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….
SEMA Show 2011 Coverage…Part 3…
As promised, here is part 3 of the ongoing SEMA 2011 coverage… When we last left off, we had just exited the wheel/tire hall and were heading back to the car to grab dinner. It was just Tuesday of our week long stay in Vegas but we were itching to grab some good dinner and party it up at the first industry party later in the evening. Before we got back to the car though, we walked along the outside perimeter of the SEMA show where all kinds of different cars were posted up outside of each hall. The thing with having cars outside is that it’s very easy to miss some really good builds because everyone is so fascinated with what’s going on inside the different buildings. The builds posted up outside are usually good ones too, they just might be overlooked… I know from looking at SEMA coverage from other sites last year that there was all kinds of cars that I missed so I made sure we put effort into walking around outside. Did I catch everything that I wanted to see? Ehh..debatable… I’m satisifed with what I saw but I can almost guarantee you that I missed out on some good cars….In any case, let’s get going with the photos…
Seeing this was a real treat. I didn’t expect to ever see this car in person but I appreciate it even more than when I first saw this build in an issue of Option magazine a couple months back. Option is a popular automotive magazine in Japan that I try to check out whenever I can and this Z33 Fairlady (Japanese Nissan 350Z) was one of their cover cars…
The Porsche conversion and all the crazy bodywork definitely isn’t everyone’s taste but you have to respect the amount of work that was involved in this build…It’s a very well rounded car and the quality of work is top notch…
One of the unique aspects of this Z is how it’s born and built in Japan but it’s rocking two different sets of American VIP Modular wheels… I saw a lot of people hovering around this car trying to figure out what it was and the only real indication of it’s original form is in the door handles, which have remained original z33 pieces…
The interior has been completely re-wrapped and shares the same level of work as the exterior…
Seeing this thing in person reminds of last year’s SEMA when a Japanese tuning shop brought over their Camaro build. It’s just really cool to see stuff like this because you would only be able to be in the presence of these builds at the annual SEMA event…
The section where that Z was parked had all kinds of different cars parked there. There were lifted bro trucks, Euros, and even really clean lowriders like this one…
Big body Caddy that I spotted as I walked by the giant Meguiar’s area…
Another vehicles that was a part of Meguiar’s “Car Crazy Showcase” was this right-hand drive VeilSide Fortune FD3S RX-7…
20-inch Forgeline wheels…
Custom interior with the original instrument cluster removed and replaced with a number of different gauges…
Rear quarter shot of the VeilSide RX-7…
Meguiar’s also had another section devoted to different builds from all over the world… This 78 Ford Falcon XC GS was another one of my favorite cars of SEMA ’11 and it actually comes all the way from Australia…
Stroked 351 Cleveland motor with individual throttle bodies…
The interior is all custom as well with a fiberglass dash, bucket seats, and re-wrapped panels… As you can see from this photo, the doors of this Aussie Falcon opens suicide style…
The amount of fabrication on this car is insane. I actually did some more research on this car and it has a custom fabricated tube chassis, radiator panel and firewall, flared front fenders, custom bumper bars, and so much more. The door hinges for the suicide doors were also hand made and the door handles for this thing were incorporated into the front cowl between the hood and windshield…fucking crazy….Look at that trunk.
If you guys want to read more on Adam Lebrese’s Falcon coupe, click here….
This Celica is also a part of Meguiar’s world wide showcase of cars… If Spiderman ever decides to move to China, he won’t have to worry about not having transportation. Again, not my taste, but I can appreciate and admire the craftsmanship and work…. If you want to know more about Jordan Le Han’s Spidey Celica, click here…the people that did the story for this car even photoshopped an image of this car scaling the side of a building, haha…
May couldn’t resist and just had to get a photo of Jared doing the Spidey-pose…
Meanwhile, DPK David asked me if I could get a photo of him with one of his favorite trucks at SEMA…
At this point, we were getting pretty hungry…but there were just so many nice cars to see on our way out. This Subaru STI was another one of my favorites that I just had to get a closer look at. We found out a couple days later at an industry party that this Subaru belonged to a female enthusiast from Maryland by the name of Joy Abdalla…
Love the shaved and tucked engine bay. It’s rare to see these Subarus with engine bays that are this clean….
I also really liked the little details of Joy’s Subaru, like this exposed carbon section of the trunk that was left unpainted…
The paint, widebody, and aggressive TE37s look great…The vanity plate also makes more sense now after finding out who the owner was…
Just had to get another shot of this Carlsson Benz from Memoryfab before we left…
R34 GT-R on Rohana wheels…I know what wheels they are just based on assumption…
After snapping that pic, we finally left the Las Vegas Convention Center. We were all hungry so we went to go eat and then returned to our rooms to hang out for a bit before getting ready to party. There were two different industry parties going on that night so we had a little bit of a dilemma deciding which one to go to. Formula D was hosting a party at Pure night club, while 5Axis was throwing a party over at Club XS, which was inside of the Encore hotel and casino. We called a couple of the other homies that were out there for SEMA and everyone seemed to be going to one or the other, so we just decided to go check out the Formula D party first. If it sucked, we could just easily hop back in the car and head to Encore so we got dressed and headed out…
When we got to Caesar’s Palace to hit up Pure, it was a fucking mad house. I mean, we weren’t even inside the club yet… there were just so many people waiting outside and it seemed like forever until anyone was able to get inside the club. Plus they had like some Ebay party going on at the same time and it was just getting too hectic for us. We walked over to the bar across from the club and grabbed a drink, then decided it would be best for us to head on over to Encore to check out the 5Axis party. We rounded up the troops and off to Encore we went…
The scene there was drastically different. The party was going on already but it wasn’t ridiculously crowded outside. We showed our IDs and walked right inside without any hesitiation. If you guys have never been to SEMA or participated in any of the parties that go on during SEMA, you have to understand one thing: It is always going to be a fucking giant cauldron of sausages. It’s an industry party so it’s going to be dominated by people in the industry, who are predominantly male. You go to these parties just to socialize and mingle, and also to meet other contacts within the automotive industry. If you go to one of these parties thinking you’re going to meet all kinds of girls and bang like 3 chicks in one night, you’re setting yourself up for failure. The girls that are usually there either work there or they are already spoken for. Like I tell everyone every year, the only girls you’re going to meet and take back to your room while you’re there for SEMA are girls that you have to pay for..haha…sad, but true. I don’t give a shit about meeting girls at these parties, because I have a significant other and May is usually there with me at the parties anyways. I just go for fun and shoot the shit, possibly drink a little… I mean, it’s a good time. There are a lot of friends and acquaintances that I hardly get to see normally so being out there in Vegas with them is cool. We make the most of these parties anyways and it’s usually a good fucking time… The only thing we try to avoid is fighting with drunken idiots because there are dudes at these parties that just get absolutely shit-faced. Anyways, below are a couple of photos from Club XS and these photos will conclude day one of SEMA 2011…pretty crazy that we’ve gone three parts of the coverage already and it’s only the end of day one…May took the majority of these photos so thanks goes out to her for covering everything outside of the SEMA show…
One of the guys we didn’t see throughout the day that ended up coming out to party with us was Rodrez from Honda Tuning magazine…He was in some meetings earlier in the night so it was cool of him to come out and unwind…behind him is another familiar face, Ryan from Rywire, who showed up to the club with a free cut…
For being inside of a club that was 80% dudes, the go-go dancers working that night at XS were awfully friendly to us… Here Jared is asking one of the girls if they could re-enact a porn scene he had seen the night before he left for Vegas and asked her to spit in his mouth…Disgusting, yes, but that’s just how DPK Jared gets down…”Spit in my mouth Rihanna” said Jared…
Jared also did some questionable dancing, which made Rodrez feel awkward…
I could only imagine what these girls were thinking about when they were dancing over a sea of dudes…
Jonathan Wong from Super Street magazine showed up and promptly shoved a drink in my face…Mr. Wong is one of those asians that gets the “asian glow” when he drinks and turns bright red…in this photo, you can see that his ear is about to explode, haha….
Jared posing for a photo while chatting up one of the dancers…
DPK Darryl and his buddy trying to steal money from go-go dancer/import model Michelle Yee….
It had been a while since I had seen or talked to my buddy Travis, so we decided to chat while this couple dry-humped eachother next to us…
UFC fighter Quinton “Rampage” Jackson was at the SEMA show and the after parties….May caught this photo of him dancing with one of the go-go girls…
There are so many different things going on in this photo…the obvious one is me disguising myself as Rick Ross, but also take a look at the two creepy white dudes in the back and some random dude trying to check Michelle Yee’s oil…haha… “HUUHHHH” -Rick Ross
May wanted to get a picture with DPK Darryl and our friend Rom but Darryl looked bored and uninterested in the photo so I transformed him into Goro from Mortal Kombat…
Me in front of the camera for once, posing for a photo with DPK David and Jared… I think the same dude that was checking that go-go dancer’s oil earlier was also checking Jared’s in this pic…
I sealed off the night with a kiss…
…and a sandwich from my favorite sandwich spot of all time and then called it a night….
Good times were had by all….
DAY TWO (Wednesday)….
I didn’t get a whole lot of sleep that night because we were at the club until around 3am, but I really wanted to get to the show to cover as much of it as I possibly could. That way I could have more free time the rest of the week. I ate some leftovers from the previous night, and then David, Jared, and I set off once again to the SEMA show. May decided to stay behind and catch up on some work since she had taken the week off from her regular job and also went to get some groceries for our place in Vegas…
When we got to the convention center, we decided to see what else the outside had to offer before checking out one of the halls that we had yet to walk inside…
Clean silver Audi wagon on Rotiform wheels…I’m pretty confident in saying that probably 60% of the photos I took had a care with Rotiform wheels on it…these things were seriously EVERYWHERE. I wonder if/when Rota would start making copies of these wheels, judging by their recent rise in popularity. If they did, would they simply call them “Rota Forms”? haha….so stupid…
This Accord coupe was interesting/weird/not attractive/from 2001…
Turbo H22 under the hood…I don’t know if I would call this a shave and tuck so I shall call it…”shit covering everything”… The only person I could picture driving this car was the opera singer from the Fifth Element movie…haha…definitely a unique build but there is some stuff that was questionable like the painted engine block with all the bolts and everything also painted. It’s like they just masked shit off and sprayed everything blue…
SL65 AMG V12 Bi-turbo…I believe this is the same one from the VIP Festival coverage I posted up…
Always liked this Audi Nimbus Grey BMW 3-series sedan….sorry once again, for the bukkake shadow…
I also have always been a fan of this BMW M3 with a mix of euro and Japanese style….
This Lexus LS was definitely another one of my favorites at the SEMA show. I had first seen it online when Freddie from Autofashion posted a photo of it, so I was excited to finally see it in person…Love the Aimgain aero and WED’s Maverick wheels…I also like the fact that he didn’t try to go all crazy “hellaflush” poke with his suspensino and wheel set-up. This is true, traditional VIP styling and I will always be a fan of this look…
Diamond-stitched dashboard and interior…
Liked the contrasting red accents on the black. The red exhaust tips are a nice touch and definitely not something you see attempted everyday on other VIP builds…
The red pin-striping is also a very nice touch….
DPK David asked me what I liked about this car and I told him that it was just an overall great package in terms of VIP styling and execution. It just all comes together and works. It is the way traditional Japanese VIP builds should look. I know that these days, wild aero and custom vents and everything is all the rage in Japan but it’s good to see this simplistic style executed…Much props to Kyoei USA for putting this build together and showing that it’s not just all about wheels and being slammed and looking broken…
SL65 AMG which the owner dubbed “SL666″…get it? Because it’s red and blaaaaaack….
Infiniti M with Job Design aero and infinite amounts of negative camber in the rear….
VIP-styled Honda Odyssey from Team Sunworks…
If Big Mike’s Prelude and Mike G’s Tank had a bastard child, it would pretty much look like this…
1GS from Platinum VIP…
Subaru wagon with it’s rear door shaved…why it was done I will never know…
Bright green S2000 with Powerhouse Amuse or “Amuse style” widebody aero….
“Minty Fresh Z” from Vegas…This is the same Z that used to have the same wheels but in a chrome magenta/pinkish color…
That’s all for today…another 60 photos down with much more to come. Hope you guys enjoyed what you saw so far…back with more tomorrow…
SEMA Show 2011 Coverage…Part 2…
I apologize for the lack of updates the last couple days. I was fully prepared to start up part 2 of the SEMA coverage on Thursday but I ended up spending most of the day trying to finish up some magazine work as well as test fitting my new wheels on my Q45. The story took a little longer than I thought it would and then I ended up not even getting any sleep Thursday night. Come Friday, I had an early shoot that took most of the afternoon and whatever time I had I used it to nap. I guess the lack of sleep in combination with trying to do so many other things at once caused me to get sick and my Saturday was spent in bed just feeling completely shitty the whole day. In any case, we are finally getting to part 2 of the SEMA coverage now and we will for sure move on to part 3 on Monday…
Today we will be covering more of what was inside the central hall of the SEMA show, which consisted of the major manufacturers as well as stuff that was in the wheel and tire hall…
At this point of the show, we had spent a majority of the time exploring everything in the central hall before arriving at the Honda of America section where the 2012 Civic SEMA builds were parked…
The first car inside the Honda area that caught my attention right away was Bisimoto’s 2012 Civic. It was good to finally see this thing in it’s state of completion and sitting on the SEMA show floor. I had been at the Bisimoto facilities the last couple nights it was there watching it all come together in the last hours of the night so I honestly felt a sense of accomplishment seeing it at the show…
Engine bay of the Bisimoto Civic…
I loved the way this build came out and I’m happy that we were able to figure out a way to get those Eins Gramm wheels on there, especially considering how closely it came to not happening because of clearance issues with the suspension, body, and tire sizing…
Interior shot of the Bisimoto Civic with the Racepak display lit up…
Dyno sheet displaying the final horsepower output of the Bisimoto 2012 Civic… Unless you haven’t heard by now, yes, the turbo K24Z7 engine made 1003.6 horsepower….
