias…
Celica that came up all the way from Mexico…It has nothing to do with what geographic location he’s from but I don’t believe those are real Work Meister S1s…
370Z with Powerhouse Amuse kit from Ar-Kan…
Preston Olson’s 350Z on VIP Modular wheels…
Autofashion USA’s new 2GS project car…coming along nicely…
Scion tC also reppin’ Autofashion USA, on Leon Hardiritt Ordens…
It’s nice to see M45s done up nicely with proper wheel fitment…
Big Steve had his LS400 teleported from his mansion in Dubai to represent at Autocon 2011…this would have been a better photo if his camel wasn’t casting a shadow on his car…
Another 2GS, this one on polished Ordens…
Many of you probably don’t know or care, but I sold my AME Shallen AX wheels a couple months back and they ended up on this 3GS…looks good and I want to say I miss these wheels, but I haven’t even put my new wheels on yet so I’m not sure if I even like them, haha…
Closing it out for today with this Dodge Challenger, designed, built, and owned by none other than Jon Sibal…check out his blog here since I still get consistent hits from his site to this very day…We have a lot in common. He’s a artist like me…the only difference is that he’s actually good at what he does and gets paid for it, while I’m busy occupying my time by having delusions of grandeur…
That’s all for today…back with more tomorrow…now off to Rywire to gawk at his Integra…
Autocon 2011 Coverage…Part 1….
Damn…I took a lot of photos at this event. I’d hope to be done going through all of them by now but there’s still a gigantic chunk of it in my memory card that I have yet to touch. I know many of you have come on here the last couple days since the event to see coverage so let’s just go ahead and kick it off today. I’m going into this not really knowing how many parts there will be, but it’ll definitely be more than just 2-3 parts. How I ended up taking that many photos I don’t know, but I think I did a pretty good job of covering the event. Obviously there is some stuff I missed but seeing as how I had a booth at this show, I think you will get a pretty good idea of how this show was…
Now my thoughts on the event…Hmm…I know many of you have already heard about the lack of organization and how the roll-in process was anything less than “hassle-free”. It probably was, I don’t really know because I got there early and set-up right away. A lot of people came by to the booth and brought it up to me, probably in hopes that I would mention it when I posted up the coverage. For all intents and purposes, shit, I have to say right now that it was a great event. I didn’t go last year because I made other plans, but I don’t think missing out on the 2010 Autocon show had any effect on how I felt about this year’s. Foot traffic was great, there was a diverse crowd of cars,…I don’t know, it looked to me as if it went well. If this was an event that I was putting on I’d be pretty happy with it. Okay, roll-in was probably a pain and I did notice how it was kind of unorganized, but you almost have to expect it with guys that are fairly new to putting on events like these. It was definitely under-staffed, but that can be alleviated pretty easily by just hiring more people. Organization just comes with better planning, and as time progresses, I think Justin Fong and staff will get better at it with time. It’s okay to bitch about it as long as you understand that it’s not something that can’t be fixed. I had a good time and it seemed as if everyone else did too.
There were some pretty beat ass looking cars that I don’t think should have been there but I don’t believe there was a screening process so it’s not like you can prevent people from PAYING YOU to show up, you know what I mean? Autocon is off to a good start….will it continue to get better? I would certainly hope so. Will they ever be as big as Wekfest and the other top tier shows of this current generation? Ehh, I don’t know if I want that to happen. I’m cool with the success and all but isn’t this show designed to be for a good cause? Justin originally put on this event as a simultaneously running toy drive. People bring in toys and gifts for children that are less fortunate during the holiday season. If this does turn into a major event, do they just continue to do toy drives at every location they go to, even if it’s not during the holidays? And if they don’t do they just move on as a major car show, leaving behind the original intent of the show itself? It’s kind of a grey area… I mean, if they abandon the whole Toys for Tots things, it would seem as if they used it as a stepping stone to move on and expand the Autocon name, and that doesn’t seem right at all…I don’t know….For now, I think we should all just be happy that this event was a success and everyone there enjoyed it. I also liked the idea of having all the food trucks outside the whole day. That I know for sure took some careful planning and it helped that people didn’t have to be there all day without food or eating some crappy, dry, convention center food…
Anyways, let’s move onto the coverage. Today we will be taking a look at the roll-in early that Saturday. I wouldn’t know about how painful roll-in was because I got there early and went in with It’s JDM Yo!!! Tony. If anything, if it was pain-free for me because I didn’t have to wait long and I took the spare time I had and shot photos…There are a lot of random photos mixed in with the cars because I had a booth and I tried not to leave it after it was set-up. Everything that you are seeing in the first couple parts are just things that happened around me and stuff I could capture from a distance….Enjoy… If you don’t like it, go log onto some other blog where they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and have no comprehension of sentence structure…
We rolled out early in the morning and got there around 7:30am. I had no idea where It’s JDM Yo!! Tony was so I just pulled my camera out and started shooting until he came and got us…This yellow BMW M5 on HREs was one of the first cars I spotted…
First generation Toyota Celica waiting in line to roll-in…
You can see here how the R35 GT-R dwarfs the original Mini Cooper….
Evo X on CCW Classics…
I’m a big fan of the Powerhouse Amuse kit on the 370Zs…I liked how this owner added the black on the sideskirts to add some contrast and also to match the black lines of the front…
BMW E46 M3 on CCW Classics…I’m not gonna lie, Autocon 2011 was probably the only show other than Import Alliance this year where I saw this many sets of CCWs…Most of them were found on BMWs too, which was really interesting because I never thought CCWs were that popular in the BMW community….
Big Mike used Autocon 2011 as a platform to officially debut his new look…You haven’t seen his car at various meets/shows lately because he’s been busy getting his Chargespeed lip molded to his front bumper, color-matching his mirrors, and getting his wheels powdercoated a high gloss black…
I eventually found Tony…he was busy going over the floorplan with one of the Autocon staffers with Freddie from Autofashion and we rolled into the venue soon-after…
Once we got inside, we waited to see where they wanted our booths to be set-up so I continued shooting…
Ryan Deguzman’s FD3s RX-7 cruising in…
DPK David posted up next to my crappy 4Runner…
The guns and DTA theme I get…what I don’t understand is why you would put crappy Varrstoen wheels on a Porsche…and I don’t really give a shit about the sponsorship argument either…
Buddy Club Honda Fit show/sometimes track car…
Andrew Lim’s DPE S20 wheels on his gold Toyota Supra…
Matte red BMW 5-series wagon from VIP Modular wheels…
S2000 on teal BBS LMs…
TSX on mag blue Volk Racing RE30s…
Another shot of the BMW wagon next to Team Praxis Jimmy’s FJ Cruiser…
Nimbus Grey BMW on custom bronze BBS LM…
We checked the weather forecast early that morning before we left and it showed that it was going to be a pretty cold day… May was all dressed in her winter gear but then we arrived to the venue and the sun started to beat down and it was actually getting pretty warm…
VIP Y34 Infiniti M45…
Another shot of the M3 on Classics…the one parked directly next to it looked almost identical to this one…
Stanced-out DB Integra on some black steel wheels…
Ly Say’s Acura TSX on Work S1R…
Jamarri Whiteside’s award-winning Subaru STI from Auto Concept Elite… This build just won “Best of Show” at Hot Import Nights just a week prior to Autocon 2011…
Auto Concept Elite’s ENEOS-themed widebody R35 GT-R…
Big Mike’s Scion xB…haha…just playing, but they share a similar tone…
Justin and Autocon had advertised that there were free hot-air balloon rides that day and sure enough, there was…
Man, I fucking loved this Toyota Tundra on Volk TE37s…That truck couldn’t look any better…
Scion xB on air and BBS wheels…
Big Mike prepping his Prelude…
Slammed Lexus SC300 from Royal Origin (I think…)….
Chivas rolled out from Vegas with his orange EM1…I just recently finished a story on this coupe for a future Honda Tuning feature so keep an eye out for that…
Gerald’s DC2 Integra on Work Equip 03s….also from Las Vegas…
DPK David all set-up and ready for the show…
JonJon was still busy prepping his IS300…
Step-lipped multi-piece Mugen M7s…
Jamarri Whiteside cleaning the door jams on his STI…check out the door panels on this thing…
Gonna close it out today with a couple shots of Michael Mao’s Acura NSX on aggressive Volk TE37s…
Back with much more tomorrow!! Gotta run for now…
Thanks for looking…
Hot Import Nights 2011 Coverage…Part 3 of 3…
Time to close out the 2011 Hot Import Nights coverage, brought to you by the one and only stickydiljoe.com….
By this time, the show was about to begin and a majority of the lights were turned off so spectators could be blinded by strobe lights and camera flashes. It was probably around 3:30pm at this point and all the exhibitors were finishing up their displays and the models were strolling into the model showcase area. Today we will be taking a look at the final car shots I took, and the rest are either of models or random things that I saw while I was walking around. I spent a majority of the time just hanging out inside the It’s JDM Yo!!! booth but there were spurts when I got bored and walked around to see what sort of debauchery was happening. I went to the show super early to avoid the crowd and shoot, but my original plan was to leave around 6:30-7pm to pick up May from the airport. She had flown out to Dallas, TX for work and her flight was supposed to come in before 8. I found out later that evening that her flight was delayed in Phoenix so I stayed at the show much longer than I anticipated. There was no point in going home because the LA Convention Center was pretty close to the airport, so I just stuck around. I think I ended up staying until around 9:30 or so. I got there at 2:30 that day so being at HIN for 7 hours was more than enough for me. By the time I left I lost hearing in one ear and had no idea where I had parked earlier in the day. The back exit was closed off so I walked out of the front gate, got lost for another 30 minutes, and eventually stumbled upon my parking spot. Anyways, on with the photos…
I don’t know if you guys are viewing these photos from your work and I don’t know how strict your work is about this stuff, but there are some photos at the end of women that are scantily-clad. I’ll warn you guys one more time before I start rolling out those photos but you’ve been warned, haha…
Now let’s move forth with photos…
I love everything about Ryan Deguzman’s ’93 FD3S RX-7…From the paint to the wheels, engine bay, audio, and everything, it’s executed to perfection…
Every time I see that yellow FD, I know that Ka Wong’s AE86 Corolla isn’t too far behind. These guys are always parked together at events so I knew Ka’s Corolla is only a couple steps away…His 86 is definitely one of my favorite builds of all time. It’s just so well done with great attention to even the smallest of details…
Ka Wong saw me passing by so he walked over to say what’s up to me. He asked me if I had a chance to check out his new audio set-up and walked me over to the rear hatch of his Corolla. I don’t know why I didn’t notice that his trunk was open when I was getting a shot of the exterior before. He didn’t have audio before so it should have clicked right away in my brain that he probably had something new. As you can see above, the audio set-up flows very well with the rest of the car and isn’t wild with all kinds of fiberglass everywhere. The custom enclosure still follows the straight lines of the older Hachi-Roku…Well done sir…
Flared-out TSX with Mugen front bumper and SSR Professor SP1s in SBC finish…
Another shot of this clean FC3s that I posted up in part one of the HIN 2011 coverage. Great looking build overall, very simple, and everything follows his two-tone white/black theme. The interesting thing about it is the engine bay though…
…because the owner decided to paint the bay purple. There could be a possibility that this car may have been originally this color, but it’s unlikely since the paint looks pretty clean in the bay like it had been re-sprayed. It’s definitely not a bad look but cause he has other purple accents in the bay to match but if I didn’t tell you that this was the engine bay of the FC above, you would almost think that it was a different car altogether. Execution is impressive though, regardless of the purple bay….I’m a fan…Especially considering all the junk-ass cars that were at HIN, this one was one of the cleanest by far…
Yellow widebody EVO X posted up next to some random Dubbed-out Escalade…
I found two things interesting about this EVO X….one, being the random pube near the bottom of the gas door, and two, the AeroCatch hood pin on the gas door itself…I’ve never seen one of these used on a gas lid so I’m lead to believe that it’s there because maybe the lid doesn’t latch anymore after the widebody was done. My initial thought was that it’s used to lock the door but there’s no lock on the AeroCatch unit itself so it couldn’t be that….Maybe the owner lives in the bad area where they steal gas or something, haha, I don’t know…the combination of the hood pin and the lone pube serves as a deterrent to gas thieves…
This Scion xA should have come with an epileptic seizure warning sign but it made for some cool photos…
S2000 on white Work VS-XX…
Junction Produce LS430 from BP VIP…
GS430 also from BP….