Bisi Ezerioha and DPK David chatting it up and David giving his impressions of the build after finally seeing it in person for the first time…
The Tjin Edition 2012 Civic Si 4-door on Rotiform wheels… This year, Neil and Gene Tjin went with a more casual look. Nothing too over the top or crazy because they wanted to show that the ’12 Civic could be stylish in even it’s simplest form….
Fox Marketing’s widebody 2012 Honda Civic Si coupe with Full Race turbo kit and Vossen wheels…
With so much custom body work and time devoted to the exterior of the Civic, the engine bay definitely left a little bit more to be desired…
HPD 2011 Honda CR-Z “Hybrid R Concept” with aero and wheels by 5Axis Design…
2012 Civic SI coupe with HFP (Honda Factory Performance) full lip kit…
HPD ’12 Civic race car on Volk Racing TE37SL…
HPD-prepped 2012 Civic chassis which I guess is available for purchase in raw form like this…They had parts listings and part numbers for everything on this chassis because it can be purchased separately…
A trio of new Hyundai Veloster builds over at the Hyundai booth…I still don’t know how I feel about this car…The original concept car looked really cool but the production model obviously doesn’t look as good. It’s kind of like the girl at the club that isn’t really all that hot, but after a couple drinks, in that special moment in time, under the right light, she actually looks very decent…yeah that’s the correct way to describe the Veloster: “Very Decent”… The Veloster name is also a combination of the words “velocity” and “roadster”, which if you think about it, isn’t all that creative either. So since the Veloster is “very decent”, they should have just named the car the Hyundai Vecent…haha… I’d build the living shit out of one for SEMA though, that’s for sure. Send one our way and we can make this thing fucking amazing… We will call it the Hyundai “Fumazing” after that…throw a cheesy one-eyed wink after you read that last line too…
Z33 drift car at the K-Sport booth…We went back to this booth the next day and spotted the spokesmodel they had and she was fucking shredded…oh man, she was in such good shape that Jared went to go take a picture with her and her abs almost ripped Jared’s tiny little sweater off his body, haha…
I knew Sunny from Franklin Autobody was doing some stuff to his Insight for SEMA but when DPK David called me over to check it out, I was pretty shocked to see it’s transformation…He went from this VIP-themed luxury hybrid look to this race-inspired, very aggressive look…. It’s a very drastic change…
I believe this is a J’s Racing wing from an EK Civic…actually, I think this is Ryan Der’s old J’s wing off his white EK….
17×9.5 -/+0 offset Volk TE37s and Brembo brakes…
Sunny’s Insight got a lot of attention throughout the day. The moments I was there hanging out, I saw all kinds of people stop by to snap a photo and many of them I could tell weren’t even Honda/import guys…
You can tell how much the rear has been modified by seeing the edge where the quarter panel and rear door meet…Definitely a lot of time and work put into this Insight…
Enjuku Racing supercharged LS1-swapped Hyundai Genesis coupe in the BC Racing booth…
Nissan 370Z also from the BC Racing booth…
Widebody Nissan R35 GT-R from High End/Auto Concept Elite representing Eneos Sustina…
Stopped by the Vibrant Performance booth to chat with our friend Donavan Griffith. We only get to see Donovan once a year and it’s at the annual SEMA show. He and Vibrant Performance have always taken very good care of us so we just had to get a photo with him…
Passed by the HKS booth and saw this S2000 rocking one of their supercharger kits… Cool thing about stumbling upon the HKS booth was that one of the guys working that day for them ended up being the translator that was with the Tactical Art Japan guys when we met up with them in the evening. That was a long sentence…
Ken Suen’s Civic w/Mugen RR kit reppin’ Ultra Racing…
2nd generation Honda Fit with a Buddy Club livery…
1 of 2 Rauh Welt Begriff (RWB) USA Porsches on display at SEMA, this one from Hoonigan Inc. on fifteen52 3GS Tarmac Split wheels…People were going absolutely apeshits in anticipation of seeing these RWB Porsches at SEMA so it’s only fitting that they decided to put a fucking stool, podium, giant computer screen, and spokesmodel in front of it…
Here’s a shot of the wing because this was the only area where there wasn’t something obstructing view of the car…
After trying to get a good look at the Porsche for a couple minutes, we decided to head over to the wheel and tire hall. It was getting late and May wanted to get some freebies before days end and the tire hall usually had the best stuff…
Bentley GT at the Nexen tire booth…I don’t know anyone with a Bentley GT nor do I know any one with Nexen tires so this is unfamiliar territory for me… I also don’t know what aero kit is on the Bentley. I imagine it would be somewhere along the lines of “can’t buy it with stickydiljoe.com money”….
Widebody Cadillac CTS-V coupe in the Toyo Tires area…
I gotta give this model props for doing her job to the best of her ability. I actually waited for her to walk away so that I could get a full shot of this car. When I went to snap the photo as she was walking away, she fucking ran back all quick and got into position for this photo, even though I wasn’t really trying to get her in the shot…haha. I was honestly just trying to figure out what kind of car this was because the design of it was so unique. Turns out that this car is actually a “Fisker Karma”, which is an electric luxury vehicle that makes 401HP and 981lb-ft TQ…. It’s a good looking car for sure and way more impressive because it electric and eco-friendly…
Time attack S2000 from AFI turbo sitting in the Hankook booth…First time seeing this car with this particular front end…
BMW 5-series in the Forgestar/Iforged booth with an End CC front lip and diffuser… Wheels are Forgestar F15….
Lamborghini LP700-4 Aventador on Giovanna wheels…
Mansory Ferrari 458 Italia…
…with carbon fiber rear louvers…
Audi S5 in the Falken Tire section on red Rotiform wheels…
Lexus LF-A…
RWB Porsche 964 belonging to Mark Arcenal from Fatlace, dubbed “Pandora One”…
Sitting on aggressive Rotiform “RWB” wheels…
Rear quarter shot of Pandora One…
This was definitely one of the most talked-about builds leading up to SEMA and it’s debut definitely didn’t disappoint….
It was day one of SEMA so there were many photo-ops with Nakai-san from RWB…here he is posing for a photo with a RWB Thailand rep to his right and Mark Arcenal from Fatlace/Illest to his left…
DPK Jared is an S2000-owner but he also owns a Porsche and is a big fan of RWB and Porsches in general, so he leaped at the opportunity to get a photo with Nakai-san…As you can see from the photo, Nakai was also overjoyed to get a photo with Jared, haha…seriously though, dude just never smiles. I don’t recall a photo ever taken of him where he’s actually worn any sort of emotion on his face. Guess it goes with the whole RWB image and that’s just his style…
After taking a few moments to check out Mark Arcenal’s Porsche, we decided that it was time to start heading out since the show was coming to a close for the day…
Upon leaving the wheel/tire hall, we came upon some cars that we will never own in our lifetimes because we all decided one day to not sell drugs… The car above is a matte black Mansory Rolls Royce Phantom…if you thought a Rolls Royce Phantom was expensive, imagine one with a Mansory kit…
I loved the way this Premier4509 Bentley Continental GT looked…the wheels and aero are executed perfectly on this CGT. It’s a car I would definitely consider selling drugs for…the only thing stopping me is the fact that I already don’t have enough time in the day to do everything I want to do. If I were selling drugs on top of that, I would definitely have to start doing some yay to stay awake and I’m just way too good looking to fuck with drugs…my good friend Notorious B.I.G. already stated very clearly once that I should never get high on my own supply and I’m just one of those guys that likes to listen to their friend’s advice. Plus, my shitty apartment wouldn’t even give me another parking pass to park this Bentley inside my complex, so fuck that…I don’t want dirty fucking street cats jumping all over this car any way…
Alright, that’s all for today. I really should be getting some rest since I still feel like shit…back with more tomorrow…the next post is pretty funny, I mean, I haven’t written it out or anything yet but I have an active imagination and trust me, my brain tells me that it’s very funny…
Thanks for looking….
SEMA Show 2011 Coverage…Part 1…
Ahh…finally…time for the enormous batch of photos from the 2011 SEMA Show in Las Vegas. I have to say, this one was one of the best trips to Vegas yet. I’ve gone in years past and it’s always been good, but this year was definitely a memorable one. The show itself was probably the best one yet I feel in terms of variety and quality cars. I don’t know if it was just me but the show seemed more full this year and foot traffic seemed to be a lot better. I went every day but Friday and it was extremely busy all week at SEMA. I kept asking everyone what they thought there favorite car was of the show and now in hindsight, I understand why no one could give me a straight answer. There was just so much to see and so many different types of builds and styles of cars to even come close to a decision as to what a favorite would be. There are definitely cars that stood out though, that’s for sure. From the moment we walked into the show til the very last moments when we walked out for the last time, there was always something that captured our attention…
I know you guys have seen a bulk of what SEMA had to offer already from various internet sources, but I promise you, the coverage here will be unlike anything you have seen. I will take you from the show to the after parties and all the while, I will include all the cool random things that we encountered along the way. The photos won’t be in any particular order….I’m basically going to provide you with everything I saw in the order that it happened through my eyes. Unlike last year, I didn’t cover the drive there though because it was pretty uninteresting. Nobody took any cars this year to SEMA and we basically took our daily drivers and got there as fast as we can. I hope you enjoy indepth coverage because I covered everything that I could. I know this is a Honda-dedicated site, but there just wasn’t that much Honda content at SEMA this year. I love all kinds of cars so I captured whatever sparked my interest and if I saw something stupid or ridiculous going on, you better believe I covered it. I have to give a special shout-out to May because she took the time to cover all the shenanigans that occurred during the after parties we went to. Luckily we were taken care of every well at every party and didn’t have to stress out on getting in or getting VIP passes or any of that BS. I’m happy that we know good people that helped us out with that. With that said, let’s get started on day one of the SEMA Show 2011 Mini-Series…It’s going to be a good one…
One really cool thing that happened this year was having Halloween happen on the same week as SEMA. SEMA is always on the first week of November but this year, it just so happened that the 31st of October landed on the Monday of SEMA. I have been to Vegas in Halloween in the past and it was always a good time so we decided to head out there on Monday to check it out. It’s cool to see people dressed-up in costumes and just walking around on the strip and it always helps if there is a reason for women to dress like scantily-clad whores in Vegas, haha….you guys know what I mean. This year, I noticed a bit of a disturbing trend in Vegas though…instead of hoards of scantily-clad floozies, I saw an abundance of dudes dressed-up as women all over the strip…it was not a good look. It is what it is though so we decided to grab some dinner at Tacos El Gordo, and then put on our costumes and walk around the Las Vegas strip…
Here we are after dinner walking around the Palms… DPK Jared was dressed as Hipster Teen Wolf, I was Waldo, and DPK David was “The criminal from any reality television show about cops who doesn’t agree to sign the release to have their likeness displayed on TV”,…that’s why his face is blurred….or he could have been “What DPK David looks like to me if I didn’t have my contact lenses on”. Either costume works but I thought it was a novel idea. I gotta tell you one thing though, if you want to dress up as Waldo, be prepared for any and every one to randomly walk up to you and go “I FOUND YOUUUU!!!!” in the most obnoxious tone possible because IT WILL happen. I already knew it when I got the costume but my last costume was a complete Jesus outfit and that yielded even stranger responses from people….I’m sure if you are single and ready to meet annoying drunk girls the costume would work out great, but alas, I am neither single or drunk enough to talk to random girls in their drunken state…
After walking around for a bit, we decided to call it a night and head back to our hotel. On the way back, I asked David if he had ever been to the famous “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign before at the front of the strip and he said he hadn’t, so we stopped by for a quick photo….
We got back to our hotel shortly after, watched some television, and then knocked out to prepare for the first day of SEMA…
The next day, we grabbed some breakfast at a local deli and set off to the Las Vegas Convention Center. All the stupid traffic and detours from construction threw me off so we ended up getting lost and stuck in traffic for a bit before we eventually got to the show. We parked in our usual spot and made our way into the SEMA show…
DPK David was all smiles and enjoying the lovely scenery in Vegas…
The first car we saw upon arriving at the show was the Meguiar’s Lexus CT200H… Jon Sibal actually did the original rendering for this car and you can see more of it here….
The paint finish on the cars inside the Meguiar’s booth are always immaculate…absolutely love the way this pick-up looked…
Acura TL sporting a full wrap by Meguiar’s Wraptivo…
DynaSport 1932 Ford Roadster…Check out more build photos of it here….
Custom rat rod pick-up from Honest Charley Speed Shop…
Rotiform wheels were everywhere this year. It was the wheel of choice for many of the exhibiting cars in attendance…This particular set looks good on this white Camaro…
Really liked this red GS that I saw once before at the Team Praxis/VIP Modular meet a couple months back…I actually hit up the shop that put this car together to do a story on it for one of the mags I work for but never got a response…Guess they weren’t interested… 
…
F50 CIMA on VIP Modular wheels…
A pair of R35 GT-Rs built by Jotech Motorsports from Texas…
Linda’s TRD Supercharged Toyota Matrix representing Team Praxis…
Jay Borcena’s Acura TL sitting on 18-inch VIP Modular wheels and Accuair suspension, also from Team Praxis…
Joey’s VIP-styled Scion tC from Praxis…
Cool looking custom fire truck…
Factory Five ’33 hot rod…
A pair of lowriders from LIFESTYLE…
Troy Trepanier’s Chevy Nova aka “NOTORIOUS”…572 cubic inch big block Chevy equipped with a Procharger supercharger…
The moment I came upon this E-class, I instantly knew that it would be one of my favorite cars at SEMA… Carlsson everything sitting on custom bronze BBS LMs…
Such a good looking Benz…Turns out that Sunny from Franklin Autobody painted this car as well and I got a chance to meet and chat with the owner for a little bit…I got a lot more of this car but towards the end of the SEMA show. I liked it so much I went back and just hovered over it for a while…haha..
This literally looks like one of those toy die cast trucks you can buy at a department store…those big ass wheels are fucking ridiculous…
One popular trend that I noticed at the SEMA show was putting older front clips on new body-style domestic muscle…I don’t know how popular this trend is but it’s definitely not that great of a look…This particular covertible has an older Camaro front end on a current generation Camaro…That’s like taking a decent looking girl and putting old lady titties on her…haha, just fucking weird man…
Porsches were definitely at the 2011 SEMA show….this one is equipped with a Top Secret aero kit and SSR MS1s….
I’m unsure about how I feel about this G35. Overall, it doesn’t look bad but I just don’t understand why people put their car on air suspension and it looks all racked like this with the front end slammed and the rear sitting high…looks like the car is braking really hard at stand still…
We still hadn’t picked up our SEMA passes yet so Jared, May, and I walked up to the Media Center to grab our media passes. The nice old lady that was giving us our passes starting laughing when she read that the passes belonged to people from a site called “stickydiljoe.com”, haha….
One of the many perks of having a media pass was this special section that offered food and drinks to media members…Jared and May grabbed some coffee while I drank some ice tea/lemonade… DPK David was off looking for Rywire Ryan to get his pass from him so we decided to meet up downstairs…
While we were waiting for David to come back, we spotted Quinton “Rampage” Jackson from the UFC walk by…
This was random as hell, but while we were waiting, the side skirt on this Audi randomly just fell off the car, haha….
I didn’t believe it so I walked over there and the side skirt did indeed fall off the car…how embarassing, haha….Nobody was even standing near the car or anything, shit just fell off…
One of the more popular vehicles in this area was this Cadillac convertible…
Once David met up with us, we made our way inside one of the halls to check out the cars inside. This white R35 GT-R looked real good in the Rotora brakes area…
This blue Camaro convertible inside the Extreme Dimensions booth ended up winning one of the awards for best cars at SEMA I believe…I don’t know that much about it other than this crappy photo I took of it…haha…
I thought this was supposed to be a Firebird Trans Am-style kit designed for the new Camaros but it actually isn’t. It’s a Camaro known as “The Firebreather” and was built by Classic Design Concepts for an upcoming movie called “Jinn”. I don’t know shit about the movie or what it’s about but this car looks pretty cool and the guy that played Darth Maul in the Star Wars movie is set to star in it….
Loved this old Ford Bronco resto-mod in the Ford Motor Company section…
2012 Ford Mustang V6 from MRT Performance…
Really digging the new Ford Focus…this one had a matching green bike on the roof and HRE wheels…
This was also on a new Ford Focus but I snapped this photo because I thought it was a cool way to show off the brakes…
Tjin Edition Ford Explorer…
This 1970 Mustang was built by the Ring Brothers and is dubbed “The Dragon”…
Roush 427 IR crate motor…
This whole package is actually available for purchase through Ring Brothers and isn’t just a one-off, one-time build…
There was all kinds of crazy commotion and hoopla going on outside in the Lexus area so we decided to walk into their gigant tent set-up to see what it was all about… Turns out that they were unveiling the new Lexus GS F-Sport and also unveiled the 5Axis GS F-Sport along with it. 5Axis can never really do anything wrong in terms of styling and this GS F-Sport looks fucking amazing…There was such a huge crowd around it that it was hard to get photos of it but I managed to elbow my way in and get these shots. Easily one of my favorites at the SEMA 2011 event…
Here is the GS F-Sport in stock form…sorry for the somewhat blurry photo, I was mid-elbow during this shot…
Walked out of the tent to get some air and spotted this Lexus SUV “factory off-road racing” build…
Another perk of having a media pass was that you could get in line to get a ride in the new GS F-Sport…They had a nice course set-up for some “spirited driving”…
DPK David and Jared didn’t hesitate to go for a spin…
That’s all for today…back with part 2 tomorrow….
Thanks for looking!!
Autofashion VIP Festival 2011 Coverage…Part 2 of 2…
Back now with the second and concluding portion of the 2011 VIP Festival coverage. I’m glad that the photos have gotten such good feedback and brought some attention to this site from guys who probably have never been over here before. I know this is mainly a Honda-dedicated site but I really have a deep love for the Japanese VIP-style community. I sold my Honda to get into this scene and seeing cars like these really inspire me to want to keep working on my Q45. I don’t mess around with it that much because my money has gone to other things the last couple years but I’m slowly putting some work into it again. I really wanted to bring my car out there for the meet and was really looking forward to it but my wheels just weren’t ready in time and I didn’t even have tires yet so it just wasn’t going to happen. Oh well, it’s all good…I’ll just save it for next year and just enjoy the car in the meantime. Today, we are going to be taking a look at the back half of the photos before we jump into the first portion of the SEMA 2011 coverage tomorrow… Enjoy everyone, and as always, thanks for looking. I really do appreciate it…
Seeing Q45s like this really make me consider taking my Wald kit off. I really like the look of the kit but lately, I’ve been feeling the whole non-kit look, especially since the OEM black trim on my car has been color-matched already. The wheels are the new VIP Modular wheels that resemble the old Work Euroline Type-N and MAE Crown Jewel wheel…pretty cool. The smaller windows give it more of a sleeker look than the Jewel/Euroline…
At this point of the event, the rain had actually slowed down to a really light drizzle so I made my way throughout the meet and crossed the street to see what cars were in the adjacent lot…
2GS with some Junction Produce gear…Guy had like a full display set-up for his car with silver and black balloons and everything, crazy…haha…
Really liked this white 2GS that was also representing Kyoei USA from AZ. Good looking car… The Weds Maverick line of wheels is starting to grow on me…
Infiniti M on some Work Varianza D3S…
3GS with a full Job Design aero kit…
G35 from Low ‘N Slow sitting on aggressive SSR MS1 wheels…
Another 2GS with Junction Produce products…
A pair of TSXs, the second belonging to Bryant Nguyen who recently installed his D2 air ride kit…
Loved the cement grey TE37s on this IS….
I’ve always wanted an LS as well because they look so good just lowered on some nice wheels. This one has no kit, just very simple, and Leon Hardiritt Ordens look great on just about any car…
VIP-styled S14 rocking a Supermade Instant Gentlemen kit…I’ve actually been trying to figure out who owns this car so if anyone knows, please hit me up!…
Even though it was the “VIP Festival”, it was also open to cars of all makes and models like this stunning orange Evo 8….
One final look at Blitz’s newly debuted Y33 Q45…Love the paint-matched grille and K-Break aero. Also very refreshing to see a VIP build that isn’t black, white, or silver….
A couple more of Jay’s TL as well…This car has come a long way in the last year or so…
I’ve followed Jon Sibal’s blog for years now so it was cool to finally see his Dodge Challenger R/T in person for the first time after always seeing him write about it. He actually won this Dodge from participating and ultimately winning a design competition held by MSN Autos and Dodge. The livery he came up with back then to win was a black on black look with realistic flames along the front and sides of the vehicle. Now it’s wrapped in matte black, sits on SSR Professor SP1s, and recently got an air ride set-up installed for SEMA courtesy of Airrunner… It’s a good look and I’m a big fan. The guy is also an amazing artist and has done a lot of work for DC Comics…
Nit’s purple S2000…
After reading Autofashion’s coverage of the meet, I realized that this GS was actually one of their new projects. It apparently didn’t get finished in time for SEMA but I’m excited to see the progress on this build…
Lexus RX with a Wald Executive kit…
It’s crazy how low the rear of these IS’ can go when they are on air….half the wheel is tucked under there…
1st generation Toyota Cressida on BBS wheels…I remember seeing this thing back when Ross from Midnight Garage was installing the air ride kit on it. I don’t know how I feel about the BBS wheels on it, perhaps something a little older would be more fitting on this chassis…
I couldn’t finish off my coverage of the meet without including some photos of Big Steve’s LS…I can’t believe I’ve seen this car three times this year. The time travel apparatus that he installed on his car must have broken or something, thus preventing him from being able to teleport the car back to Middle-Earth…haha. In all seriousness though, it is good to see this car. It was one of the first true VIP-themed builds back when there wasn’t even a VIP community and it’s remained one of the better builds up until this day…
Freddie entertaining the crowd by singing a cover of New Edition’s “Can You Stand The Rain”… “Sunny days, everybody loves them, tell me baby can you stand the rain…”
Nitty Beat can stand the rain…
Miss VIP Festival Julie Mai was all smiles because she too can stand the rain…
I arrived at the VIP Festival when it was raining the most so of course, it was only fitting that the sun finally made it’s way out when I decided to leave to grab some Lolita’s Mexican food before heading back to L.A….I loved this shot so much that I turned it into a 1080P-sized desktop wallpaper. I posted this up on Facebook yesterday but I know a lot of you guys don’t have Facebook so click the link for the larger image…. Desktop Version (1920×1080)
Oh this was pretty cool…I wanted to snap a photo of Tetsuya from USDM Jam before I left and the gentleman to the right of him is Shuji Fujioka, a member of the sales department over at Junction Produce Japan. Tetsuya introduced us and Mr. Fujioka was kind enough to give me…
…this Junction Produce L.E.D. flash light. It’s a solid piece and not one of those flimsy plastic lights that break after three uses… Cool of him to give this to me after meeting me for a brief moment…If you are reading this, thanks again sir!…
That’s about it. After we said bye to everyone, we drove another ten minutes down to Lolita’s Taco Shop to grab some mexican food. Overall it was a good time. Even though it rained for a majority of it, it didn’t prevent people from coming out or leaving early. Thanks for looking and congrats to Autofashion on another successful event. SEMA 2011 coverage starts tomorrow….
Autofashion VIP Festival 2011 Coverage…Part 1…
About a couple hours ago, I made the decision to go ahead and go through the photos from this year’s VIP Festival and get those up first before we get to the SEMA coverage. One of the main reasons behind that decision is because there are just so many photos from SEMA. I’m going to have to divide those up and it’ll take multiple parts before we can get through all of it. The Autofashion VIP Festival provided a lot of good photos so I figured it would be better to get those out to you first. SEMA photos are floating around already but the VIP Festival just happened on Sunday, so you probably haven’t seen anything up about that yet. There’s only around 70 photos or so from the event as well so we can knock that out in the next two days. The SEMA coverage will take up a bulk of the next two weeks so be prepared for that….
Anyways, let’s get going with part one of the Autofashion VIP Festival…
I try to make it a point to come out to any event that Freddie from Autofashion puts together. We’ve known eachother for quite some time now and we have always made it a point to support eachother. He’s taken time out of his schedule the last two years to come help me out at my anniversary meets so it’s only right that I make the trek down to San Diego to be a part of his annual VIP Festival events. I’ve been in love with the VIP-style of tuning since the early 2000s and I’m happy to see how big the scene has grown throughout the years. One of the main reasons behind it’s growth is due in part to Freddie and Autofashion. They laid the groundwork for the VIP scene years ago and Autofashion has developed quite the following since then. The annual VIP Festival happens the Sunday after SEMA every year because it’s easier to get everyone out to San Diego since they are already in the same general area. A lot of VIP enthusiasts are out in Vegas for the SEMA show already so it makes sense to make the drive down to check out the event…
I’ll be honest, I was pretty worn out from the entire week in Vegas but I wasn’t about to just lay in bed all day and miss out on the VIP Festival. We all made the trip out there last year and it was a great time so it was definitely something I was looking forward to. The last couple days in Vegas, it had already begun to rain so on Sunday morning, I woke up to check the weather reports and it showed no indication of rain until the evening. I called up DPK David to see if he was ready to roll and he didn’t believe me when I told him it wasn’t raining in San Diego. I don’t blame him because we were just about an hour and a half away from the event and it was pouring where we were at. I grabbed some breakfast with May and left with a sense of optimism because I really didn’t want it to rain. I was worried the event would be dead because of it so I looked online and was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not only busy, but it also wasn’t raining. I picked up DPK David as well as Rywire Ryan and the four of us headed down to San Diego. The whole drive down was pretty intense because of the rain in our area but we were looking forward to arriving to a nice, dry, VIP Festival. I kept telling everyone in the car that it wasn’t going to rain but a couple miles away from the freeway exit, the rain was still coming down pretty consistently…. Turns out that we were basically racing the storm the entire time and it beat us to the meet. When we arrived at Autofashion, it started to come down pretty hard but luckily for us, the guys at Falken Tire were there with a booth that provided us coverage from the rain….