Austin aka Amoney47′s Y33 Q45 on VIP Modular wheels…
BB6 Prelude on some step-lipped Work Equip wheels… I can’t wait to get my Equips back and throw them on my car…
Karl’s EM2 Civic on CCWs posted at the Fatlace showcase area…
Jon Jon’s IS350 that served as the booth display vehicle for It’s JDM Yo!!!…His feature in Performance Auto Sound magazine just dropped this month so make sure to pick that up and check out this build…
Oh this was fucking random as hell. I was staring at this Scion tC on 26′s or whatever with the Tjin brothers and we spotted this female half-torso thing sitting under the chassis…Crazy but a cool idea I guess, haha. I like how dude hold mirrors everywhere just so you could see all the random things going on under the car…
This was my view for the majority of the evening. Natalia Marie hadn’t shown up yet so we just hung out at the booth… Here you can see Keith and Gilbert from It’s JDM Yo!!! soaking up the club-like ambiance of HIN 2011…Tony had a pretty elaborate display for his booth. He brought out lighting and everything as you can see from this photo…The booth was very well-lit throughout the night so many were probably left wondering why there was a bunch of dudes sitting in a booth meant for models….
Okay, so this is the point in the coverage that may or may not be “safe for work” for you guys. I don’t know what you guys do for a living but if it’s not okay to look at scantily-clad women at your job, you should probably close this browser now and resume viewing when you get home…
You’ve been warned…
I really have absolutely no idea who a majority of these girls are, but thanks to Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!! and the Autocon 2011 model line-up, I was able to match up a lot of faces to names. If I for whatever reason get your name wrong, it’s probably because I don’t know who you are…Ready?…
Stacie Li…
Michelle Sanchez modeling for Fatlace….
Holly Lee and Tracy Linh…
Lily Wang…
Raquel Estrella…
I am unsure of her name but she was a part of the Capistran swimsuit showcase…
Brian Filoteo from Auto Concept Elite with his fancy purse…
Sherry Tee…
Cara Skye modeling for Auto Concept Elite…
Veronica LaVery…looking angry and then slightly less angry…
Another shot of Michelle Sanchez after Yogi from Fatlace hooked me up with some stickers…
Big Mike and Sloppy…
Neil Tjin showing his mechanical prowess by not being able to remove spark plugs from a display cylinder head in the UTI booth…
Ali Marie with a hoodie of herself…
A little while later, Natalia Marie showed up at the It’s JDM Yo!!! booth and the whole outlook of the booth changed. Before, it was just us hanging out there looking all sad and shit and after Natalia showed up, the booth was crackin’ with all kinds of pervos…
Emerging from the darkness of HIN was the creepiest perv of all… Do you guys remember this photo, where I snapped this shot of an old man doing a jerking motion to good ol’ Titla McBoob?…I guess he is quite the import model/asian girl fanatic and attends all these shows to spread his creepiness…I shall call him…. “Old Man McJerkin”….There was one very distinct difference at HIN that I noticed right away when the models starting showing up. You have your car enthusiasts, and then you have the dudes that follow the import models everywhere they go and are not into cars whatsoever…
Old Man McJerkin’ doing the thumb-up stroke while posing with Natalia Marie…
Ela Pasion and Nikita Penalosa came by to say hi to Tony…
This photo was not conveniently cropped…
Another shot of Stacie Li…
Oh these are cool…. If you guys have an iPhone 4/4S, make sure to head over to the It’s JDM Yo!!! storefront to pick up one of these cases featuring some of your favorite models. What was really nice of Tony to do was to include The Chronicles logo on the cases that feature images that I shot for them. So if you grab one of these, not only are you supporting It’s JDM Yo!! and the models, but also showing your support for The Chronicles… peep them here and buy a couple, they make great stocking stuffers…
By this time, it was already 9pm or so and I had to pack up and take off to the airport to pick up May. The show was still pretty busy and there was a line to enter as I left…
Before I took off, I made sure to get a shot of Natalia Marie at the booth…She’s a cool chick. During some moments when it wasn’t stupid crowded at the booth, she was talking to all of us about her previous car show experiences as well as stuff that was going on with her regular everyday life. Very down to Earth girl and it was cool that she was there to help Tony out…
Natalia Marie noticed the over-usage of new import models that were trying to dress like Lady Gaga and it infuriated her, so she Hulked out and started smashing shit. I wanted no part of it, so I left…
That’s a wrap on HIN 2011. It was an interesting experience no doubt, would I go every year? Ehhh…
Thanks for looking…
Hot Import Nights 2011 Coverage…Part 2…
Back now with the second of a total of three parts of HIN 2011 coverage. I’m happy that everyone enjoyed the first part so much, judging by the comments as well as feedback from Facebook.com. I almost feel sort of bad today because I didn’t expect part one to be as popular as it was from a comedic standpoint. I actually took the time to take photos of the cars and this second portion will cover mostly cars themselves and not so much of the horrible builds that floated around at the show. There wasn’t anything new per se, but there were a couple of cars there that I hadn’t seen before. I just shot what I could in the time allotted to me before the gates opened and people starting coming inside the convention center. It’s definitely not as funny as the first part, but eh, you take what you can get…haha. Enjoy the photos and part 3 will cover more of the girls and extra stuff that was going on when the show was actually happening…
I got back to the Los Angeles Convention Center about 2:10pm that Saturday and met up with Tony at his booth. The show wasn’t set to open to the public until around 4pm so it gave me plenty of time to shoot and walk around without being disturbed. An hour into me doing coverage though, they made an announcement over the PA system that said that we all had to move our cars outside because parking wasn’t permitted on the dock unless we had a dock pass. I didn’t want to risk getting ticketed so I walked back outside to move my 4Runner to the normal convention center parking structure. I swear, in all my time living in Los Angeles, I never had any idea that we actually had hockey fans until I drove out of the Convention Center that day. Apparently, the LA Kings have a pretty big fan base because a hockey game was going on that day and the street was just flooded with Kings fans, it was crazy. I mean, for all that LA has to offer, hockey is definitely not the first thing you think of when you think of LA sports. There isn’t even a football time out here and you would imagine that there are more football fans here than hockey fans. Anyways, after the whole melee of having to get around the Kings fans, I eventually got back into the Convention Center and paid my $12 for parking. I ended up being pretty far away from the hall that I was supposed to be at but luckily there was a Convention Center employee driving by in a golf cart and he picked me up and drove me back to the show, which was really cool of him. I walked back in and here is where the coverage picks up..
The first set of cars I wanted to go take another look at after checking out roll-in the night before was this group of Miatas. There were a couple that I had my eye on to do a story on for the magazines I work for so I wanted to go find the owners. They hadn’t returned yet so I snapped this group shot of them and moved on…
Another car that I wanted to make sure to go back and see was this S13 coupe. It really caught my eye the night before and I also wanted to see if the owner was interested in possibly getting a story done on it. He wasn’t back yet either so I took a couple moments to just get a closer look at the car. It’s very simple outside so I wanted to see if I could catch some details that I missed…
The funniest comment I saw on Facebook when MayDay Garage reposted this photo was some guy saying that this photo “had to be fake, because 240s aren’t this clean”…haha…it’s not really that funny, I’ll admit, but sadly, it’s kind of true. Very every clean, well-built 240 out there, there’s about 10 others that are trashed, drift-wannabes…
The wheel most-often mistaken as the Work Meister S1….SSR Professor SP1…
Something about seeing a Rolls Royce Phantom with a VIS Racing windshield banner seems completely fucking odd to me…
A Lamborghini Murcielago LP640, also with a VIS Racing banner…
Jose Romo’s Audi A3…
Subaru STI from 1UP on Advan wheels…
I spotted a booth from that looked like they were offering knob flossing services so I rushed over, but I did not get my knob flossed and in the process I saw this wild widebody RX-7…
STI with a Voltex aero kit and white Volk Racing RE30s…
Day 617: Still no rear wing piece in sight…. Haha, I love how this MR-2 looks but damn, get that missing piece fabricated at a metal shop or something!…
White on white S2000 with CR front lip and BBS LMs….
Every time I walked by this Supra, I thought it looked kinda cool but every time I took a photo of it, something just seemed odd about it…
Bright green “Amuse” widebody S2000 from DTM Autobody…
Mazda RX-4(?) drag car…another car you probably didn’t see because it was in a dark corner of HIN…
Charles from 1UP’s widebody S2000, now wrapped in red…
Mastermind’s Spirit Rei LS7-swapped S13 Nissan 240SX…
Michael Mao’s Acura NSX on aggressive Volk Racing TE37s…
Accord coupe on AME Tracer FS-01s from Norcal…
Another shot of the BMW M3 from part 1…
K-swapped Mini Cooper from Auto Concept Elite…
I didn’t stay until the end but I believe this Subaru from Auto Concept Elite won “Best of Show” at HIN 2011…
I never really liked the color scheme on this G35 but it shouldn’t take away from the fact that there is quite a bit of extensive modification on this thing…The engine bay was pretty sick…
350Z with JGTC-inspired aero from Auto Concept Elite. You can see here how they weren’t finished setting up yet because it still had the raw Top Secret hood on it…
EVO X from Auto Concept Elite on Wedsport SA55M…
Ben Abutin’s 1993 FD3S RX-7, also from Auto Concept Elite…
My boy Billy Shea’s 2JZ-swapped IS300 sans HKS livery…Billy is kind of over the whole car show scene now but still represents for Auto Concept…
Top Secret GT300-kitted Toyota Supra, again, from Auto Concept Elite. I believe they ended up winning a majority of the awards that night and with good reason…
Another shot of the widebody R35 GT-R…
This Audi wagon from VIP Modular wheels ended up winning “1st Place Best Static Drop” at HIN 2011….surprised they actually updated their awards categories…
This matte red BMW 5-Series wagon from VIP Modular took home the award later in the evening for “1st Place BMW Class”…
Slammed Z33 also representing VIP Modular wheels…
Tjin Edition Chevy Cruz…trunk probably still stuffed full of shit from SEMA…
Tjin Edition Camaro…
Tjin Edition Ford Mustang convertible…
Tjin Edition 2012 Honda Civic SI 4-door…
Tjin Edition Ford Explorer…
I just love the way these Cadillac CTS-V coupes look…some day in a different life time, I will own one…
Evo VIII race car with wheels so bright that it probably lit up most of the show that night….