All the cars were soaked by the time we got there but at least it made for some interesting photos…
It was pretty gloomy and gray which was a stark contrast to the Facebook photos we saw posted from the event earlier on in the day…
One thing that was really surprising was the sheer number of cars that were there and remained there even through the storm…
…it was a great example of how devoted people are to Freddie and the Autofashion family. Many of these cars would never even touch the rain on a regular day, let alone sit out in torrential downpour…
One of the cars that I was excited to see was the debut of this Aurora Flare Blue Pearl Y33 Q45, which belongs to VIPstylecars forum member Tony aka “Blitz”…I met him while I was standing under a random canopy hiding from the rain and he was a pretty nice guy…I was really hoping the rain would stop for just a quick moment so I could go take a closer look at his car but in the mean time, all I could do was look at it from a distance…
SL65 AMG pulling into the VIP Festival…Only way to out-floss all the nice Japanese VIP builds is to pull up in a 12-cylinder European beast…
Kevin from Autofashion and “Miss VIP Festival” Julie Mai checking out the event… Julie looked pretty upbeat walking around in the storm…
…while this dog wasn’t particularly happy to be drenched…
5&A Dime and the Dudeblvd crew were on hand to show support…
Enrique Rosario and Natalie attempting to stick it out…
Tetsuya Yamaguchi from USDM Jam/Yamaz Store flew out from Japan for the 2011 SEMA show and decided to stop by the VIP Festival…
The first couple shots are pretty random because I spent a chunk of time under the Falken Tire tent just getting whatever I could with the 70-200mm lens…I wasn’t afraid of getting drenched or anything, I just wasn’t really down with getting my camera wet but eventually I sucked it up and started walking around when the rain let up a bit…
I walked out and ran into my old high school buddy Dennis Kiyan and snapped this photo of Jay Borcena’s Acura TL while I was chatting with him…
Really love this TRD widebody SW20 MR-2 but I really wish he would just fix that wing already…
I’ve always had a soft spot for the Y34 Infiniti M chassis…I was trying to find one actually when I was looking for a car to build a couple years back until I landed on the Y33 Q45 I have now…
This Aimgain-equipped LS from Arizona was one of my favorite cars at SEMA so it was great to see it at the Festival…
Blitz’s Y33…I can’t say I’ve ever been a fan of Weds Kranze LX-Zs but they look amazing on his Q…The Aurora Flare Blue Pearl paint is a color from a 2012 Nissan GT-R that’s supposed to have a really cool effect when the sun hits it. I would not see that cool effect that day because of the obvious…
Even though Leon Casino has never personally built a VIP ride, it didn’t stop him from making the trip down to SD to show his support…
The Lexus 2GS chassis was definitely one of the most popular at the VIP Festival…
This magenta/fuscia/hot pink-toned G35 was definitely interesting, especially with the gold Leon Hardiritt Ordens…
Really liked this 2GS on Weds Kranze Bazreias…
Meanwhile back at the Falken Tire tent, Ryan was bragging about how he found a pair of dry socks in his snowboarding jacket…
Dennis Kiyan’s M45…
Absolutely loved everything about this LS….the attention to detail is awesome and something that many VIP guys overlook…More on this car in the SEMA 2011 coverage later…
I personally would never build a pink car on gold wheels but I have to say, I like this G35 a lot…the kit is not too over the top and the wheels aren’t poking out all ridiculously…
Silver 2GS on Eurolines from the crew “Royal Flush”…
Hakosuka Skyline GT-R that’s popped-up at numerous events this year…
JonJon’s supercharged IS350…
Oscar aka “Pancakes” Y33 Q45…
Big fan of this VIP Acura TL…love the custom kit and fender work…
Great wheel fitment on this 2GS…Interesting how he incorporated the JDM sidemarker lights into his vented front fender instead of shaving the hole like many would…Makes for a cool look since people just expect you to shave everything and delete things these days…
Q45 belonging to VIPstylecars forum member “Brokey33″…
…his Weds Kranze Cerberus wheels with custom Z32 300ZX brake calipers “bedazzled” with Swarovski crystals…
Q45 also repping VIPDOUT…I actually went and checked out their website and it’s got some pretty cool shit on it… check it out here if you’re into VIP stuff….
Gonna cut it off here for now…Definitely coming back with the second and final portion of the 2011 VIP Festival Coverage…thanks for looking…
Year.Three Coverage…Part 3…Finale…
Just a couple final shots of the Year.Three event…I hope everyone had a great time and if you didn’t, at least you got a chance to enjoy these photos. It’s too far away right now to know for sure if we will do another anniversary meet next year but if all goes well, why not to another one, right?…
On with the photos. If you guys haven’t had a chance to check out the previous two posts of Year.Three coverage, just click back to the previous posts and you will find them there…
Now, to close it out….
Here’s a couple of shots of the front VIP area during the mid-afternoon… We had a great turn-out overall, and I was very happy with the attendance. As I stated before, I missed out on taking shots of a lot of cars because I didn’t start covering most of the event until later on in the day…
One more shot of Angelo Arayata’s EF, this one with the hood closed…
A clean R on white Regamaster EVOs…
Around 430pm, it was time to present the awards… From left to right, we had the “Best Engine Bay” award, followed by “The Chronicles’ Choice”, then “Best Non-Honda”, and “Best Honda”…Another reason why I was running back and forth all day was to judge the cars. I had the help of Rywire Ryan, DPK David, and Big Mike, but it was still hard to determine the winners since there were so many great cars on hand that day…
To kick off the awards, Big Mike and I announced the “Best Non-Honda” award, which went to Ka Wong and his F20C-powered orange AE86 Corolla…I don’t know many builds out there that are as well built as Ka’s Hachi-Roku, so we had to give it up to him… I also ordered some L&L Hawaiian BBQ from him earlier that morning too and brought it out to the meet for close friends and family. Inside the bay at Eibach was a little party we had going on with food and drinks….
The “Best Engine Bay” award was probably the most debated award among our group of judges…there are just so many different style of clean engine bays so it was hard to decide who should really get the award. In the end, we just had to give it to RC Chacon for his wild turbo K-series set-up in his 4-door EG9 Civic… Ms. Holly Lee was helping us in distributing the awards as well as posing for a photo-op with all the winners…
The “Best Honda” award was an easier choice than I had expected…Cooper Boudia aka Skipunk4 had the cleanest Integra there and we all loved everything about it. It’s a very well-rounded build and it seems to have every aspect covered. That and him making the epic journey down from Washington and the car still staying in immaculate condition as it was made it the easy choice as the best Honda of the day…
“The Chronicles’ Choice” aka my personal favorite build at Year.Three, went to a very deserving FA5 Civic SI that belonged to Sam Ip…I absolutely love his car so it was an easy choice as well to present the award to him….
Congrats to all the winners, because you guys are all very deserving of the accolades…
Even though Freddie from Autofashion told everyone that the event wasn’t over yet, after the awards, people started to roll-out. I guess people are so used to leaving after the awards at shows/events that they automatically thought we were done. No matter though because a bulk of the people still stuck around to hang out….
Very clean BB6 Prelude on Volk CE28s…
Sam’s Civic as he was getting ready to put his hood back on…
Always see this red S2000 around at various events so it was cool to see it at Year.Three…
The Leung brothers, both with very nice AWD builds, posted up together…
Red EK on JDM OEM Civic SiR/VTi wheels…
This S13 hatchback wasn’t really parked up front in the VIP area originally but since a lot of people had left and it was towards the end of the day, we didn’t mind it being there. Cool looking drift-inspired look too on what looks to be some new AME wheels…
A couple more shots of RC Chacon’s Civic and his “award-winning” engine bay…
A rear shot of Sintype’s Civic coupe…
A shot of DPK JP’s Civic before he took off. He had to get home before it got dark since he had no headlights…
Twin S2000s…different colors of course but with a lot of matching parts…
I enjoyed this yellow DC2 so I had to get another shot of it as I was passing through…
Random shot of Frank Boys Bolts aka Bolt Boys Frank’s valve cover with the new Skunk2 valve cover hardware kit…
Phaze2 Salem, DJ Murdock, and Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!! checking out some new tees…
Shot of Ka Wong’s F20C…
Really like this hatch….sorry about the shadow bukkake…
MX-5 Miata on some concave TE-37s….
Rear quarter shot of Michael Mao’s NSX…
Mike G’s extensively detailed engine bay…
DPK Henry aka Rick Fox’s legit RHD EG6 arrived a little later in the day, minus his J’s Racing front lip…
Missed this car earlier on in the afternoon but glad I got a shot of it before the owner left…
Band of misfits…
All white errrrr-thang…including that old ass Supra that was just sitting in the background. I don’t know who it belonged to but it was there before we even got there in the morning…oh well, it flows with the photo…
All cleaned-up before we rolled out to dinner afterwards… Not much else happened..we picked up some trash, walked around to make sure the lot was clean, then we packed up and rolled out to Mr. Kebab for dinner…
That’s a wrap… Once again, thank you everyone for their continued support throughout all these years. May we have many many more and may I have a chance to meet all the great people in our community. Thanks for looking…
Year.Three Coverage…Part 2…
Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. I didn’t take a day off or anything like that, I was just on the road and it took longer than expected to get home. It’s been a pretty busy week so far…I was expecting to take a break after all the Year.Three planning and the event itself but I’ve been all over the place non-stop either working or doing stuff for the site. Monday I woke up bright and early, rented a Chevy Cruz and drove all the way to San Luis Obispo to shoot a car for work. Then when I got home that night, I was up trying to finish up a couple stories as well, stayed up all night, and was actually planning on getting some sleep around 8-9am but then I got a call from Bisi Ezerioha. Bisi let me know that they were set to send their SEMA project off in the afternoon and wanted me to get some shots of it before it left. I never pass up an opportunity like that so I drank a energy drink, ate some Jack in the Box tacos and headed out to Ontario on no sleep. There’s plenty more to go with both those things I just told you, but I’ll save those for individual posts later on. You’re here to see Year.Three coverage so that’s what we’ll talk about today…
Umm, what should we talk about today as far as the meet….oh yes, the trash issue. Holy fuck, there was way more trash this year than last. Overall I think everyone was very respectful throughout the event as far as following rules go but along the sides and the rear of the Eibach building, trash was just fucking everywhere. I believe this is because the people that just showed up and parked along the free sections were people that didn’t know about the site and just showed up, or they were just outright disrespectful. I don’t know, either way, a couple of us spent the remaining hour or so picking up trash that was like, shoved into bushes, or thrown all over the side of the building. The stupid thing is that the area that had the most trash was an area in which there was a dumpster like a couple feet away, it’s ridiculous… In any case, it’s cool…next year maybe I’ll have to do something about the free parking area…
Parking as a whole just couldn’t have gone any better. It probably took about a team of 4 guys to get all the cars parked and everything went smoothly. Big shout-out to Leon Casino for manning the front gate and getting everyone situated. Also guys like Ly Say, and the other TSX owners that were hanging out at the front gate area were very helpful. Okay, now onto some more photos….Again, my bad for not following up with part 2 yesterday, with SEMA coming up, I’m all over the place…
There’s something about Ly Say’s TSX that I just love…I mean, I’m a big fan of nice, authentic Japanese wheels and Ly’s one of those guys that has a very good taste in wheels. Every wheel he’s had since he started working on this car has been a good look. Photo is blown out as all hell but trust me, it’s a good looking TSX… I almost gave him the “Stickydiljoe’s Personal Choice” award at Year.Three but the guy that ended up getting the award has a fucking sick build and I just couldn’t pass it up….
Work S1R on Ly’s TSX…Leave it to Work Wheels to take a wheel they already had, narrow the spokes, and release it as an entirely new wheel. I can’t blame them though, they look good and the Meister S1 has always been a classic wheel…
Alex Colon’s Civic has looking nice…correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t he used to have an SCM front bumper?…
This guy was literally the first person in line and got the first parking spot at Year.Three…not including some of the homies that came in earlier of course, because they didn’t have to wait…
My old homie Jeff Correa from San Diego’s 8th gen. Civic…
Randall Ang aka Sintype’s Civic coupe…
Lance Uchida’s Civic…Lance and some of his buddies also helped clean up at the end of the day, which was really nice of them…
Really liked this yellow right-hand drive Integra…another one that was up for contention for being one of my favorite cars there…
Just a stock LS motor under the hood but the bay has been cleaned-up and looks good…
Loved the kevlar/Recaro Tomcat/Wildcat-style door inserts…Nice touch with the matching Personal wheel with yellow stitching…Oh and also the teal shift knob to match the valve cover. Very minor details but details I can appreciate…
Nit’s S2000 reppin’ DudeBlvd…
Nitty Beat himself…looking kind of confused and disoriented…
DPK David showed up a couple hours late because he had a friend’s party to attend, luckily he has good friends that will save a spot right up front for him…
PlanB Mike’s Evo X…
All the credit in the world goes to this guy for making the 20+ hour drive down by himself from Washington to attend Year.Three. Cooper is a super nice kid and his Integra is very well built….
The engine bay is where this car is at…well done…
Interior with red Recaro seats and Spoon Sports goodies…
Nice EK with 949Racing 6ULs…
Angelo Arayata aka jdmpnoy89′s EF Civic…
ek9abe’s Civic…
Sam Ip’s Civic Si… I love everything about this car. He went all Spoon Sports the first time around but with this build, I believe he’s going the full J’s Racing route…
The engine bay, interior, and rear of Sam Ip’s Civic…
DAP EK on Volk Racing RE30s…
Teddy’s Civic with First Molding front lip…
Quan’s Integra on bronze Volk Racing SE37K…
Justin Fong’s widebody Civic. Tony from It’s JDM Yo!! told me that Justin actually got rolled on the way home from the meet and got a huge ticket for all kinds of shit…sucks but thanks for coming out…haha…
Ejay’s DA with his new “streetable” look… I miss the SSR Super Mesh and airbrushed hood, haha…
Brian Arias’ Habanero Red Pearl EK on BBR Comps…
Loving the way TGIJoseph aka Sloppy’s Fit is looking these days….this is probably his best look to date…
Not sure what was going on with the front end of this car but it’ll look so much better if it was all one color…
Interesting EF on old school Hoshino wheels…
White-on-white FA5 Civic on Work VS-XX wheels…
Indey’s del Sol…
Love this 4-door DB and also love that he has both the sticker from last year’s anniversary meet as well as Year.Three…
2nd Gen. Lexus IS from Royal Origin sitting on Junction Produce Scara wheels…
Closing it out today with a couple shots of RC’s K-turbo’d EG9…
That’s all for today. I have one more part of the coverage coming and I will put that up for sure tomorrow…thanks for looking…
Year.Three Coverage…Part 1…
Thank you.
There are no two other words in the English dictionary that can better explain my gratitude and appreciation for your continued support of The Chronicles. It’s still pretty wild to think that it’s already been three years since I started this site and how quickly it has grown in that time. You guys hear me talk about this on occasion but to put it in perspective, man, it’s been a pretty wild ride. I started out with no camera, decent writing ability, and perverted sense of humor and in my first month, I achieved a staggering total of like 120-something hits for the ENTIRE month. Since then the site has grown to the point where I can get 120-some odd hits in a matter of 15-20 minutes. I taught myself how to use a camera, got a little bit better at writing, and I guess you can say that I created somewhat of a fan-base. Throwing meets and events have never been my thing…I like going to them and having the freedom to do as I please without worrying about who is going where, what’s happening, or anything related to organization. Last year, when I did the 2YRS two-year anniversary event, it was mildly stressful. I had never put a meet together, I really didn’t have anything planned, and up until a month or so before the event, I didn’t even have a venue! Luckily Ryan from Eibach Springs was kind enough to offer me the Eibach Springs facility and everything just sort of fell into place. People had a good time, and that’s what mattered.
This year, I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to do an anniversary meet. Everyone kept asking me when I was gonna have it and I told them that my goal was to only throw an anniversary meet if the site got bigger and I was happy with the direction of The Chronicles. We are sitting here now talking about the Year.Three event because the site has continued to be successful. I have met so many incredible people throughout these three years and it’s actually only right that I was able to get everyone together to celebrate not only the success of the site, but also to celebrate the great relationships that have formed because of the site. It’s the people that matter to me and I honestly do appreciate the friendships that have developed throughout these three years. I’m not just talking about people from California either. I’ve met and spoken to people from all over the world…Japan, Canada, Australia, and all parts of the United States. Last year’s meet had such a great reception and positive feedback that it was an easy decision to bring it back to the Eibach Springs facility. It’s a gigantic open space that everyone knows of, because of the annual Eibach Honda meet, and it’s tucked away in the industrial section of Corona, CA where no one unrelated to the event would be able to disturb anything that was going on. I hit up Ryan from Eibach and he was more than happy to let me use the Eibach lot and the planning began. I didn’t want to do anything drastically different from last years because everything went so smoothly in 2010. One thing I wanted to do this year was bring along some vendors and friends of the site for the ride as well as doing something that nobody expected, which was to present a small set of awards at the show. I like to show my appreciation for great builds every year with the annual Top Ten Hondas list so I thought that it would be a good idea to have some awards to spotlight some of the best builds that came out to the Year.Three event.
Everything really couldn’t have gone any better. I would say that I am about 97% happy with how everything went down at Year.Three, with the remaining 3% left to the incredibly hot weather that day as well as the horrible traffic leading to Eibach, both factors which were completely out of my hands. As for the coverage, I spent the majority of the first couple hours that day setting up the booth, making sure everyone else’s booths were situated, and parking cars. There were quite a few cars that I didn’t get a chance to get photos of simply because they left before I was able to. I didn’t really get to start shooting until maybe halfway through the meet and I wish I could have covered the entire day. The same thing happened last year but there’s just no other way around it. I didn’t want to burden others with having to help me out just so I could take pictures and I’m lucky that there were already more than enough people lending a hand. I pretty much got the bulk of the meet though as far as the cars that were up front in the VIP section. I walked around the side and rear of the building to check out the cars but that wasn’t til the end of the day when I was taking out the trash and cleaning up. If you don’t see your car in the coverage, that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate you being there, because that just isn’t the case. I either just plain missed you, or I was busy chatting with people that were coming up to me. I can’t thank everyone enough for coming out to support Year.Three. You guys make this possible and you make it fun. Let’s keep the positive vibes going into 2012 and we can do it even bigger next year…
With that said, we should probably start getting to some photos. I’ll continue talking your heads off in part 2 of the coverage. You do come here for the spoken word and commentary, you know? Any other site can just post up photos and move along. I’m here to numb your mind with non-stop rambling and some decent photos…Enjoy…
Huge shout-out goes to Tony Jackson and Ryan Hoegner for taking time out of their weekend to be a part of this event. Without these guys Year.Three wouldn’t be possible. Ryan even coached his daughter’s softball game before making his way out. Tony was there bright and early waiting for May and I to show up to set-up the meet. When I got there at 11:30am, he was the only one on the lot and he was trying to set-up a canopy on his own…Thank you guys…
Here’s a look at what the front vendor area looked like a couple hours into Year.Three…This year’s meet was way bigger than last years but it still had the same, laid back, chill vibe that I really wanted…
I was happy to see some of my favorite cars out, and I was really happy with the amount of love I got from enthusiasts that came out from my hometown of San Diego, CA….I would say that probably a 1/3 of the event consisted of people from San Diego…Bryant and Ly’s TSXs are some of my favorites from back home…
Another car that I was overjoyed to see was Sam Ip’s 8th gen. Civic…
Gumby also apparently is a supporter of The Chronicles…
Tony from Phaze2 stopped by after work in his daily VIP 1GS…he recently got new wheels for it and was anxious to bring it out to show us…Here he is taking a moment to chat with Arnel from Phaze2…
Tony’s 1GS laid out on the ground…
RC from Arizona made the trek out to show us his updates on his EG9 Civic…The last time we saw this car was at Nisei when he parked in my “GENERATIONS” section…More photos of this build will come later…
Random shot of DPK JP helping out in May’s “Walk for Hope” Cancer Walk booth…
What I liked about this year’s event compared to the 2010 meet was the variety of cars that showed up. I’m a huge fan of all sorts of different cars so it was cool to see equal support from non-Honda heads…
The lovely Ms. Holly Lee on hand at the “It’s JDM Yo!!!” booth…
These two guys made the trip all the way down from the state of Washington to check out the meet…I had been exchanging emails with Greg (left) leading up to the event but I really regret not being able to chat with them more because I was busy running around everywhere…
May had a cool purple-themed set-up at her own booth to raise money for her Cancer Walk on November 6th…
Keith aka Keychain from “It’s JDM Yo!!!” reppin with his Stickydiljoe.com Chronicles tee…
I had a huge turnout of Accord enthusiasts last year so I was honestly a little bummed to see that they didn’t come out for this year’s meet, but luckily, a huge number of TSX owners represented and I think a lot of people that day were surprised by the quality of all these TSX builds…
Arn Reyes kept his Integra at home for the day and instead brought out his Mini…He was posted up front alongside DPK JP and Enrique Rosario’s cream-colored hatchback…
Absolutely love JonJon’s IS350…
I wasn’t really sure if any of the ATS Garage guys would be able to come down from Norcal so it was a pleasant surprise when I showed up at the Rywire facility that Friday and saw Ryan Der and his EK….
Freddie and the Autofashion crew not only supplied the music and entertainment but also brought out a pair of Honda Ruckus’…The guys from Standard Functions also came out and brought a large group of Ruckus’ as well…
Good to see JP’s Civic coming out of hibernation and making public appearances again…
Really nice Acura NSX that was posted up by the front gate. The owner wanted to purchase a VIP spot and park closer but we all felt that it was perfectly placed where everyone could see it…
A couple guys checking out JP’s “Bling Gauge” on his carbon headlight cover…
Enrique Rosario’s Civic…this guy has always been a huge supporter of The Chronicles. I still remember when he had a green valve cover and a Chronicles sticker plastered on his spark plug wire cover…
Arn’s Mini on SSRs…
Good to see DPK Jared’s S2000 in a near complete state. This car spent much of the year out of commission because Ryan was busy doing a wire tuck as well as custom brake lines and custom radiator…
Here’s an updated shot of the engine bay after everything was relocated, hidden, and the entire bay resprayed…
One obvious change since you guys last saw it is the Mugen air intake…
Downstairs Frank from PG+K…
James Nguyen aka OldManJames’ S2000…
Michael Mao’s NSX on Volk CE28 Genesis wheels…
I was happy to see my favorite AE86 build of all-time at Year.Three…Mr. Ka Wong also helped supply the L&L Hawaiian BBQ food that I ordered for all the close friends and family of the site….
Big Steve’s LS teleported from the magical land of Narnia and mysteriously appeared at the meet….I went from never seeing this car to seeing it three times in one year…it must be some sort of miracle…
Another angle of Phaze2 Tony’s 1GS on Work Varianza D3S….
Take another look at RC’s engine bay and tell me later on if you think that this car deserved to win the “Best Engine Bay” award….
Yogi from Fatlace along with some of the other Ruckus guys getting set to take off…
The line-up as they rolled out…
Rodrez from Honda Tuning magazine getting some video footage…
On that note, I’m gonna cut it off for today with the video that resulted from what was going on in the image above…Thanks goes out to Rodrez for taking time out of his day to create this cool video…
Back with much more tomorrow!…
“Race Day” at Racer’s Edge Indoor Karting Coverage…
While there was actual racing going on over in Fontana, CA. at the IDRC International Finals, I was over in the city of Burbank for “Race Day”. There was certainly racing going on over here as well, but of the go-kart racing variety. This small show/meet was held inside the compound of an indoor kart racing facility known as “Racer’s Edge”. Norman, who is also the head of local Socal car crew AS1, set-up this entire event and all the homies as well as other fellow enthusiasts came out to show their support. The lot didn’t seem very large but they were still able to squeeze in a pretty large amount of vehicles. Norman and crew had expected more cars and were planning to use every possible open space to fill it with a car but the fire marshall notified them that they wouldn’t be able to house as many cars as they could due to fire code. It certainly didn’t have too big of an effect on the show though because there was a very good mix of different builds present. Hondas, Nissans, Subarus, you name it, there was probably one in attendance. There were even some very nice old school rides present, which is always a pleasant surprise. One of the coolest things about this show was that people were also able to go karting inside for a discounted rate. Being able to race and watch others race inside also provided shade from the intense heat outside. I don’t really know what’s going on with this weather, especially in mid-late October. There’s no reason why it should be getting this hot. All in all, it was a good show. Big Mike, DPK David, and some of the other homies ended up spending a lot of their time there judging the non-Honda categories and some of the other guys showed up just to hang out. May and I arrived around 2pm and I began snapping away at whatever I saw…enjoy the photos and thanks to Norman for organizing this event…
This was one of the first cars I spotted when I got to the show…Pretty cool looking MK5 GTI on air and Bentley wheels…Kinda liked this photo so I included a Larger Version (1200×800)
Integras were abundant at “Race Day”…
I thought this MX-5 Miata on TE37s was interesting…
Classic look for a DC2…R front end conversion, R wing, Spoon SW388s…
Another good looking DC2…this one with clear housing JDM Integra headlights, front end, and Mugen MF10Ls….
Always been a big fan of this 4-door Integra…I like the simplicity of it and the contrast of the red Bride interior on the white…
The engine bay is very traditional…no crazy tuck or shave or anything…still retains ABS, air conditioning, stock battery location, etc…
Very nice interior…
Teddy’s white EK with his newly-mounted First Molding front lip…
This coupe was pretty clean…the engine bay is pretty random and I can’t say I’m really a big fan of that whole style but I can appreciate the amount of labor involved in creating it…
The bay was so busy I almost didn’t notice the ITBs…
This Corolla was really clean…I didn’t get a chance to see what was under the hood but the outside looked pretty mint. Even the Watanabe wheels looked like they were brand new straight out of the box and on the car with original center caps and everything…
Another AE86, this one on SSR Longchamps…
Here’s another old school Corolla…this chassis is the one that preceded the AE86 chassis….
Loved this RPS13 hatchback on SSR Professor SP3s and Top Secret aero…
Sil80 on SSR Professor SP1s…
Legacy Wagon on Blitz Technospeed Z1…it was so hot that the tires were sweating, haha…
Sloppy aka TGIJoseph’s Honda Fit on Spoon wheels…
Clean Subaru STI on polished Volk CE28s…
White EG Civic on what looks to be Mugen sideskirts (could be Wings West), and Spoon Sports-style front lip….949 wheels with caps also and Recaro seats…
4-door Civic on Mugen NR10s…the name of the front lip escapes me right now, but I think it might be a Vision-style carbon fiber EG9 Ferio lip…
This was tucked away in the corner at the show but I thought it was a good look. The blue on blue is not that common with Subaru-owners and it doesn’t hurt that the wheels are aggressively sized Work Meister S1s…
Spotted this RSX at various events in the past…
FA5 Civic on Yokohama Super Advan Racing Ver. 2 wheels…
I walked inside to the karting area and spotted Salem from Phaze 2′s TSX parked inside the track…pretty cool but with the way some of these kids were driving, I would have been a little worried…
One of the interesting things to note about this event was that Racer’s Edge had a separate building inside the parking lot that made it possible for Norman to park some cars inside of and out of the sun. While this was cool for the people inside because they could escape the burning sun, it made for crappier photos…
Here’s a Civic that I’ve been keep an eye on. It has a cool, track-inspired look and the guy actually takes it to the track…It just needs to be painted and it’ll look like a completely different car…
DPK David’s EJ1 coupe…
DPK JP’s Civic…
Crappy photo of Arn’s Integra…looks like he parked next to the fucking sun or something…
Phaze2 Arnel’s 4-door with the lip kit paint-matched….this thing is starting to look better and better…
AS1 Karl’s EM1 Civic on CCWs…
A “photoshoot” that was going on in the middle of the show with one of the girls that was working the Race Day event…
Jose Romo’s Audi A3…
This was pretty interesting/random…authentic right hand drive Datsun Bluebird that was tucked away in the back corner…
Mugen CR-X Pro.2 from GSpot Automotive…
Brian Arias’ Civic that was featured this year in Import Tuner magazine…
Civic from GTS Auto that you should all be pretty familiar with by now…
Arn brought his wife and baby out to hang out at the show for a bit before it ended…this little guy always looks like he’s surprised, haha…
Leon also brought his newborn baby out for the first time…it’s still pretty crazy to think that Leon is a dad now…
Chaba was working the event inside the karting area throughout the day but found some time to come out and hold Leon’s baby… On most other sites, you will see her doing poses and modeling at events at what not…on The Chronicles…YOU WILL SEE HER HOLDING A BABY. Haha…this ain’t “It’sJDMYo!!!” We got models holding babies over here…
Anyways, it was nearing the end of the day so it was time for the awards to be presented…
Norman, the man behind the event, holding up one of the awards…he also does his fair share of holding babies because he’s a father of 12…
DPK David won “Best Honda” and Chaba was happy for him…
DPK JP won “Best Honda without headlights”/”People’s Choice”….