Cody’s Miata…
I liked this S13 hatchback…For the most part, everything looked good on it except for the carbon fiber wrap-like substance on the bottom of it…I almost think that it would look better without the S13 coupe front end and just had the OEM 180SX Type-X aero….
The fenders and Work S1R wheels looked good though…
Lexus 1GS from Platinum VIP…
This LS from Platinum VIP was one of my favorite builds at HIN 2011… it was absolutely stunning…
Also had some of my favorite wheels of all-time, WED’s Kranze Bazreias, and the brakes aren’t too shabby either…
The rear camber on this Infiniti M was a little too much for my taste but it’s not a bad looking car overall…
Clean EVO X on Advan RS…
Gonna close out this portion of the coverage with some more gems from that day…be prepared for greatness. These cars are so sick that LeBron James would personally walk up to you and do his whole pre-game baby powder clap before showing you these pics…
FUCK. YES. Honda Civic sedan CONVERTIBLE with Black Widow sideskirts and Lambo doors…So if you want to be a cool guy and do the leap over the door into the Civic convertible, beware because you might leap into the doors that open into the fucking sky. If that’s not enough…
POW POW POW…it’s also got an ashy smoked clear hood so that the owner can stunt his single cam beast…Batman isn’t shocked here…he’s at the peak of Bat-orgasm….Ugggghhhhh…holy shit, strut bar has dimple-die plates too son! STRUCTURAL RIGIDITY…Bat-jizzzzzz….
Couldn’t close out the coverage without another great shot of my favorite mid-explosion truck…There is a serious amount of custom work on this truck and they had an elaborate display and everything…props for the hard work…is it my style? Noooooo….
Fuuuuuck, I was so disappointed when I found out that the Subaru from Auto Concept Elite won Best of Show….The Diablo, aka 300Camaro….totally should have won…Dude even has his front license plate bent to the shape of the Camaro bumper!! The Auto Concept Subaru also only has doors that open the regular way, whereas the Diablo looks like it has 16-different ways for you to open the door, all of which make it more difficult to get in and out. It doesn’t matter, because it has a fucking Camaro front end on it, you’ll never want to get out of the car! And while the Subaru is displayed in such a way that it looks like it’s pulling 1G and about to flip over, The Diablo is posted up like it’s braking really hard, because that’s what you do when you’re trying to stunt. You’re not trying to flip over at high speeds, you want that aggressive Camaro front end to look as mean as fucking possible…I demand a recount on that Best of Show award!!! My buddy Brian Filoteo from Auto Concept Elite probably agrees with me too but I don’t know for sure so I’ll put words in his mouth!! The Auto Concept Subaru wasn’t even sitting on red velvet carpet! COME ON!!…
What the shit?! After the mid-explosion truck finally exploded, it sent me 10 years back in time to the year 2001, where I spotted this Civic coupe. Believe me, it’s a Civic coupe. Don’t let that S15 Silvia front end mislead you okay? Imagine if this thing was pulling out of a garage…there would be just about 3 seconds where you would actually think it was a S15 and then you would see the rest of it. Man, 2001 was a different time….all that time traveling made me hungry so I have to go back to the future now, to present day, when this Civic still isn’t a S15 Silvia…Fucking thing has Bride seats in it though…probably fake but he’s too busy trying to make you believe this is an S15. Oh, I fucked up by not taking a picture of the rear of this Silv…err Civic coupe…IT HAS A BB6 PRELUDE TAILLIGHT CONVERSION!!!! BOOM…Sixth Sense moment!! You just dropped your coffee mug mothafucka!! Now go sweep that up and come back tomorrow for the 3rd and final portion of the Hot Import Nights 2011 coverage…
Thanks for looking!!!
Hot Import Nights 2011 Coverage…Part 1…
I’m sure all of you have heard that Hot Import Nights is making a return to our beloved import automotive community. Some were very skeptical about it’s comeback because the last couple years that it was around, it just wasn’t the same anymore. Many of the new generation won’t understand, but HIN was once the top tier car show to attend in the early half of the 2000s. Back then, you looked forward to two events every year, Import Showoff and Hot Import Nights. HIN was so huge back then and were making so much money, that they even tried to buy the Showoff series at one point, but Ken Myoshi turned them down because he wanted to keep the show grassroots. It turned out to be a good decision because inevitably, HIN was sold itself and the whole show just changed and shifted another direction. The new owners didn’t want to do the shows indoors anymore in an attempt to save some money and it somehow hooked up with the NOPI series which was the worst fucking idea EVER. Now, apparently, the original owners of the HIN brand have brought it back and are hoping to bring the show back to it’s top tier status…
This past weekend’s HIN event was held in the venue that helped make the show huge back in the day; the Los Angeles Convention Center. Maybe by bringing the show back here, it’ll conjure up the same excitement that enthusiasts once had for the event. What they didn’t mention to people was that the show wouldn’t be held in the larger hall where the once epic Hot Import Nights show called home…it was in the adjacent smaller building next to it. I was honestly a little surprised to hear that it was back at the Convention Center myself, because renting out a venue of that magnitude is not cheap at all, by any means. Plus they get a chunk of your gate, insurance, etc., etc… When I arrived the night of roll-in and Tony told me that it wasn’t in the larger hall, it made more sense to me. They dubbed this show “The Return”….as in Hot Import Nights “return” to prominence… Unfortunately, in my opinion, it was more of a “return” like if you were returning a DVD at the videostore. It’s loud, crowded, and you just want to get out of there as soon as you can. I’ve been in the car show scene since the late ’90s so I am very familiar with Hot Import Nights. I was there at the peak of it’s popularity when it was so crowded inside the Convention Center that you could barely walk or breathe. Nevermind trying to take photos because there was constantly people walking in front of you and it was so dark in there that you couldn’t even see the cars. It was a massive….they had concerts with major recording artists and it was the talk of our industry. “The Return” served as a nice reminder of how HIN once was….that is, until you walked through the doors into the actual event. It’s just not the same anymore. It’s called Hot “Import” Nights but line-up of cars were everything but imports and a chunk of the cars were DUB-style, luxury vehicles or high-end exotics. I understand you want to bring these type of cars into the events because they have money and lots of it, but if you want to bring the show back to it’s roots, you have to bring back the cars that people came to see….IMPORTS. I didn’t really expect there to be a big turn-out of Japanese cars because I’ve also seen what has happened to Extreme Autofest over time, and that went from an all import show that turned into a DUB show. There were cars in there that definitely made me scratch my head…I have no idea where these cars came from but I definitely did not need to see them again after HIN…
The Hot Import Nights show has just turned into every possible cliche’ you can think of, of a mainstream COMMERCIAL automotive lifestyle event. Which basically means that it was pretty much a ridiculous music video that you really wanted to end, but you couldn’t find your remote anywhere so you just had to sit there and watch it happen. There were go-go dancers on the stage, DJs at every corner playing music that was way too fucking loud, it was dark as shit, there were rappers “performing”, and there were exotics as well as every car you could think of that could somehow manage to cram 24-inch wheels into their wheel wells. It was fucking hectic in there. I don’t know what the purpose of blasting six different songs at max volume simultaneously was, but it was so loud in there that you couldn’t even have a conversation with the person standing inches away from you without screaming at them. I didn’t even plan on going at all, but I managed to get a free pass from It’s JDM Yo!! Tony so I decided to go do some coverage of the show. From my previous experience, it’s always been incredibly difficult to take photos at HIN while the show was going on because, like I stated earlier, it’s incredibly dark in there and crowded. I knew that I had to get there as early as I could and get as many shots as possible before the show started. The coverage you’re going to see from HIN is basically everything that went on during roll-in the night before, and the day of, but before the gates opened to the public. They won’t look like the typical HIN photos because no one was there yet and the lights were all on. I apologize if you wanted to see the photos with the “HIN ambiance” included but I wanted to make my life easier and not have to fight people to get a good shot. I did take some pics during the show itself, but it wasn’t really car-related, haha. I just wanted to capture what was going on while I was there. At the end of the day, I think the HIN staff did a good job of executing “Hot Import Nights” but it just isn’t the same as it once was, and I highly doubt that it will ever be how it was when it was one of the top shows in the industry. The cars that are there just don’t fit the enthusiasts that once made the show as big as it was and it almost seems as if they want to cater to a different audience now. The younger generation might enjoy the event, but it’s hard to spend $12 on parking and another $35(?) at the gate. It’s more of a DUB show now and the cars there represent that. You won’t see those cars here though because I took the time to weed out the cars that I liked and the ones that aren’t very favorable to your eyes are cars that I captured merely for comedic relief. With that said, thanks to HIN for the hospitality and I hope that you guys enjoy the photos…
If somebody were to ask me to describe my HIN 2011 experience in one long-drawn-out sentence, I would say:
“I went to Hot Import Nights and saw a Chrysler 300C with a new Camaro front end on it and across from it was a Scion tC with 26′s or some shit and a truck that looked like it was in mid-explosion.”
It’s kinda like the new Chrysler commercials where they say that their cars are “imported” from Detroit. You’re not really fooling anyone but it was a nice attempt. I guess if you dim the lights and turn up the music, nobody will notice, but somebody is eventually going to trip over an RX-7 in the dark and ask their friend what it’s doing there…
We’ll kick it off today with the widebody R35 GT-R from Auto Concept Elite. You probably recognize this GT-R from SEMA 2011 sitting inside the ENEOS Sustina booth… This was taken around 6:30pm the Friday night of roll-in when the Auto Concept/High End guys were still setting up their massive display…
Loved this Lincoln that was posted up near the area where Tony was setting up his booth… This is actually one of the few none imports that I was happy to see….
Despite the obnoxious rear arch work on this S14, it was actually pretty well done. I don’t really understand why the rear arch was done like that but it throws off the whole car. The craftmanship itself is not bad at all and it has all the right parts on it. It even has Racing Hart CPF Tune-R wheels on it that you don’t really see utilized that often.. I just wish the owner bought wheels that fit better under all that bodywork…
Carl’s EM2 Civic at the Fatlace showcase area on some CCW wheels…
VIP-themed S14 with an Instant Gentleman kit and MMR wheels…I posted up a photo of this car awhile back and asked you guys to help me find out who the owner was and he actually emailed me, I just barely remembered right now and I need to return his email….