A bunch of other awards were given out too but there was already a photographer on hand to cover that so I just sat back and didn’t do shit the rest of the time…oh I clapped…that should be mentioned I guess…
Group photo with the award winners…Arnel actually won “Best Stance” but he was nowhere to be found so David is holding up the award for him. He was either smoking a cigarette or not caring, or something related to not standing there at that moment…Congrats to all the winners though, smokers or not…
That’s pretty much it. YEAR.THREE is this weekend! Get your cars some what in presentable condition!…
Thanks for looking….
Hellaflush Japan 2011 Coverage…Part 2…
I’m glad that everyone is enjoying the coverage from Hellaflush Japan. For me personally, it was really cool to be able to see most of the cars represented in these photos because I’ve never seen them before. Today we will take a look at the rest of the photos that I got from the event. Again, special thanks to Mr. Koji Karimata for providing these awesome photos for all of us to see… Enjoy… If you missed part one, it’s directly below this post and probably the reason why these are taking a while to load haha….
This Civic immediately stood out to me while I was browsing through Karimata’s photos… It looks like a mix of Ryan Der’s white EK and another ATS member, ATS Vee’s Civic… You probably remember Ryan’s Civic because you’ve seen it plenty of times on this site but probably not Vee’s. His is a very similar color. With the wheels and brake set-up though, and especially since Ryan has now removed his C-West kit, this car definitely reminds me of his hatchback and that is a VERY good thing…I wonder what the bay looks like and what motor he is running…
Honda Inspire converted to U.S. 2nd. generation Acura TL-spec on some HRE wheels…I like the little details on it like the silver door handle frames to match the wheels and what not…cool build…
Evo 8 slammed on some SSR Professor SP3s…
This was weird/cool/strange… Note the mirrors and the exhaust coming out the rear corner… If Big Mike’s Prelude and his Accord wagon were to have a child and then later they both discovered that they were actually related, this is the inbred child it would produce…
Speaking of random combinations of things, check out this DB8 Integra…It has a Blitz-style front bumper that I haven’t seen in years, 5-Series BMW headlights, E46 BMW M3 side vents, and what looks to be some re-barreled Mugen M7s…Pretty wild look…I think those are also some Bomex sideskirts or something. Style is a little different for sure, but execution doesn’t look all that bad…Interior is a trip also…
S14 Silvia slammed on some 350Z wheels…
Oh man, I fucking love this car! Nissan R30 RS-Turbo Skyline from the 80s aka Tekkamen (鉄仮面) or “Iron Mask”… I don’t know what I love more about this thing, the fact that it has Volk TE37Vs on it, which are probably my favorite wheels at the moment, or the fact that he’s rocking a Chronicles sticker!! That’s fucking awesome…haha….Damn I wish I could see this car in person…
This one is a R31 Skyline sedan, which was the direct precursor to the R32 Skyline and the last Skyline they made before they went back to having GT-Rs….Such cool looking cars fromt he 80s man, I really dig these old Nissans. Stuff like this is what really keeps me interested in the Japanese tuning community because I just love seeing cars like this…They have like, a very distinct look to them so you automatically know what era they are from, you know what I mean? Cars these days all sort of look the same now…
EK Civic on some Hayashi Streets…I remember when HeyMikeyyyy was asking me if he should get a set of these and I was like “fuck no, you’re crazy. That’ll look retarded on your car”….I still stand by those statements today even though I really like the wheel itself…just not so much on Hondas…
Integra that’s on some pretty aggressive SSR MK2 wheels…
Very well done MK5 VW R32 that I always see in photos at various events in Japan…
This new VW Scirocco is also very nice….I like the polished OZ Futuras and the neon green accents expressed throughout the car…
This was another favorite of mine at the Hellaflush Japan event…If you don’t know what you’re looking at, this is the 2nd generation Toyota Soarer (or what we know of here as the SC300/400). This was the Soarer long before Toyota had aspirations of bringing the 3rd gen. over under the Lexus brand. It shared the same chassis with the A70 or Mark III Supra but had similar styling cues from their sedans like the Cressida, Cresta, and Toyota Mark II… This is another car like the R30/R31 Skylines that are still really cool to see modified in our day and age. I love the modern Volk TE37SLs on it as well as the red Recaros and Vertex wheel… DPK David asked me yesterday if I was Puerto Rican since I like old Toyotas and Nissans so much, haha…
This Subaru Forester is pretty sick. You don’t see these things modified very often but they definitely have a unique look to them…This car and a couple others were at the Hellaflush Japan event parked together and were all the same color…pretty cool but I wonder how long it took for them to deliberate what color all their cars were going to be…haha…
Widebody Subaru STI….Love the details like the orange and black accents. Even the Sparco seats have matching trim…
Nissan 180SX Type X on Volk TE37s…
Japanese S2000 showing American folks that you can have aggressive wheel fitment on S2Ks without have fenders that look like the Cookie Monster knawed through it…
S2000 on blue Work VS-XX…Not really sure why this photo is smaller than the other ones on this page, I think I may have been falling asleep while editing this photo…
Nissan S13 Silvia coupe with 180SX/USDM 240SX coupe front end conversion…Most would probably just think this was how the S13 240SX came in Japan but that’s certainly not the case…That’s one thing that I definitely don’t miss about the 80s automobiles though…all those fucking flip lights.. like every 2-door coupe or sportscar in the U.S. had them at the time for some reason…Makes you wonder if it was some sort of mandate made to automobile companies during that time to make cars more “aerodynamic” since the world had just gotten out of the world oil/fuel crisis of the 70s…
I believe this is an 8th generation Toyota Mark II sedan…Cool VIP/drift look to it…
Mazda Eunos Roadster…the Japanese equivalent to our Miata…
R32 Skylines will probably always be one of my favorite Skylines of all time… Doesn’t hurt that this one has TE37SLs on it and AP Racing brakes…That’s a perfect look right there. Just leave it alone and cruise in it…
Nissan Stagea on some AME Tracers and AME-sticker bombed front lip…If you guys don’t know what a Stagea is, just imagine a 4-door Skyline wagon and look up…
I don’t know what type of Toyota van this is but it’s one of the best looking vans I’ve ever seen…I know the Japanese Odyssey, Stream, and other Honda vans were great looking but I had no idea Toyota was pushing out vans like this…oh damn….
Toyota Soarer from N’s Factory…I read the description under the door and it said “N’s Factory: Total Car Life Consulting”. That’s awesome….I guess you can go to these guys for a consultation on how to build your car. I wish I would have thought of that…then the world would have 5 more crappy cars than usual…haha…
Ignore the crazy camber on this Nissan Cima for a second and take a look at the front end of the car. As you guys all know, I have a Q45 that I’ve had for a couple years and about a year or so ago, there was a huge fire at Midnight Garage and the bumper I had there was torched and destroyed. Well, besides not getting any compensation from the fucking dumb ass kid that accidently caused the fire, seeing this photo makes me especially sad because the bumper on this Nissan Cima was the exact bumper that I was searching for on Yahoo Auctions Japan for over a year. I was finally able to source one and Mastermind helped me bring it over, but then before I even had a chance to put it on, it was lost in the fire…What’s different about this bumper from most other JDM Nissan Cima bumpers is the OEM front lip on it. This lip indicates that this Cima was probably a Grand Touring model, which was a non-V8, turbo 6-cylinder version of the Cima. The owner switched over to a Zenki, non-Touring model Cima front grille, which was also what I have now, so other than the smoked fogs, black paint, and JDM headlights, that’s pretty much what my front end would have looked like. I have a complete Wald kit on my Q now but when I first purchased the bumper, I had plans to ditch the kit altogether and just rock this JDM front bumper and Grand Touring lip. Kinda still upsets me a little bit because I lost what was pretty much a 3-400 dollar bumper and never got to put it on. You guys probably don’t really care since this is a Honda site but that Grand Touring bumper and lip combo is pretty rare to find, especially in good condition…Maybe some day I’ll find another one…oh well, what can you do…it’s not everyday some jack ass starts a fire and runs away afterwards…
On a lighter note, I’m gonna close out the Hellaflush Japan coverage with my favorite Integra from Japan…
Thanks for looking…
Hellaflush Japan 2011 Coverage…Part 1…
One of the great things about being friends with guys like Tetsuya Yamaguchi from USDM Jam/Yamazstore and Takeshi Kobayashi from Type_K on Facebook is that I get to constantly see updates of what is going on in Japan. Though they don’t have as many major events as we do here in the U.S., the Japanese enthusiasts are die-hard car heads and are willing to travel 5-10 hours one-way just to attend a meet. In the last couple years, the connection between the American and Japanese enthusiasts has grown a lot stronger thanks to social media outlets and internet blogging. When I logged onto Facebook over the weekend, I noticed that Mr. Tetsuya had uploaded some photos from an event that had just happened. Upon further research, I discovered that it was the first ever Hellaflush event held in Japan at the Fuji Speedway. I don’t recall if I’ve ever attended a Hellaflush event here in the U.S. but I’ve always been a fan of Mark Arcenal and all his many projects and accomplishments. I didn’t know that there was a Hellaflush event going on in Japan because, well…I don’t live in Japan and don’t have the resources to be there. While looking through Tetsuya’s photos of the event, I did spot some really nice cars there and I really wanted to show you guys some of the builds that Japan has to offer. I mean, you guys always see photos scattered throughout the net but for the most part, you only see the demo vehicles that major aftermarket tuning companies produce in Japan…
So I hit up Tetsuya to see if he would let me post up his photos from the event. It took a couple days for him to reply, but he was more than happy to let me use them. The only problem was, the photos on his Facebook page are a bit small and it’s hard to see some of the details that the cars had. If the event were held here, then it wouldn’t be that big of a deal because you have probably seen the cars before but for an event that’s held in Japan, I really wanted to give you guys the largest photos that fit to the layout of my site. These cars you will probably never have seen before on this site and the ones that you are familiar with are the ones that I’ve posted from some of either Takeshi’s events or Tetsuya’s… Since the photos were a little too small for me to use, I went on a search through Flickr and found some really great photos from a Japanese enthusiast named Koji Karamata or his user “Ka Ry”. He actually has all kinds of photos from events that he has attended and I spent a good couple hours looking through them. The photos that he updated were straight from his camera so it was perfect for me to use…I just needed his permission. So I immediately messaged him through Flickr to ask if he was cool with me using them. On a random side note, he even has photos that he’s taken from last year’s Nisei Showoff event, so there was a chance that we might have crossed paths at one point and just totally didn’t notice because we had no idea who each other was. I was a little anxious because I really loved some of the cars that were at the Hellaflush Japan event. It only took a couple hours late in the early morning hours but he messaged me right back and was more than pleased to allow me to post up his photos…
Since some of his photos were straight from his camera, I took the liberty of going through the ones that I liked and cleaned them up a bit before re-sizing them to fit this site. I hope you guys really enjoy these photos because it’s all completely new and foreign to many of you. VERY BIG THANKS go out to Mr. Koji Karamata for allowing me to use these photos and for giving me the opportunity to bring you guys some new shit all the way from Japan…
Make sure also to check out his blog HERE… Got some pretty cool stuff that you won’t understand at all but there are pictures…. Seriously though, I used the Google translator to try to translate the name of his blog and the translation told me that it was the “Russian Stupidity Downtown Dance” blog…haha
Enjoy…
One of the first cars that really caught my eye from looking at some of Tetsuya’s photos was this Japanese firetruck-inspired Toyota Carina. To us it’s more known as an early 80s model Corolla wagon but I assure you, in it’s original Japanese state, it is a Toyota Carina. From a quick glance through Karamata’s blog, I believe that he’s actually been a part of the build process of this Carina because he has a lot of photos of it during it’s build-up stages…
I absolutely love how this thing looks. One of my dreams is to actually build one of these one day but I don’t have the time or the funds to go out and hunt one down to do all kinds of nutty shit to it…
The outside looks great and I love it when older Japanese cars are built in this fashion but where it really shines is under the hood…
You would never expect an old Toyota to have a bay like this, with the cage running into the shock towers through the firewall and the shave and tuck job. The sickest fucking thing about this is the motor…
…which is a rare (at least in the U.S. anyway) Yamaha-built BEAM’s 3S-GE from a Toyota Altezza… I’m telling you, this Carina is the shit….I can stare at this thing for hours…
I like the old school Advan graphical livery on this car…I’m not going to lie, I really don’t know what this is…Toyota Sprinter? Someone feel free to let me know…
Speaking of cars I am unfamiliar with, this Kei-car was also nice, sitting aggressively on some BBS RS wheels…
Honda TSX with Acura TSX conversion on BBS CH wheels…
Honda Civic Ferio on BBS wheels…
Honda Integra with a Top Fuel front lip, offsetting-colored headlights (?), and original Work Rezax wheels…
The Work Wheels booth at Hellaflush Japan… I was really digging the blue Fairlady and the Skyline in the lower photo but unfortunately he didn’t get any more photos of it…
The van and wagon scene in Japan is ridiculous…Seeing vans built like this make me wish we had a similar following out here in the U.S. Instead we have Dodge Caravans, and fucking Ford Windstars and shit…
Civic on Work CR-01s…
Honda CR-X also on Work CR-01s and a hopefully an authentic Mugen aero kit…
First gen. Honda Odyssey on BBS RS wheels…
Probably unnoticeable at a glance but take note of the left-hand drive and the 97-01 DC2 front end…I wonder if this is a legit Acura Integra that they imported over to Japan…
This guy’s rocking one of my Hellasunk stickers and has a Filipino flag hanging from his rear view mirror…
Ej1 Civic coupe on Work Equip 03s…
This may not seem like anything that special but from what Takeshi has mentioned online, this was just once a regular Civic coupe in Japan that the owner converted to full U.S. EM1-spec. The coupes don’t have sunroofs over there and the owner went as far as to import a sunroof back to Japan from here and then getting the headliner and all necessary pieces to make it look like an OEM EM1 coupe. Pretty cool if you really consider how much effort was used to make it look like a U.S. car…
Civic on some aggressive Buddy Club wheels…I believe he is running wheel spacers though…
Datsun 510 with some modern touches like Volk LE28 wheels and Recaro seats…
Check the fuel set-up and the horns on the carbs…
Not 100% sure, but I believe this is a Nissan Cedric sedan…I’m usually pretty familiar with these cars being a Q45 owner but I guess I didn’t get enough sleep or some shit today…
One of Toyota’s better looking sedans that we never got here in the U.S…. the Toyota Crown Athlete… While they get all these great looking sedans, we are stuck with the Avalon and Camry…
Toyota Aristo with some aggressive body work…
Original U.S. Acura CL imported back to Japan on some Enkei Racing S wheels..
Old school Toyota Cressida…
This is probably my favorite Honda Integra build in Japan right now. I’ve had my eye on it for the last two years now and the owner recently added some BBS LM wheels to his collection. I like how he just has all kind of different LM faces chillin’ on the floor….
Honda Torneo Euro-R on Advan TCII wheels…
I have no idea what the fuck this is but I thought it was interesting enough for me to post up…
Nissan 180SX with some interesting bright green barrels…
Really liked this VW Corrado…there looks to be quite a bit of extensive modifications done to this thing both inside and out…
Gonna close it out today with this Honda Accord wagon on BBS LM wheels…On the side of the wagon it says “InfiniteGBoys”…I have no idea what that means so you can take that and do what you want with it…Wagon is a good look though…
Back with the second half of the photos tomorrow…All kinds of good shit coming up so stay tuned…
Thanks for looking….
Air Runner Open House 2011 Coverage…
Spent the early Saturday afternoon at the Air Runner facility for their open house event this past weekend… The turn-out was probably less than stellar since it was planned and advertised everywhere but it was a good time for me because it gave me the opportunity to talk to some of the homies that I usually don’t get to see often. I think this event wasn’t as successful as it could have been because I feel that the general consensus from enthusiasts is that you have to have like a super VIP’d out ride on Air Runner suspension to attend this event…and that certainly wasn’t the case. I mean, they threw this event in the hopes that all kinds of enthusiasts would show up, not just luxury VIP guys. I guess maybe it should have been stated when the event was advertised but I think that the Air Runner guys just automatically assumed that that was the case. I didn’t arrived until a couple hours into the event and I was told there were more people and cars in attendance earlier but it didn’t matter, I stuck around, did coverage and hung out. My main reason for going and supporting Air Runner is because I’ve worked personally with Shin Okamoto before. I shot the 5Axis GS460 on Air Runner suspension a year ago and Shin was kind enough to pay me with some Air Runner gauges and switches for my Infiniti Q45. I have them on my Q now and I couldn’t be happier with them. Since that time I shot the car, I’ve run into Shin at a number of events and we’ve always taken the time to chat so I felt that it was the right thing to do to go and support his event, regardless of how the turnout was. At the open house, I asked him how he felt about the turnout and he seemed a little down about it, but I explained to him that the main reason was enthusiasts’ mindset that it was probably only tailored to VIP luxury car owners. I told him that once people see the event coverage online, maybe they will understand that it’s an event for everyone and next year’s will be much bigger and better…
Below are a couple shots from the open house. I captured basically whatever was there that caught my eye and then hung out for a couple hours before taking off to go eat lunch and spend the rest of the evening with May and friends… Thanks for looking and if you guys want high quality air suspension components, please make sure to consider Air Runner…
Big Steve decided to stumble out of bed and bring his LS out for the event…
White-on-white S2000 on BBS LMs….definitely not a VIP platform but it was on hand for the event…
It’s JDM Yo!!! model Holly Lee was there to show her support, posing in front of Big Steve’s LS…
A couple more shots of Holly…
Pancakes aka Oscar’s Q45 posted up next to a Junction Produce GS…
GS with a Job Design kit…
VIP Modular had a booth set-up…
F50 Q45 on VIP Modular wheels…
2nd gen. Lexus IS on Junction Produce Scara wheels…
Saw this GS with really extreme, ridiculous camber pull up to the meet…
JonJon’s supercharged IS350…
Neo-chrome Endless brakes sitting behind a set of Weds Kranze Vishunus…
Lexus IS on 5Axis wheels…
5Axis GS460 on Air Runner suspension…
Really liked this IS on SSR Professors… just a simple lip kit and great wheel fitment…
The overall stance on this GS was a bit overwhelming for me…I mean, I’m more into the traditional VIP look and it seems guys are more willing to make sacrifices like having haggared-up fenders to achieve a certain look…It is definitely an extreme look, especially since he drove with half the tires not even making contact with the pavement…
Infiniti M on some Work Varianzas…
Really liked this Lexus RX..this cars look so awkward in stock form but when you take the time to do some proper modifications to them, they look great…
Scion xB with a Gulf livery that belongs to Mike Ma and M2 Motoring…
Another shot of JonJon’s IS350…
Lexus LS430 rolling up to the meet…
Make sure to visit the official Air Runner site for all your air suspension goods…
One more shot of Holly Lee holding up a limited edition “It’s VIP Yo!!!” decal…
That’s all folks, thanks for looking…
K-Day 2011 by Type_K Autosource Coverage…
One of the great things about creating The Chronicles is all the wonderful people I have met over the last three years. There’s no better way to give back to the automotive community then to share experiences with one another. Being able to meet all these great people has presented me with the opportunity to learn about what the community is like not only in the United States, but throughout the world. About a year or so into the creation of this site, I met a Japanese enthusiast by the name of Takeshi Kobayashi. He was the owner and operator of his own shop, known as “Type_K Autosource”. He and his friends/clients are huge fans of the American Honda scene so he spends a majority of his days at work fulfilling orders for his customers for all things USDM-related. Not only did he bring over car parts and accessories, he brought over EVERYTHING he could from the U.S. There is a large chunk of the Japanese who are really into American culture and Takeshi’s job is to bring in anything he can from our country. I first heard of Takeshi when he emailed me about sending over a large order of Chronicles decals and shirts to Japan. At that time, I had no idea anyone outside of California even knew about the site so I was quite shocked. He was able to communicate with me over email and his english was actually pretty good. He filled me in on how I had fans over there in Japan and how much they loved the Hondas from the west coast. I knew that there were some Japanese that were into USDM stuff but really had no idea that it was that big of a deal. It wasn’t until Wekfest in either 2009 or 2010 did I finally meet Takeshi. Oddly enough, I was standing outside of a Safeway supermarket waiting for a friend when Takeshi came over to introduce himself. To keep a long story short, since that day we have become good friends. I mean “good” at least for two individuals who live half the world away from each other. Takeshi and Tetsuya from USDM Jam come out every year with some friends to experience some of the biggest Honda events in California and Me and the rest of the guys always make it a point to chill with them and hang out.
Here we are taking Takeshi out to enjoy some classic American cuisine…
It really is crazy just how different things are in Japan, from the food to the cars, everything…and it’s honestly really interesting to hear about it from Takeshi who has experienced life both in America and in his home country. Over time, we have developed a pretty good understanding of one another and we try to help each other out whenever we can. He recently put together a USDM-themed car event, known simply as “K-Day”. He wanted to know if he could throw my name on the flyer and of course, I was totally cool with it. I want to help him promote his events, no matter in what geographic location it is in. He’s a good dude and he does the same for me. I would really have liked to have been there for it, but timing and monetary issues prevent me from just picking up and flying to Japan to cover his event. Luckily for me and all of you guys, Takeshi and other enthusiasts from Japan were able to document the event for us and today I will be showing you some of the more intriguing Hondas from K-Day. The photos are mixed between Takeshi, Tetsuya Yamaguchi, and another Japanese Honda head who is from “Lowered 2 Perfection” or “L2P” car crew. He has his own blog that he updates sometimes and I was able to snag a couple of shots from his site. He owns the burgundy-colored 2nd generation Honda Element on bronze Volk TE-37s. I’ve posted a couple photos of it before but I’ve included a shot of it below for you guys that don’t know which car I’m talking about…
The photos aren’t in any particular order. I just grouped a bunch of shots together…enjoy…and thank you to Takeshi from Type_K for organizing this event and giving us Americans a glimpse of how they build USDM-themed Hondas in Japan…
This left-hand drive Acura Integra Type R is Takeshi’s personal car and is a real legit American ITR that he purchased and transported back to Japan…
This EG caught my eye when I first saw photos from the event. The front lip is a First Molding unit and the wheels, while I hope they are real Chevlons, are probably replicas…
You can see how the green under the bay glows and almost hurts the eyes…
The neon green isn’t really my tastes but it’s definitely different…
Side profile shot…
I liked this hatchback on Mugen M7s and rocking a BYS wing…
Love how he’s rocking a Chronicles decal…haha… All in all, sticker or not, it’s a good look. If this build was over in the U.S., it’d be pretty popular I’m sure…
EG9 Ferio on what I believe are Panasport wheels…
Note the Cali license plate, NWP4Life license plate frame…
…and the USDM “It’s JDM Yo!!!” and Chronicles decals on the back window…
I really liked this Prelude…Man, if you think the Prelude is an unpopular platform to build here stateside, it’s even more unpopular over there, so it’s actually quite refreshing to see one out there… The front lip is nice but I am unsure what it is, I’m sure Big Mike and jump in and elaborate…
A non-R DC2 Integra on bronze Volk SE37Ks…
Slammed CL-chassis Honda Accord…
Clean black DC on 8-spoke, 4-lug Volk CE28…
Seeing this Integra actually reminds me of Donut’s current DC2 build…
Gutted red EG on white Work Meister S1s…
Looked like this black Civic was getting some quarter panel work done to it…
Slammed EJ-Civic coupe with a First Molding front lip…
Slammed Ferio on “mag blue” Mugen MF8s…
Honda S2000 CR that is pretty much the Japanese doppelganger of DPK Carlos aka Mugen Boy…
…but unlike Carlos, the owner of this S2K who is a close friend of Takeshi’s rocks a Chronicles decal…haha…
The Element I spoke of earlier…
Love the color of this hatch on the contrasting Mugen MF10Ls…
White EK on red SSR mesh with original SSR center cap…
Mugen’d out Prelude down to the not-so-attractive Mugen wheels…
USDM front-end converted EF Civic hatchback on Work Equips…
This was an interesting look…
1st gen. Element SC on Advan RS-D…
Clean…I love how he kept the OEM mudflaps…
I’ve seen various shots of this EF sedan floating around on the internet…
Interesting engine bay…too bad the rest of the car isn’t all that much to look at…
Here’s a shot of a couple awards that Takeshi was presenting at K-Day…
That’s about it. If I come across any more from K-Day, I’ll be sure to post up some more….Have a great weekend…
Extreme Dimensions Open House 2011…
Uhhh…this meet was less than extraordinary…haha. I had no idea it was even going on actually. The girls were busy doing some wedding dress shopping/fitting early Saturday morning and since May is a part of the DPK David/Jackie wedding, it left David and I with some extra time on our hands since the girls were away. I dropped off May at the wedding dress store and on my way home, I was illegally glancing through Facebook on my phone while driving and spotted one of my cousin’s (Timscribbles) updates where he stated that he was going to stop by the Extreme Dimensions meet. Then that triggered something in my memory where Mrs. Bisi Ezerioha herself, Hedi, emailed me telling me about this meet a couple weeks back…I just never bothered to look at the date on which it was supposed to take place. We were struggling to find something to do while the girls were away so this meet was the perfect spot to be at….so we thought anyway… Another thing that I had totally forgotten that was taking place that day was the Kardashians’ appearance at the local mall. Had I remembered this, I’m sure we would have gone to the mall to go see Kourtney and Kim Kardashian. It’s something that I know David regrets because he’s a big fan of Kim Kardashian. He doesn’t watch her show or really have any idea what she does for a living, but he’s seen pictures and watched the sex tape, and he became an instant fan….I too am a fan, and was a little disappointed when I realized that I dropped the ball and totally could have been awkward standing there and staring at them while they were signing autographs or whatever…
Going to the meet was probably a better idea though, because now I have something to show you guys on The Chronicles. So if you want to put it that way, it shows you how devoted I am to this site…because I totally missed out on staring at the Kardashians and instead went to Extreme Dimensions to get some coverage of this less-than-spectacular event…Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, the meet itself wasn’t lame or anything, because I think they put on a good event. They had food, a raffle (I think), and plenty of space for cars. The lot itself is also not exposed to the main street so it was actually a pretty private event. I say it’s “less-than-spectacular” because of the general attendance and the cars that were there. Many of the cars that were there were…uhh….not that great, but I mean, I guess I can’t really expect that much considering the type of demographic that a body kit company has. Attendance was alright but for such a huge venue, maybe it could have been better. I didn’t really see it promoted on any of the forums I regularly peruse but again, it comes down to the demographic and the type of enthusiasts who’s market they are looking to build interest in (probably Scions)… The only way I heard of it was through a private email and a social networking site, so in this instance, Facebook really did help to promote this event because I would have had no other way of knowing about it. I told David about the meet and he didn’t even know what Extreme Dimensions was….