Cody Chan’s widebody Miata that I shot awhile back for Super Street magazine. If you guys follow this site religiously like I hope you would, then you probably caught the unpublished photos from the shoot that I posted up just last week….
Here’s that truck that I’ve been talking about that looks like it’s in mid-explosion, haha…Excuse me for being ignorant towards this style of modification but what exactly is the point of having your hood look like that?…
Widebody G35 that’s been a consistent force in the import show scene…
MaDara’s S2000 with ASM I.S. Designs aero…
Love this race-inspired BMW M3 with Voltex components and HRE wheels…
Wild widebody Cadillac CTS-V from D3 that was also at SEMA 2011 in the Toyo Tires booth…
I found it a little odd that this whole set-up was finished by the time I got to roll-in but when I returned the next day, it was completely different booth with different cars…
Crazy dually that was sitting on the floor…
Matte red-painted 5-Series BMW wagon from VIP Modular wheels…
Really liked the classic-styling of this FC3S RX-7…The two-toned bay was kinda odd and I took a photo of it the following day when the hood was popped, but I’ll save that for later…
Another R35 GT-R…I think this was the second of maybe 4 or 5 that were at HIN…
Top Secret widebody S2000 from Bulletproof Automotive…
This particular section of the show hosted some of the better cars at HIN in my opinion, including this Miata on SSR MK2s…
This Miata was also nice and I had a chance to talk to the owner the following day at the show and he tells me that there’s a motor swap in it from a newer Miata…
This one was a little more wild in contrast to the previous two I posted. It had a polished hood and a two-toned black/silver theme…
This S13 coupe was one of my favorites from the HIN event…I saw this thing posted outside on the dock during roll-in and it instantly caught my attention, even though it’s very basic aesthetically. Crazy how hammered to the floor it is and apparently from watching him drive in, this is his static ride height… I chatted with the owner for a bit and this S13 also has a RB25 swap…More pics of this thing tomorrow…
Tony and friends setting up the “It’s JDM Yo!!!” booth…
Yuta’s S30 240Z from Heart Breaker…
I think a lot of people at HIN slept on this Supra because it was dark as shit in there and you probably couldn’t see it…
…however, you couldn’t miss this thing from miles and miles away….Batman helps to illustrate my shock here when I saw this Chrysler 300C with a Camaro front-end….
This orange Civic hatchback was pretty clean… Me thinks those are Rotas though…
Engine bay is clean and well-done with a K-swap and JRSC…
Lexus SC430 from BP VIP on some Work Schwert SC4s…
2nd Gen. Lexus IS on SSR Professor SP1…
Infiniti Q45 on WED’s Kranze LXZs…
Junction Produce Toyota Previa…
Does anyone remember Greg Leone from the MTV show “True Life: I’m a Street Racer”? Well this is his short bus…
What’s cool about it is that it’s like some make-shift auto-transport for his S13 “drift car”…. The car is whatever and has VIP Modular wheels on it that cost more than the car itself, but what’s interesting is that he probably has more money invested in the school bus than he does on the car…
You see that little platform above the bus? Well during the show, he and his band of buddies were pulling random girls up to the roof and posing for all kinds of ridiculously douchey photos. They had their sunglasses on and some guy had a zebra-printed blazer, it was quite a spectacle…He should call this thing “The Douche Bus”…
A pair of Ruckus’ in the Fatlace display area…
Tony almost finished with his display…
EVO X on gold SSR Type-F….
Not really sure what’s going on with this 350Z… It has WED’s Kranze wheels on it, which are luxury VIP wheels, but then it has this really wide, aggressive body work done to it with a front bumper that looks like it’s too long for the Z33 chassis…I don’t know, I’m confused…
Michael Mao applying some finishing touches to his NSX…
S14 celebrating the spirit of the holidays…
Ferrari 360 Modena on HREs…
Another shot of the BMW as I walked past it…correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that bottom front splitter might be a new addition…
At this point, I walked over to the DUB area where I unearthed these gems…
OH MAN. Words just can’t describe everything that is going on with this 240SX…rainbow zipties….Kouki S14 front end conversion…a hood that may or may not fit the front end..Advan SA3Rs that look like they are trying to hide…
The back is even better…pink zebra taillight garnish…paint-splattered rear hatch…crazy arrow-looking spray-painted sharpie designs on the rear-quarter….AHHHH!!!…
Directly next to it was another S13, this one I’m hoping is some sort of display vehicle for House of Kolor…Fucking thing looks like a rolling acid trip…
I had to do a double take just to figure out what kind of car this was…I believe this is an Eclipse with a Vertex-style Toyota Soarer front bumper and spray-painted wheels…I was walking with Tony and he said that this car looked like it was “Transforming but got stuck half-way”….haha…
I’m not even gonna lie, this MR-2 with ROJA wheels wouldn’t even be that bad if it didn’t all of a sudden grow Nissan S15 Silvia headlights in it’s front bumper…now it just looks odd…
Once I returned to reality, I spotted this Honda Fit rolling into the show…
…and also saw VIPStylecars member “Blitz’s” Y33 Q45 with WED’s Kranze LXZs and a K-Break aero kit…
After that I packed up my gear and headed home. Tomorrow I will bring you guys the photos from the actual day of the show and I swear, they are much better than these. I even brought my tripod out and everything…. Since I went back to the show so early the next day, I had all the time in the world to do coverage because nobody was even there…Anyways, back tomorrow with more…thanks for looking….
Hot Import Nights 2011 Coverage…Preview…
Oh man, so much fucking randomness going on at this event, haha. Luckily Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!! had a booth at this event, otherwise I wouldn’t have even gone to it. Here are some shots from roll-in last night. My coverage of this show will be mostly from the set-up phase of the show because, as you know, HIN is all about being in a pitch black so it’ll be hard to see any cars later. The good thing about going on roll-in night is that I actually got to see some of the better cars there. I feel like the best cars at HIN will be overlooked merely based on the fact that they are shoved in the corner somewhere where there will be absolutely no lighting. Maybe they will prove me wrong, but in year’s past, that’s how it’s always gone down. It’s interesting that it’s called “Hot Import Nights” and now the majority of the cars there aren’t even imports anymore. There are some very VERY questionable cars there and I’m happy to have been able to get those on camera to show you guys. If you’re heading out there today, cool…if you aren’t going?…Eh, you’re not really missing out on much, haha. Here’s some quick shots before I head back out there today…
HIN features a number of really nice builds like this S2000, but it’s unfortunately scattered with really awful cars. I don’t even know where the fuck these cars come from actually, haha. Some of the stuff that was there just blew my fucking mind. There was even a truck that looked like it was mid-explosion with parts folding up and sticking out in all different directions. Almost like that yellow government cheese truck from SEMA but fancier with sofa cushions and diamonds and shit…
I really liked this BMW wagon from VIP Modular wheels…
Yuta from Heartbreaker had his Z at HIN, with the appropriately named “Hot Junkyard Nights” sticker…That’s Cody with the white Miata from Super Street holding the sticker up…
HIN brought out all kinds of vehicles…even the short bus came out…
…but the moment I saw this car below, it was clear to me who the winner of “Best of Show” would go to at Hot Import Nights 2011…
…this Chrysler 300C with the “C” meaning CAMARO FRONT END….POW POW POW…which was “DUB”bed “DIAAAAAABLOOOOO”….
Xzibit could be hear saying “Yo dawg, we heard you like Camaros so we put a Camaro in your 300 so you can mistaken identity while you drive….”
Haha…back with more soon…
Honda Nationals 2011 Australia Coverage…
This update is over a month late, but I liked the cars so much that I had to devote some time to posting it up for you guys. If you are a Honda head or have followed this site closely these last couple years, then you should all be pretty familiar with Yonas Liu’s battleship grey Civic from JDMYard. He’s all the way down under in Australia but his Civic is such a great build that it’s become recognized all over the world. One of the reasons behind this Civic’s popularity is because of how multi-faceted it is. It not only looks great, it also serves time as a time attack and drag vehicle. I’ve become familiar with this car over time because I’ve done a story for it in Honda Tuning magazine and I’ve also been following Yonas’ build for a few years now. Now whenever Yonas has an update on the car, he hits me up on Facebook and gives me all the details on what he’s up to. The car has always been known for having an all-motor K24 set-up but a couple months back, Yonas decided to take his car in a different direction and supercharge it with a Rotrex unit. The car itself has always been pretty quick but now with the supercharger, it’s pumping out around 400hp or so. With the new added power, adjustments had to be made and Yonas has had to re-learn how to drive his car. The Honda Nationals event at Wakefield Park Raceway in Australia proved to be the cars first big test, and it ended up finishing 6th overall on the day. Below are some photos from that event, courtesy of photographer Simon Nguyen…
Oh, forgot to give you guys some details on the event itself. Honda Nationals was one of the first all-Honda track events held out there and cars were divided into 4 different categories, depending on level of modification. Enthusiasts from all over Australia showed up, even some who were 1000km (over 600 miles) away to compete at Honda Nationals…
Yonas Liu’s Civic from JDMYard…you can see the intercooler for the new Rotrex S/C behind the bumper…
Integra with some pretty aggressive Enkei RPF1s…
EG with a similar set-up…
Interesting wing mount on the EG…
Love this S2000 on CE28s…
More of Yonas’ EG…
Extensive do-it-yourself modifications to the front end of this coupe…
Great shots of some Integras on the track…
More of the S2K…
EP3 creeping on this S2000….
Peep the oil cooler where the right blinker once stood…
Meaty tires and massive StopTech brakes….
You can see in this rear shot of the front fender had to be spaced out to make room for the buff ass Enkei wheels…
Yonas in action…
Here’s a quick fly-by video of the JDMYard EGK24A…no onboard video since Yonas forgot his camera that day…
Here are a couple shots of the install prior to the Honda Nationals event…
TTS Rotrex supercharger DIY kit…
How it looks with the bumper off… A full-size DC2 radiator didn’t fit anymore so an extra tank was fabricated to hold an additional 3.5 liters of coolant…You can’t see the HKS blow-off valve here but it’s tucked under the headlight/wheel well area…
After running at the Honda Nationals event, it was apparent that traction and braking were two major issues with the car….
To improve braking, Yonas and the JDMYard crew decided to go with a 5-lug conversion, as well as Project Mu SCR Pro 300mm front rotors and Spoon Monoblock calipers from an S2000….
With the 5-lug, the 949 6UL wheels weren’t going to fit anymore so they took a set of white Volk CE28s off of their RSX project car and tested them on the EG… The 17×9 +22 CEs up front made for an interesting fit, especially considering the 255/40-17 tires… You can also see where the blow-off valve is mounted in this photo…
It won’t be making very many U-turns in the future but they managed to get the wheels to work. Hopefully the wider tread of the 255 rubber up front will help to alleviate the traction issues…
Great fab-work on the ducting/scoop for the oil cooler….
More modifications were made to the front bumper to help direct airflow into the intercooler as well as the side-mounted oil cooler….
Yonas is already back on the track and doing more testing with the new upgrades… This is one of my favorite EG builds of all-time and I love seeing it’s continued evolution…
JDMYard is throwing a big meet on December 3rd and Yonas has been hitting me up for awhile now trying to get some Chronicles merchandise over to Australia. I wanted to do something a little different for him and since I love his car so much, I went ahead and created a custom decal just for him and to celebrate his meet. Hopefully the package gets down there to him in time so he can rock these bad boys on his EG…
One-off Chronicles x JDMYard collabo decal…battleship grey to match his car as well…
That’s all for today. I hope everyone has a wonderful and most importantly, safe Thanksgiving holiday. Be careful out there people…. Thanks for looking…
Catch-up Week…Photos from Super Lap Battle 2011 Finals…
Many of you who follow time attack closely have probably seen these already or have heard the results, but for the more casual enthusiast, this might be news. It’s rare that I ever run into a back-log of posts and actually have too much content, but with SEMA and the VIP Festival coverage, we are playing catch-up. I didn’t actually get the opportunity to go to the 2011 Super Lap Battle Finals, but Loi from Sportcar Motion was nice enough to take some photos for me and give them over so I could show all of you. Sportcar Motion has had a pretty good year so far and they closed it out in consistent fashion by winning the Limited FF Class and along the way, also posting a new record in that class. I’ve posted the full results at the bottom but enjoy the photos from Loi Song before you jump to the end…Enjoy and congrats to all the winners…
Driver-extraordinaire and future doctor Tim Kuo piloted the Sportcar Motion Integra Type R to a class record 1:54.789….
Evasive Motorsports and their Mitsubishi EVO 9 won the Limited AWD class…
Ryan Novak’s Civic…
Evasive Motorsports also brought out their S2000, debuting new Voltex aero and also finishing at the top of the Street FR class…
WORLD Racing and Chris Rado won the Unlimited FF class with their Scion tC…
The biggest news of the day came from FX Motorsports and their Acura NSX which not only won the Unlimited FR class, but also broke the overall record by recording a 1:40.981 lap time…
The Gates 311 EVO X finished just a little over a second slower than the class-winning EVO 9 from Evasive…
BMW 1-series from Berk Technology won the Limited FR class…
Rare to see an S14 chassis utilized as a time attack vehicle…this ’96 240SX is from Spec Clutch…
Nate Hassler from Modified Magazine in his EK…
S2000s were a popular chassis of choice at Super Lap Battle…
FF Steve from FF Squad…
Renzo Marsano in his 2006 Honda Civic Si…
A couple more shots of Tim Kuo behind the wheel of the Sportcar Motion Integra Type R…
Congratulations to Loi Song, Sportcar Motion, and Tim Kuo for doing an amazing job and winning the Limited FF class…
Overall results from that day…
Thanks for looking…
SEMA Show 2011 Coverage…Part 6…The Finale…
Ahhh…we are finally at the conclusion to our 6-part miniseries of SEMA 2011 coverage… It was a great trip and always something I look forward to every year. In terms of major events, SEMA is always a landmark on the calender and I’m already excited to go back in 2012. Today, we are going to check out the final day of SEMA that I went to. I went every single day last year but this year I skipped the last day, which was Friday. I felt that I had already seen a majority of what I wanted to see and the stuff I really liked, I went back and looked two or three times more. Skipping Friday also gave me an opportunity to spend some more time with May and hang out with the homies that were there. A lot of the guys from out east and midwest were out in Vegas too but I just didn’t have time to really hang out with them. The entire week was filled with walking around the show and when we were not at the show, we were either eating or at an industry party. The parties would have been a good place to meet up but a couple of the guys didn’t get there until Wednesday and if they did go to a party, they ended up at another one that we weren’t at. The partying wasn’t particularly for everyone either and a lot of the guys just wanted to hang out and gamble, which was cool with me. I don’t do much gambling except for messing around with some slot machines so I’d rather go to the industry parties to mingle…
The Pro-Motion/Falken Tire party was the big industry party to close out the week and everyone decided that they would go so we could have everyone in one place at least once during SEMA week. As you read in Part 5 of our coverage, we had partied a little too hard the night before so we just made the decision to take it easy at the Falken party. I think a lot of people who were there for SEMA were also kind of over the whole partying thing by Thursday night as well because I saw a lot of people just chillin’ that night at the party. It’s all good though…many of us are at the age now where we have already been there and done all that partying shit when we were younger so there wouldn’t be any added incentive of going on a rager three nights in a row, especially considering the amount of walking around we did throughout the week…
I have photos from that party as well but before we get to those, let’s take a look at my final day at SEMA…
When we last left off, we had just exited the wheel/tire hall and made our way back to the outside of the show to take a look at some cars we might have missed. After hanging out outside for awhile, we walked back towards the manufacturer’s hall one more time to show some of our other friends who hadn’t been there yet, what the North Hall had to offer…
On our way to the manufacturer’s hall, I spotted Mannie Fresh and our buddy Hoonie wanted to take a picture with him. He was walking around by himself and seemed busy, so it was mighty nice of him to stop what he was doing to be in the photo. If you guys don’t know Mannie Fresh, he’s a rapper and hip-hop producer for Def Jam South. You’ve probably seen him or recognize him more for being one of the Big Tymers with Birdman and Cash Money…
After that, we walked over to check out this 1960 Ford F100 pick-up which was built by Two Brothers Customs. The owner came up to us and introduced himself before giving us full details on the truck. He said that the truck came together in less than two months time and even showed me what the truck looked like the day he started the project in September. It was just a beat up old frame then so it’s amazing to see the final result. I asked him how it ran and he said that he hadn’t even had a chance to start the truck yet after finishing it. I’d love to give you guys more details on it but you can actually read more about it here…
I couldn’t leave SEMA 2011 without stopping by the Lexus section to see the 5Axis GS F-Sport one more time…
It’s just a beautiful car overall…5Axis really knows what they are doing with their body components and I can’t get over how great this GS F-Sport looks…
We walked over to the Honda section to see if anyone was over there but there wasn’t so I just snapped another pic of the HPD-prepped bare 2012 Civic Si coupe chassis…
…also snapped this photo of the HPD supercharged Honda CR-Z motor…
Custom 1963 Mercury Comet built by Troy Ladd of Hollywood Hot Rods….
Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima’s Pikes Peak record-holding Suzuki SX4 “Hill Climb Special” inside the Go-Pro section…
Big Foot making even Hoonie look small…
One more look at the Auto Concept Elite/High End widebody R35 GT-R…
Hoonigan Inc. Rauh Welt Begriff Porsche 965…stool and lady still blocking view of it, haha…
Loved this custom Chrysler Le Baron…
Honda CB836F cafe racer…
Supercharged Factory Five ’33 Ford hot rod coupe…
Check out the seats on this thing…
I still remember back in the day when I used to always pass by this Jeep/AMC dealership while sitting in the backseat of my parent’s car. I was just a kid then but was already very interested in cars so I just looked at any and every car that existed. One thing I always remembered about AMC (American Motors Corporation) was how hideous all their vehicles were. In the late 80s-90s they had the AMC Eagle Premier, AMC Eagle Wagon, and they even sold those crappy Renault convertibles under their name. The cars were just fucking weird looking and super boxy. The best thing to come out of American Motors were the Jeeps and those were eventually sold off to Chrysler, who have been making Jeeps ever since…The 70s were even worse…remember the Gremling and Pacer? Guess what? Those were crappy AMC cars…The 60s were a little better, but all cars during the 60s had roughly the same look and design. Above is an AMC AMX (American Motors eXperimental)….it was marketed back then as a muscle car like the Mustang and Camaro but it was unique in that it had a short wheelbase. That’s why it looks kinda odd because it has a long body still but the with the wheelbase shorter. I don’t know whose idea it was to make all these fucking weird ass cars but they aren’t around anymore so I guess it didn’t work out too well for them. What’s stranger is that I know so much about these things…man, I need to get out more…The AMX above is pretty unique though because you just don’t see these cars around anymore, especially at a SEMA show,…
…you’d also be hard-pressed to find an AMC AMC with a GM LSx swap in it…
Drag Civic coupe sitting at the Exospeed booth…
My first time seeing a BMW 1M in person…If you guys don’t know what a 1M is, just imagine an M3, but compressed into a BMW 1-series chassis. If there is an M version of a 3-series BMW and it’s called an “M3″, and likewise for the 5-series “M5″, then why isn’t the 1-series an “M1″ you ask?…well…that’s because there already is an M1 in the BMW family lineage and it’s probably one of the most influential sports cars of the 1970s. It was actually designed and built by Giorgetto Giugiaro and Lamborghini but sold under the BMW name. It had a straight six engine with 6 individual throttle bodies and made around 277 horsepower. It’s also the only mid-engine sports car BMW has ever sold and a couple years ago, there was a concept car built in homage to the M1. If you’re interested in knowing what the BMW M1 looked like, simply google “BMW M1″…it’s pretty well known…I remember when I used to go to elementary school and I had a folder that my parents bought for me that had a BMW M1 on it…pretty cool because my parents were the reason I was so interested in cars as a child…
BMW M3 race car sitting next to the 1M inside the H&R booth…
I believe this is model Janelle Ha…
Do-Luck Aero Wivern-equipped R34 Skyline… I saw this car in passing a couple times during the week but the wheels threw me off and made me not really want to look at it…haha…It’s rare to see R34 Skylines these days that aren’t sitting on some government-owned impound lot, especially with full Do-Luck aero, so I stopped to check it out…
Carbon kevlar front fenders…you can actually see a hint of the kevlar next to the mesh opening in the fender…
Do-Luck Aero Wivern insignia…
Even has the low-profile D0-Luck rear spoiler… I actually went through the SEMA website to find more information on this car and it’s actually from Chicago…
A couple other guys we were walking around with ended up getting stuck behind because they were busy looking at other cars so David and I stopped by this Benz one more time while we waited for them to catch up. It was one of the first cars that caught my eye on the first day of SEMA so it’s only fitting that I close out the week by getting a closer look at it…
I really like that this E350 Benz sticks to two central themes: The full catalog of Carlsson products…
…and the custom BBS LM wheels built by Memoryfab. The car remains very subtle to the casual onlooker but once you stop to study the car, you realize that there is so much more to it…
Full Carlsson aero with L.E.D. daytime running lights and all as well as the carbon fiber chin spoiler that is tucked neatly under the front bumper…
The entire chassis is adorned in Carlsson gear and the BBS wheels receive a similar amount of detail…I really like the red BBS lug nuts that match the LM center cap…
Matching BBS valve stem caps as well….very well executed along with the custom bronze finish…
Great fitment…fitment meaning that the wheels fucking FIT on the car and doesn’t have all that ridiculous poke with a 1/3 of the wheel sticking out past the fenders…The wheels actually look like they belong on the car and don’t look like they are trying to escape…
Appropriate plate and frame combo for this build…
Speaking of fitment…this Scion tC is doing is wrong. What better way to represent your tire sponsor by getting tires that don’t fit your fucking car…*sigh*….
Oh while we’re on the topic of fitment, I spotted Neil Tjin’s Chevy Cruz just a couple steps away from the Carlsson E350…Neil not only has good fitment with his custom Rotiform wheels, but also wins the award for…
….aggressive trunk fitment. Neil really wanted to show off the trunk space in his Cruz by shoving as much shit as he could into it….
Neil did show me this cool award he got from some German publication though…I think it was for best customized wheel or something, I can’t really recall. What’s cool about the award is that it’s a true 2-piece wheel. I mean, you can’t really drive on it or anything because it’s only like 8-inches in diameter but the construction of it is very much like a real rim…neat….
A shot of one of the Factory Five ’33 Fords as we were walking out…
That pretty much wraps the actual SEMA show coverage…On the way back to the parking lot we parked in…
…I spotted this Vette…Kinda random for it to just be parked in a hotel parking lot but cool nonetheless…
DPK David had to meet up with one of his aunt’s that lived out in Vegas for dinner so we went back to the hotel and parted ways for a couple hours. May, Jared, and I went to go grab some buffet over at the Wicked Spoon inside the Cosmopolitan and we regrouped back at the hotel so that we could get dressed for the Pro-Motion/Falken Tire party. We pre-gamed a little bit and drank, then headed out to Paris hotel & casino to hit up Chateau club. The party was crackin’ by the time we got there already so we walked in, got our Falken Tire VIP wristbands and headed up the elevator to a completely separate party upstairs on the balcony. The view was stunning… You overlook the strip and party directly under the Eiffel Tower. I’d never seen anything like it…
We all made sure that we were at the same party on this night, just to close out the week with everyone. S2K Jay from Atlanta was there, along with some of the other PG+K guys and also my good buddy Chris “Blizzard Man” Sullivan aka CRS Foto…It was good to finally hang out with these guys for a change after trying to chase each other down over the phone throughout the week…
There wasn’t too much craziness like the other two parties. We just wanted to chill and chat with the homies since we don’t always get the opportunity to do that because we are so far apart…
Downstar/Bolt Boys Frank and DPK David in a rare photo together…
Rywire Ryan and DPK Jared, leaders of the Seinfeld fan club cheesing it up….
One of the great things about the Chauteau club was that it kept with the whole “French” theme…The girls working that night as servers had full on French Maid outfits and their maid skirts left very little to the imagination. Like if they sneezed you’d get hit with some vag action…. Both Rom and I sat back and enjoyed the view of some French clam, haha….
Not concerned with French maids, Christ (Pronouced “Steve”) from PG+K, was busy giving a seductive lap dance to his girl Christina….He’s from Georgia so he was getting down… At one point he even turned upside down and made his ass clap…
One person who was unimpressed and outright confused by the ass-clapping was Ryan from Eibach Springs… When you work at Eibach, apparently you get all kinds of special treatment. We had exclusive wristbands just to get upstairs already but Ryan had like 6 different VIP wristbands, one for every level of VIP. The blue one was for regular Falken VIP, then came Super VIP, double-stuffed VIP, VIP’s cooler older brother, VIP the crappy TV show starring Pamela Anderson, VIP Chinese Buffet, and even a VIP wristband that travels to the future so you can see what you’re doing later on in the party in the VIP section…shit was out of control…
A photo of me with Frank and Oscar aka “Pancakes”…
Natalie and Nick from SEEN IT! traveled all the way from Chicago for SEMA…. Nick does this crazy dance that looks like he’s stomping out a hoard of fire ants, it’s the craziest thing I’ve ever seen…
Thanks to Christ (Pronounced “Car-los”) for buying us shots at the club…
Nick Caster taking a moment to enjoy his own company and have a drink with himself…
Ryan and Natalie playing rock, paper, scissors….nobody won…
S2K Jay from PG+K and I…I was probably holding in a fart in this photo…Chateau club was a fancy place so I chose to reserve my farts for a later time…
One unique item that they had at this party was a photo booth type thing. It was basically just a webcam with LED flash but it was cool because you could instantly upload the photo to your email or to Facebook… I realized later on when I got back home to LA that you could actually go back and view all the photos that were taken that night. I’m going to be honest, I was trying to find a photo with some drunk chick flashing but that just didn’t pan out so I’ve included some of the photos that we took at the booth…
Ryan, May, and Nick…you can see in these photos our view of the Vegas strip from where we were…
From left to right, DPK David’s shoulder, May, Christ, Nick Weir, me, and CRS Foto aka “My Ass is Haunted”…
No idea who these breezies were but I enjoyed the photo so I included it…haha…does any still use the term “breezies” by the way?….
JDM Mike, sad-face Jay, and Frank, who was trying to look as sexy as possible… I guess this wasn’t his first time in front of a webcam…
Totally random but I also found this photo of some random white guy in the background with Kevin from Autofashion USA and Julie Mai…
Not much else happened at the party….It was just a chill night overall to be with good company. There was an old man who was dancing like the world was going to end the next day but I guess that just goes with being at an industry party during Vegas….After the club shut down, we all headed over to our favorite Vegas food spot, Earl of Sandwich, for a late night sang-wich…
It was Chris’ first time at Earl of Sandwich after hearing about it all these years from our Vegas trips…
One more sandwich for these guys before they headed back to their respective homes the next day…
Not much else happened after on that particular night. We actually got a good amount of sleep since we didn’t have to worry about heading back to the SEMA show on Friday. We woke up around noon or so and David, Jared, May, and I went to grab some lunch at Cabo Wabo before David and Jared went back to L.A. I spent the rest of the afternoon having some alone time with May and we gambled and walked around for awhile before heading back to the room to relax. Ryan wanted to have dinner so we met up later on in the evening to grab some all-you-can-eat sushi. It wasn’t terribly exciting so I didn’t have any photos of that…
Oh, I almost forgot this…remember how I mentioned that I always manage to miss out on some cars at the SEMA show? Well, I actually spotted a car from SEMA that I didn’t see at the show parked at Planet Hollywood when we were hanging out there…
This is probably the first new Infiniti FX that I have seen modded and it’s not a bad look…I personally think these crossover SUVS look a little odd but they don’t look half bad with some work done to them. I can imagine how aggressive it would look if it was on air and slammed to the parking lot floor…
We headed home early Saturday afternoon and passed by the Autofashion guys along the way…That Sunday was the VIP Festival which you saw coverage of before the SEMA posts began…
That concludes the 6-part SEMA 2011 coverage. I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I did. I know many of you don’t have the opportunity to go because you aren’t a part of the industry and don’t know people that can get you in but this is basically how the entire week is, at least for guys like us anyway. I’m sure there are more people who party harder, spend more time at the actual show, and do more baller shit like eat at fancy restaurants or whatever, but I think I’ve given you guys a good glimpse of SEMA life. I try to put into words what happened through my eyes and hopefully it has translated well to you guys. Obviously some of the more crazier things that happened during the parties were fabricated but it makes for a more entertaining side of the story. It’s more exciting then me just telling you that we stood around and drank with a bunch of dudes standing around us and breathing down our necks. I mean, how fucking fun does that sound? Haha. That’s just how it is at SEMA…it’s a good time but you have to take it for what it is. You don’t go out there to meet your next fuck friend or even your next significant other, it’s not realistic to think that it would even be remotely possible. The SEMA show itself is basically the same every year but just with a different cast of characters and new builds. That will just never change… Anyways, I have thoroughly enjoyed painting the SEMA picture for you guys. I appreciate that you took your time to go through it…
Thanks for looking….
Fin.
SEMA Show 2011 Coverage…Part 5…
When we last left off, we had concluded day 2 of the SEMA 2011 show and were headed back to the hotel. It was early in the evening already so we decided to grab some dinner before heading out to a local meet later that night. I guess they do these meets in Vegas every now and then but since Freddie and the Autofashion crew were in town, everyone decided to meet up at the Callaway Golf course to hang out. It was a VIP car meet but it didn’t really stop other cars from showing up. I had been exchanging emails with the guys from Tactical Art Japan off and on the weeks leading up to the week of SEMA and we thought it would be cool to meet up. I mean, realistically, how often would we have the opportunity to meet, being that we are usually in different continents? SEMA was the perfect meeting place for us but the only problem was that they couldn’t meet during the day time. Reason behind that is simple: the guys from Tactical Art don’t speak English, and they needed a translator but the translator they had with them worked the SEMA show for HKS. I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity to meet these guys so I told them to come by the meet. That way they could not only meet us, but also have the chance to see some more U.S. builds while they were here…
If you’re not familiar with who Tactical Art is or if by chance you just missed out on the post, read more about our Japanese friends here….
We grabbed some dinner over at the Steak n’ Shake inside Southpoint Hotel & Casino, got ready for the industry party later that night, and headed out to Callaway Golf Course for the meet. We arrived a little late, as usual, and the meet was going full force. There were all kinds of VIP cars everywhere but it was a little hard to see because the lighting there was very poor. I grabbed my cell and called up the translator for the Tactical Art guys, and they were already there looking at cars…
The Tactical Art guys were very friendly and I really appreciated the translator taking the time to come out and help us break down the language barrier. They wanted to take a photo with us right away so the translator grabbed their camera to capture the image while May stood off to the side and snapped this photo of us….
They have a blog (online diary) as well were they documented this event, so if you’re interested, you can check it out here. You probably need to understand Japanese though, otherwise you’re just looking at pictures….
This is the resulting photo directly from the Tactical Art blog…Of course you already know the cast of characters up top, but the guys below are (left to right) Yasutaka Shimomukai from Tactical Art, Keisuke Morita who is a Sales Engineer from HKS Japan, and Atuki Tubouti, who is the head of Tactical Art… Taku Kusugami, who owns the brown EK on black Work S1s, was also in town but couldn’t make it to the meet…
Even though it was hard to really speak to one another, I could understand how much they appreciated me doing a spotlight on their shop and cars on The Chronicles. They were asking me how long it took me to put the post together because it was really detailed, not knowing that I am a writer by trade and can whip up some good content pretty easily, haha. It was a great experience meeting those guys though. It’s cool to meet enthusiasts from other countries because they have a different outlook on things. When they were at the meet, I could see their enthusiasm and how surprised they were to see VIP cars in the U.S….
I kinda fucked up by not bringing any Chronicles stickers to Vegas, knowing that I would probably meet up with them down the line, and I felt even worse when they gave me a giant stack of Tactical Art stickers….
…and I mean, it was a pretty large stack. These guys were more than generous and I’ve been putting together a package of merchandise for them to mail out to Japan. I got so many of these that I’ll probably throw a couple of these in there with some big orders when I re-open The Chronicles Storefront. Keep an eye out for that if you’re interested in some pretty rare stickers straight from Japan…
Here’s one of the VIP Q45s at the meet…
Gerald from Royal Origin and his DC2 were at the meet…
…as well as Chivas’ orange coupe. The Tactical Art guys are huge Honda heads so they spent quite a bit of time looking over Chivas’ car and were surprised to see his purple color-shifting engine bay…
S2000 from “Jock Me” with Alexisthemovie’s old glow-in-the-dark Work Rezax wheels…
Ronzilla’s Scion xB… I still remember this car from the 2009 SEMA show when it was still white…
We hung out for a little while longer but it was getting late and we had to get to the Scion industry party over at the Aria so I snapped one more photo with them, said our goodbyes, and headed out with Freddie and the Autofashion guys…
We arrived at Haze nightclub inside Aria around 11 and walked right in to get some drinks. I had been to Haze before and it was a pretty nice club. I remember going there one year for Phaze2 Tony’s birthday and the club was absolutely packed with people. They had like this Geisha Girl show on the stage then with chicks in all kinds of thongs and shit and it was a blast. For the Scion party, uhhh…it was a little different. No geisha girls, and definitely just lacking in general when it came to girls, as expected, but fuck it, we had a good time…
Drinks weren’t exactly cheap at the clubs, but that was expected. With little women around and plenty of industry folks walking around trying to have a good time, their only release was throwing down some alcohol. It’s also not as crowded as it usually would be on say, a regular weekend, so the clubs mark up the prices a bit to make some money off these guys. Luckily for us, our buddy Fat Kid from Ballade Sports had the super duper Scion VIP wristband, which allowed him to have access to an open bar all night. This guy right here, standing next to DPK David, literally made our night because he would just go back and forth and bring us whatever drinks we wanted. He was basically our liaison to an open bar with free drinks and he did not hesitate to keep bringing the drinks over….
Our buddy Nick Caster flew out from Roseville, CA and made it just in time for the party, while our other friend Hoonie (scary giant to the right), drove out from Orange County to join the festivities…Here they are partying it up with Rywire Ryan and Fat Kid…
With few women in sight, Ryan enlisted the help of a Peter North video while he pounded down two drinks…Ryan could be heard saying “…Damn that dude must eat a lot of egg whites…”…
While Ryan was busy enjoying some fuck faces, I ran into one of the Tjin brothers. Gene is always willing to experiment with fashion so he showed up to the club rocking a fucking Nintendo Power Glove…If you don’t know what these are, then you were probably born in the 90s or later. Never fear though, because the Tjin brothers are now sponsored by some Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall video game store in Garden Grove, CA and will be releasing the “Tjin Edition” Power Glove. They will come in a new brushed metal wrap that will still come with the timeless ability to make it difficult to pick up anything while trying to get this glove to work with Shaq-Fu the video game… I was overjoyed by this news and asked Gene if they had a brand-new in-box Virtual Boy, which he replied “Yes, but the only game that works on it is called ‘a headache’…”….
Jared was looking mighty pimped-out in his velour blazer posing alongside May….The jacket would later be found on the kitchen counter where Jared was busy unearthing his demons into the sink…
Somewhere later on in the night, Fat Kid had given us waaaaayyy too many free drinks and we started doing all kinds of dumb shit…I don’t know who that girl is and Wolverine seemed awfully douchey, but it didn’t stop me from dancing like an asshole with my glow stick out…
The rest of the night just kind of seemed like a utter blur after that… I didn’t know what the fuck was going on… I totally forgot Rom was there partying with us until he emerged from this cloud of smoke…. Shit looked like a fucking Prince video…
When the club shut down, we headed out once again to go grab some food…I think…the night was pretty hazy (no pun intended, you know cuz we were partying at “Haze” and because of the last photo..no pun though I swear).. We got back to the hotel room and listened to Jared re-enact the scene from The Exorcist and went to bed…
I thought I went to bed fine and dandy, but around 6am, I woke up with a sudden urge to take a shit. I walked over to the bathroom, sat down, looked through Facebook with one eye open, and then got up…and fucking threw up all over the toilet. I guess I had drank more than I had remembered, and broke my consecutive non-yack streak of 4+ years. If that wasn’t bad enough, I actually still had to take a shit too so I sat down to poop, probably all the while sitting on my own yack….I did my business, hopped in the shower, cleaned the toilet, all the while with just one eye open, and then hopped back into bed and kiss May goodnight, haha…
The next day was kind of rough. I really wanted to hit up the SEMA show early because I wanted to see whatever was left that I had missed. It didn’t help that we woke up super late and didn’t get to the show until about 1pm…
I really liked this VW MK1 Golf from the United Kingdom that was sitting in the Meguiar’s Car Crazy Showcase…
I don’t know enough about Volkswagens to tell you what swap is in here…pretend I did though and act like I have endless amount of knowledge… Fucking R32 motor or something, yeah that sounds about right…
Right hand drive with an absolutely immaculate interior….
Refinished Ronal Turbo wheels in a wrinkle black finish…
Had to get a shot of this as I passed by the Meguiar’s stage…
Our buddy Hoonie tagged along with us to check out the show and here he is pointing at the 50-inch wheel he was planning to put on his Chevy pick-up…the A/C isn’t working but if the truck is sitting in the sky with these big ass wheels, he won’t have to worry about getting hot…It’s a wire wheel though so he’d have to stop the car every 10 miles and re-tighten all the spokes…
Seibon’s Honda CR-Z in the Hankook booth with some baby ass TE37SLs…That’s like a TE37SL fetus that hasn’t developed into a full grown wheel…
These girls were happy to see me, although I am still unsure if the girl on the right is still capable of smiling…
Three things are very obvious in this photo, one of them being that I should have framed this photo better…the other two are bursting out of that girl’s dress…
I tried to think of what to say to her and the only words that came out of my mouth were “Tiiiiiits…” which she responded to with a smile…she probably gets that a lot…
Pretty model and a company with some unattractive wheels…
SLS McLaren inside the Forgiato booth…
Murcielago from Japan with Liberty Walk aero, air suspension, and Forgiato GTR wheels…
I guess there was some controversy online as to whether or not this was actually a real CLS 63 AMG or not…turns out that this was a regular CLS550 and the brakes ended up being the dead giveaway. One eye witness who was at the show even stated clearly that one front brake caliper said “AMG” on it and the other side didn’t….weird, either way it’s still a CLS with a Wald Black Bison kit on it. The aero isn’t for everyone, especially when it comes to the typical demographic of CLS owners but companies don’t take risks and make these aggressive kits to please everyone…It’s an interesting look in my opinion but I’ve also seen photos of it online where it’s just black and not this bright matte orange color…Either way, it’s not something I really care too much about cuz it’s out of my price range anyway, haha…
Oh man, this was crazy. We were at the back half of the wheel/tire hall when I thought I spotted the HRE section. When I looked closer, it turns out that this wasn’t HRE, but a Taiwanese company called BC Wheels that literally took EVERY SINGLE wheel from HRE and made copies of it! Fucking nuts…I mean, they made no attempt to even hide the fact that they are ripping off HRE wheels. Even their center cap design was close to the HRE center cap. Apparently they are forged too, but who knows….
I mean, seriously…a copy of every HRE wheel…shits crazy….Even if you were a casual car enthusiast you would probably recognize these wheels as being HREs…I just had to snap some photos because nobody would believe me. I know I usually get some photos of the Rota booth but nothing is really different this year other than the fact that they have already made a copy of the Work CR-01 wheel. Oh speaking of which, FUCK XXR wheels. Every year at SEMA they prevent people from taking photos of their booth. They even have signs posted everywhere that they don’t allow photography. As soon as they see that you have a camera they already have a rep stand up and hover over you and shit, it’s bullshit. Lame ass company…It’s sad how dirty they are and how they are afraid that people will take photos of wheels that are blatant copies…Rota doesn’t give a shit and will even give you a fucking free baseball cap. XXR tries to pretend like they aren’t doing anything wrong, when everyone already knows what they are all about….
Ever wonder what a blank 20×8.5in wheel looks like before a design has been cut into it?…(Totally unrelated to the company above by the way…)
Ever wonder what a Chrysler 300 would look like if it crashed into a brick of government cheese?… Haha, I think this rolling travesty was once a Chevy S10 pick-up that transformed itself into a giant brick of crusty government cheese. Don’t know what government cheese is? Well look it up, because you’re lucky to be financially stable and never had to encounter government assisted foods…Usually when that old crusty brick of cheese has been left in the fridge too long and gets old, it starts cracking and flaking and looks a lot like this truck. If somehow there were ever an accident where a Chrysler 300 crashed into a Best Buy the same exact moment when a Chevy S10 carrying a truck-bed load of government cheese crashed into it, this would be the result… And they say miracles don’t happen…
One of the best comments I’ve seen online about this thing is that it’s fitting how the truck was built by a collision center because it’s meant to resemble an accident, haha…Seriously though, why the fuck does a hood need to open like that? Unless it’s like a trap door that opens to a world filled with giant tittys and free hamburgers, it’s awfully unnecessary. And then whoever built this thing is trying to fool me into liking this truck by throwing some fucking sideways TVs inside the doors. Motherfucker, I can’t even watch TV like that….
Anyways, moving on…
Now let’s take a look at a build that is much more pleasing to the senses….This is John Fortuno’s Chrysler 300, which is dubbed “Fatchance 2.0″. We had actually walked through the Dodge/Mopar section earlier but we ran into some of the guys from out east and totally missed this car. On the way over to the Falken Tire section, David and I spotted this thing walking up the stairs and decided to go take a look at it. When I started looking at the bay, the owner John Fortuno came out from the back seat and decided to give us a tour of the car…
We talked with him for quite a bit actually and even found out that he’s from Huntington Beach, CA, which isn’t too far away from us. Fortuno has a 426 HEMI engine swap with custom fuel set-up, tucked harness, and white powdercoated intake manifold….
I love the front end on these new 300s because it finally has a look of it’s own and not anything resembling a Rolls Royce…
The trim pieces, grille, etc. were all removed and redone to have this brushed metal finish…John tells us that he took the pieces, sanded them down to a dull finish and then powdercoated it in black chrome to produce this look…
Full custom interior…You can see the brushed elements also appear inside…
Custom trunk enclosure with dual air compressors for the air suspension and Accuair digital leveling system…
Fatchance 2.0 also features aero from Xenon and 22-inch forged USW Uprise wheels… Overall a great build and another one of my favorites. It was a pleasure talking to John Fortuno as well and I appreciated the fact that he took the time to tell us all about Fatchance 2.0. You can actually find quite a bit of information on this 300 if you’re really interested in it. Just google “Fatchance 2.0″. This build is quite famous in the Mopar world and is considered the first heavily modified 2011 Chrysler 300. John even worked closely with Chysler to put this car together after the success of his first 300 build, Fatchance 1.0….
Once we finished speaking to Mr. Fortuno, we made our way to the Falken Tire area…
We walked by the Toyo Tires booth along the way where I spotted UFC lightweight Anthony “Showtime” Pettis…There were a bunch of UFC fighters on hand during SEMA and a couple of them made appearances in the Toyo section inside this make-shift cage display. The first day featured Rampage Jackson and Strikeforce Woman’s Champion Miesha Tate. I think the next day it was Brandon Vera and then Anthony Pettis… While walking around, I also spotted Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and Leonard Garcia. I don’t know if you guys recognize any of those names but I’m a huge MMA fan so it was cool to see these guys just walking around and enjoying cars….
One more look at the widebody Cadillac CTS-V coupe from D3 Group….the car features an APR rear wing, matte body wrap, and D3 hood, sideskirts, chin spoiler, and widebody kit…
Motor is powered by a D3 Stage 3 supercharger, D3 1000HP axles, and Art Carr transmission…
Speaking of widebody, I also spotted this Ford Mustang from Galpin Auto Sports. The front looks good but the side and rear are not really all that pleasing to the eyes…
I don’t know what Kenda Tires are but they had this S13 hatchback with Kouki S14 front end…
GM Performance LS3 crate motor and Sikky engine mounts….
Finally got to the Falken Tire section to grab some free Falken gear and so that some of the others could see the RWB Porsche…I had already seen all the cars here so I just hung out and snapped some photos of the Falken ladies…
Falken Tire model Randyl Dawn…who was giving out some free Falken carabiners and referred to me as “Hey you cameraman”…
Falken Tire model Melanie Tillbrook…
Falken Tire models Julie Galindo and Myra…
We left the wheel/tire hall after that and walked back outside to try and find some cars that we missed…
The new Camaros are all the rage these days, especially at SEMA 2011, so it was refreshing to see this 80s-90s era Camaro completely race-ready and in great shape…All caged-up with lexan glass front and back…crazy…
Widebody Subaru WRX wagon parked next to some railing…this is a perfect example of a nice build that might have been missed because of where it was placed…
I was finally able to get some better shots of this matte red E61 BMW 5-series wagon on VIP Modular wheels….
Love this brown Ford truck…
Gonna close it out for today with this 1960 Cadillac DeVille aka “Cruella DeVille”, owned by Justin Carillo….
That’s all for today folks, hope you enjoyed the read. Thanks for looking, back with whatever is left of the SEMA 2011 coverage later….
SEMA Show 2011 Coverage…Part 4…
Let’s jump right back into the ongoing SEMA 2011 coverage by your’s truly, Stickydiljoe and The Chronicles. I’m glad you guys have enjoyed it so far and even liked the photos from the first industry party we attended. There’s so much more and photos from two more parties as well, along with some photos from a local meet we went to where I met the Tactical Art guys. I finally finished going through all of the actual show coverage from the memory card today and there isn’t that much more. I think maybe we are looking at 3 more parts possibly? I’ll have to double check. As far as the show pics go, it’s only a couple more sets but when I throw the party and other random stuff in there, the number of photos grows a bit…
When we last left off, we had started day 2 of the SEMA show, which was a Wednesday. May and stayed behind to get some work done for her job and it was just DPK David and Jared that cruised back to the show with me. There were a couple more sections that we missed along the way and two of the things that we wanted to make sure and see was Bisimoto’s 997-swappped Porsche and the Scion booth. The Scion section is always good because they select a couple of individuals in the industry every year to participate in their Scion Tuner Challenge. For 2011, Scion rolled out their new 2012 Scion iQ and wanted to see what tuners like Jon Sibal and Evasive Motorsports could do with them…I want to mention in advance that I had more photos of Jon Sibal’s iQ, which ultimately won the competition, but they came out shitty and blurry so I didn’t want to post them up. Jon’s and the Evasive iQ, in my opinion, were the only ones that were notable in the competition anyway so if you want to see the other competitors, you’re going to have to look elsewhere. One of them had like, low offset XXR wheels or some shit and an exhaust coming out of the trunk, it wasn’t a good look at all so I didn’t even bother with it…sorry if I sound like an asshole for saying that but realistically, I knew I would have close to a 1000 photos to go through and if it didn’t peak my interest, I wasn’t going to try and fuck with it…Anyways, on with the photos…
This is the Scion “iQ-RS” that was built by Evasive Motorsports. It was completely race-inspired and had a lot of cool parts on it. Jon Sibal’s was more catered to a broader audience and that’s why I felt like it deserved to win the challenge, but it didn’t mean that the Evasive car wasn’t equally as deserving of recognition…
Voltex aero and the newly released Advan Racing RT wheels…
Interior even had a six-point cage and a number of custom interior pieces…
Love the custom Stack tachometer….
The Scion “iQ-RX” by Jon Sibal…Jon’s iQ featured HRE wheels, VeilSide aero, and Airrunner suspension…
Scion FR-S Concept…I was pretty excited to see this thing in person finally…
The “Pit Boss Cartel iQ”…
After checking out the Scion section, we headed back to the North Hall, which was the hall that I wasn’t really all that excited about because there normally isn’t anything to look at. It’s the hall that has all the new tools, seat covers and shit, just a bunch of random stuff and sometimes they will have a nice car here and there…We decided to head in with low expectations. I remember from previous years that I usually only go to the North Hall to see the Mazda sections. I don’t know why they are stuck in that hall every year but it never fails, I walked inside and instantly found them…
Mazdaspeed Turbo2…
Mazdaspeed MX-5 Spyder… really like what they did with the fabric convertible top…
Original Mazda Cosmo Sport…The Cosmo Sport is actually the first 2-rotor rotary-engine powered vehicle to be produced in Mazda’s family lineage… The last generation Eunos Cosmo from the 90s was the first Mazda to be powered by the 3-rotor 20B rotary engine that you see now being swapped into RX-7s…
Models from the Mazdaspeed booth…I realized later that the girl on the right is Amanda Gift, who has been in a couple issues of Super Street magazine in the past. You might recognize her more for looking like this…
Jared, hungover still from the night before and wearing sunglasses indoors, posing with a model from some booth I’ve never heard of…
After realizing that we were correct in our assumption that there was nothing to look at in this hall, we decided to hop back to the other hall to check out some more cars…
This lime green widebody R35 GT-R from Jotech Motorsports was pretty sick…It was stuffed in the corner and was probably over looked by many because I haven’t really seen any other photos of it floating around online…
Liked this E-Class Benzo that was inside the Injen booth…
Teal-wrapped Lancer Sportback also in the Injen booth….
A lovely model from the Spyder Auto booth…This booth was stocked with models the entire week and up until this very moment in time, I am still unaware of what they do or what products they sell…
Another great build from Ringbrothers…
Nice chop top action on this street rod…
A heavily-modified ’69 Plymouth Roadrunner built by Spitzer Concepts dubbed “The Roadrattler”… SEMA 2011 served as the grand unveiling for this build and the 528 cubic inch motor makes 790HP with a 500HP nitrous assist…
It took us awhile to find but we finally stumbled upon the NGK booth where the Bisimotowerks 997-swapped Porsche 911 was parked…
Custom sheet metal widebody and Bisimotowerks Eins Gramm wheels…
It was crazy to even see this car in this nearly-completed state considering how the build finished in the 11th hour before departing to SEMA….
Walked over to the Mackin Industries booth to see what was new from Volk Racing/Rays Engineering… The wheel above is the new Volk Racing G16 wheel…
The new Volk Racing TE37 Tokyo Time Attack wheel…
Volk Racing TE37Vs coming soon in sizes other than 15′s…
New Project Mu brakes available in other colors than their signature teal hue….
Over at the Advan Racing area, I stopped to take a look at one of my favorite wheels of all time, which coincidentally, were also one of the most copied wheels of the early 2000s; Advan AVS Model 5s, which I guess are being released as the AVS Model T5….
’56 Cadillac aka “Badillac”, owned by Pete Pettenon…
Anyone notice anything different about the Eibach Springs Honda CR-Z?…
A lot of casual passerby’s glanced and kept walking without even noticing that the CR-Z is now K24-swapped thanks to Brian from Hasport… It was also supposed to be supercharged but time just didn’t permit that from happening…
….And the winner for “Best of Show” at the 2011 SEMA show goes to…
The Ringbrothers 1965 Ford Mustang “Producer”….
Keith Craft 351/427 stroker V8 making 740HP…
Full custom interior featuring a one-off dashboard and chromoly roll cage…
A glimpse of the cage and it’s hard to tell from this photo but the entire body has also been widened 4-inches….
Sorry for the crappy shot of the rear…
Another one of my favorites from the 2011 SEMA show….Kevin Byrd’s GM LS-swapped 1990 BMW M3….
GM Performance Products LS3 motor making around 500HP…
Love the “LSM3″ represented on the valve covers…
E30 M3s have to be one of the best-looking cars ever built…boxy in design, yes, but the flared body of the M3 chassis has a timeless, always recognizable look…The BBS wheels, swap, and everything come together for a amazing build. The chassis has seen all sorts of reinforcement too from what we saw when the owner was detailing the car to another onlooker….
Hennessey Venom GT….1200HP via a twin-turbo GM LSx engine…
Chrome green painted Chevy Camaro sitting at the GM booth, representing Hot Wheels….
This year, GM was busy spotlighting their new Chevy Sonic, which looks a lot like a mini toy version of a Mitsubishi Evo X…
Tjin Edition Chevy Sonic…
Fatlace Chevy Sonic hatchback built by Mark Arcenal….
Really liked the chameleon color-shifting paint…
I didn’t even know that this Sonic was Fatlace’s until Gene Tjin told me…apparently the car is not even on air, and sits hammered to the floor on coilovers…The Rotiform wheels are nice and the center almost matches the interior, which I’m sure was intentional…
This year for SEMA, GM was celebrating “100 years of Chevrolet” so to commemorate that event, they had two 50-year old men laying on the floor next to an old Chevelle…
David was busy talking to Sunny over at the Airrex booth about his Honda Insight, so I walked over to the K-Sport section and snapped a photo of this model at their booth just as she was headed to the restroom….
She probably had to go pee real bad but it didn’t stop us from making Jared take a picture with her….
Another shot of Sunny’s Honda Insight from Franklin Autobody….
These two guys were taking the whole “human tripod” thing to a whole new level…If the dude on the bottom was laying down face up, I wouldn’t have take this photo and ran away quickly…
We stopped by the Honda area and ran into the Tjin brothers, so we chatted with them for a bit along with Preston from Function & Form…
We hung out there for a little bit before heading back to the hotel…it was the end to day two of the SEMA show and it was time to party once again…
Oh I also snapped this photo of this Imola Red E39 M5 aka “LoLa” on the way out…
That’s all for today…thanks for looking, back with more tomorrow….