It’s cool that they put on this event though, I’m not trying to take anything away from them…There was definitely some hard work involved in organizing it, I’m just saying…many of the cars there were not what I was into. I’m a car head, no doubt, I follow all makes and models. It’s just that some of the choices and tastes in mods aren’t anything that I would want to see done to a car..some were just out right bizarre (you will see)…Below are some cars that I thought stood out and also some cars that had me scratching my head, wondering why people do these things to cars… If you are offended by what I have to say, remember that this is one man’s opinion. If it’s not something that you enjoy reading; come back, don’t come back, go look at another site, whatever, I don’t know because it’s not up to me. You have the option to disagree and leave at any time… With that said, let’s get to the photos…
Oh I had to show this to you guys…this car wasn’t actually at the Extreme Dimensions meet but I should have saw this has an omen to what I would see on that Saturday. Supertwinz John, Big Mike, and I were on our way to grab some drinks one day while we were at the Rywire facilities and we spotted this Accord posted up in front of a local audio shop…I knew I had to stop by and take a photo on our way back to the shop and sure enough, when we went back, Marty McFly and Dr. Brown were there going over some new modifications to the Flux Capacitor…
Anyways, so that day after I left the wedding dress spot, I headed home to grab my camera and headed over to DPK David’s house. He wanted to take his Civic coupe out for a spin so we hopped in his car and headed to Fullerton for the meet. When we got there they gave us some paperwork to put on the dash since it was a free car show as well as a meet. We gladly obliged and headed inside. When I got there, my cousin came by and I chatted with him for a few moments about his new camera. He took off and then I started snapping some photos…
Here’s three S2000s I saw as soon as we started walking around…
I believe the owner of this S2K’s name is Lee…last time I saw this thing was at this year’s Skunk2 Unmeet I believe…
Don’t know the owner but I’m pretty positive this is the same S2000 that used to have a CR front lip on it… Here’s a shot of it from last year…
S2000 on BBS LMs…
Scion tC with some Rotiform BLQ wheels on it…Probably would look much better if it didn’t have all kinds of randomness going on in the front of the car…
Always enjoy seeing this Z33 on VIP Modulars….this thing is so low that people were like, laying down on the floor to check out the clearance on it…
Not really my style but there were actually quite a few of these types of builds at this meet…Crazy to see how much Import Tuner has evolved, seeing as how this car once graced the cover…
I saw in the cover shot that it had carbon fiber fender flares…what was a little weird for me was why he chose to leave like three stripes exposed when he had the car repainted…I don’t know if he did this to make it look like the flare was vented or to show off the carbon fiber…it’s pretty random looking….
This AE86 was pretty nice…I was checking out someone’s Japanese Classic Car Show coverage and I saw that this Corolla won an award at that event…Love the color and the Work CR-01s…I’m trying to enjoy these CR-01s as much as I can before I walk into the SEMA show this year and see that some company has probably knocked it off already…
This tC was a little less dramatic than some of the other tCs there, which was a really good thing…
Really liked this 350Z on Work Meister S1s…The Nismo V.2 front bumper is a good look…
Stumbled upon this S13 hatchback and it’s crazy turbocharged GM LSx swap…
Aston Martin that was posted up by the free food line…
Ryan Kado’s Nissan Titan VK56DE-swapped 350Z drift car…
Here’s a video of it on the dyno, sounds fucking intense…
The inside of the warehouse was open for spectators so we headed inside to check out the facility. This is just a small section showcasing their stock of body kits…This place was huge…
There were a couple cars parked inside on display as well. Here’s a semi-crappy shot of one of the 2GS on hand in the VIP Modular booth…
F50 Q45 on VIP Modular wheels…
Linda from Team Praxis also had her car parked with VIP Modular…
Bisimoto brought out the turbocharged Honda CR-Z and Bisi was busy chatting it up with his fans…
Strawberry-faced S13 drift car also on VIP Modular wheels…
Mugen-faced TSX on Enkei RPF1…
This drag-spec Civic hatchback was available to be won in some contest…I’d love to see the liability paperwork included with this car for whoever wins it…
R32 Skyline with a complete Do-Luck aero kit, wing and all…
S2000 that was in the 310 Tuners booth showcasing their new hood hinges…
VIP-styled S14 with a Supermade Instant Gentleman kit and 20-inch MMR HR3 wheels…
Another S14, but this one following a more traditional, non-VIP theme…
Classic example of how “aggressive” wheel fitment and “stance” can ruin a perfectly nice Honda…
Not even close to fitting, nor has there been any attempt to make them fit under the wheel wells,..you know, where your wheels are supposed to go…
I mean, it literally looks like the wheels are trying to run away from the rest of the car…
Oh, if you think that was bad, what you’re about to see below will blow your mind…It has to be one of the most random fucking things I have ever seen…
I don’t why this is happened, or exactly what is supposed to be going on here…The fact that it’s missing the top part of the dashboard is strange enough already but then you have the license plate that’s facing the people inside the car. That’s just the beginning though because then you take a look at the gauge cluster that is just laying there, and you spot a different image of Michael Jackson in each gauge. If you’re not mind-fucked yet, you also have a bullet belt just fucking laying there on top of everything… And IF that isn’t enough for you, the owner also has a shift knob with the head of Animal from Sesame Street… Looking at the interior of this Scion reminds me of walking into a Big Lots! store…it’s full of shit that you don’t want, scattered everywhere for no apparent reason…
Toyota MR-S on re-released Enkei J-Speed wheels…
Widebody Toyota Supra from San Diego…
This cement grey Scion tC looked great on 5Axis wheels…
Infiniti G35 coupe on fluorescent yellow Volk TE37s…
Supercharged Camaro…
I know there wasn’t much Honda content but that’s because there weren’t really that many Hondas there. That was pretty much it for that event. We hung out for a couple more minutes and then hopped back in DPK David’s coupe and headed home….
Thanks for looking…
NWP Summer Nights 2011 Coverage…Part 2 of 2…
Back now with the second part of the NWP Summer Nights 2011 Coverage held at the Eibach Springs facility…If you guys missed the first part make sure to scroll down and check it out…
When we last left off, the sun was setting quickly and Jared arrived in his Porsche with Big Mike. Throughout the night, people continued to show up in groups and by about 7:30-8pm, the lot was pretty full…
Here’s a look at what the front looked like just before it got dark. There were open spots scattered throughout the meet but for the most part, the turn-out was way better than anticipated…
Black DC5 with black chrome components under the hood…
One more shot of the white EK from part one…
SuperTwinz John, Rywire, Sheepey, and Jared hanging out in front of the main bay at Eibach…The guy that looks like Adam Levine from Maroon 5 is actually Tanner who owns the white 4-door Civic that was posted in part 1…
May hanging out and listening to Jared’s adventures in dating…
One more shot of Colin’s BB6 Prelude with rare Wisesquare aero…
Donut having a drink with Tony Jackson from Eibach Springs…
Jackie and May…
As you can tell from the photo above, it was starting to get pretty dark. I didn’t have a tripod nor did I bring any lighting so I just put my camera away and started using May’s Canon S95 point and shoot. I used the same camera when I took some behind-the-scenes shots during Sheepey’s Honda Tuning feature shoot. The photos were a little different from the norm because I was shooting in the S95′s “Nostalgic Mode”, which made for a cool look, so I decided to cover the rest of the NWP Summer Nights meet using the same feature….The previous two photos up top were actually shot with the S95 as well, but just in full-auto with no flash…
Ryan from Eibach Springs grilling up some meat and hot dogs for us to eat while we hung out…
Ryan’s ITR that he picked up a couple months back…
Arnel and Sid came up to me laughing and told me to walk over to this one white Civic coupe. I wanted to know what was so funny so I went to go check it out and saw that the car had a bootleg “Phase 2″ sticker on it…haha…weird…
A trio of Integra Type Rs…
Red Civic slammed on some SSR mesh…
Phaze2 Arnel’s 4-door, Sid’s Fit, and Sid’s brother’s Chevy as they were getting set to take off…
A red NSX on Work VS-XX that arrived late in the evening…
Tony Jackson and Ryan Hoegner…
DPK JP with his two baby boys…
Yellow S2000 on Enkei RPF1 and blue Cusco cage…
Carlos from DPK’s white-on-white S2000 CR…
Joseph aka Sloppy from AS1, Karl, and Karl’s girl chillin….You may not be very familiar with them but you probably know their cars…
Sloppy’s Fit…
Karl’s EM2 on CCWs…
Big Mike, Jared, and David…
Rywire Ryan taking off to go grab dinner with some of the guys…
JP and his boys…
S2000s…
A pretty clean Miata that I spotted on my last walk through to see whatever cars were left at the meet…
The majority of the crowd had dispersed by around 9:30pm or so and you can see from the photo that most of the cars were gone…We just hung out and talked for a little bit before we took off…
Ben from ATS Garage giving one of JP’s sons some water…
One final shot of Tony Jackson’s Civic…
That’s about it. We said our goodbyes to Ryan and the other Eibach Springs guys as they started to clean up and then we hopped into Ben’s G35 to head back home…
Back tomorrow with more updates, possibly the next installment of the Rywire ITR build…Thanks for looking…
NWP Summer Nights 2011 Coverage…Part 1 of 2…
Not many people knew about this meet because it was sort of an impromptu thing. There was a thread on the NWP4LIFE forums where there was some discussion in regards to a meet, but there was never really anything set in stone for a time and date until a couple days before this event took place. The whole idea behind this was just to do something small because Ryan from Eibach Springs didn’t want it to become a giant fiasco. For any of you who have gone to any of the annual Eibach Honda Meets, you already know how many cars that facility can hold and the type of foot traffic that it generates. Doing that would require permits, a larger staff to make sure all the cars got inside okay and no bullshit was going on, and that would just be more of a headache than it was really worth since this was meant to be a smaller meet. Ryan just wanted to get a couple NWP forum regulars to come out, chill, and just have a good time to celebrate the end of summer…
I’ll be honest, I didn’t even plan on going to the meet. Not because I didn’t want to, I just didn’t think that I could actually make it there. I was in Las Vegas, Nevada that entire weekend because I was attending the wedding of Mike from Plan B Motorsports. Mike is a good dude so it was cool that he invited us to go out there for his wedding and to allow us to be there for such a momentous occasion. Mike has been with his now-wife for ten years now and they wanted to step outside the typical wedding-box a little bit and just decided to have fun with it. As he said “it’s been a great ten years so we wanted to make it fun.” He went with a full costume-themed wedding and wanted everyone in attendance to dress up in different costumes. This was cool because it made things a lot easier and at no point was there ever a moment when things got overly serious, like many other weddings. I thought it was a great idea because it meant that I didn’t have to dress-up and do the slacks and tucked in shirt business. I mean, if it required that and it was a formal wedding, cool…but to have the opportunity to dress up and just do whatever we wanted definitely made things more entertaining…
Here’s a shot of a May, Big Mike, Rodrez, and Tes….May was an old school rapper with a giant inflatable boom box, Big Mike was doctor, Rodrez was the creepy guy at the club, and Tes was a pregnant Snooki… This was taken outside the “world famous” Little White Chapel in Vegas. I’ve never been to a wedding in this type of setting so it was definitely an interesting experience. The ceremony went by quickly, we all did some photos inside, and then headed out to El Segundo Sol for the reception. After that we got out of our costumes and then just hung out in Vegas. Big Mike actually arrived earlier that day to attend the wedding, and then headed home after the reception because he had work the following day…
While the wedding was quick and small, it was definitely something that I’ll always remember, just because of how unique it was. There was a lot going on that weekend with not only the NWP meet, but also Japanese Classic Car Show. I love attending that event every year, and I’m sure you guys have seen my coverage of the JCCS event in the past but I would gladly miss it again to attend the wedding of a friend. It was good to get away that weekend as well. I absolutely love going to Las Vegas to just chill and have a good time eating. I know a bunch of people love to get out there to go clubbing and do all that shit but honestly, I’ve been there and done that and the whole Vegas club experience isn’t something that I like, have a boiling feeling in my loins for, you know what I mean? I’ve partied everywhere, shit ain’t that different in Vegas and I don’t think it’s worth the hassle. I just wanted to get out there and do nothing. We are headed back there in about a month for the annual SEMA show anyway so there was no rush to do anything crazy…
I got back to my hotel late Saturday night and was looking at the NWP forums through my phone and noticed that the meet wasn’t going to start until 6pm Sunday night. I went to bed and woke up the next morning, had lunch, then headed back down to Los Angeles. I got back around 4:15pm, and hit up DPK David to see what time they were heading out to the meet. He said that he was heading out there with Jackie and Ben from ATS Garage so he came by, swooped May and I up, and we headed out to Corona to the Eibach facility. I wasn’t expecting much of a turn-out since there wasn’t any formal announcement of the event, but I was pleasantly surprised when I got there. Cars were beginning to fill the front lot and it looked like it was going to be a promising meet…
This is the Honda CR-Z that belongs to Eibach Springs. You probably remember it from last year’s SEMA show where it was parked with all the other CR-Zs that were distributed to various individuals/companies by Honda to build for their display. Brian from Hasport actually came by and picked this car up moments after I snapped this photo. I chatted with him for a little bit and he filled me in on what Eibach and Hasport had planned for this car. I don’t really know if I’m at liberty to reveal what they are doing but I promise you this; you guys won’t want to miss this thing at SEMA if you’re attending. For those of you who can’t make it there, I will definitely have some photos of this CR-Z’s new powerplant…
Tanner from Eibach Springs’ 4-door weekend track toy…
Sheepey’s turbo S2000…hopefully you guys have seen the video of this car that was made by Rodrez…if not make sure to click here to check it out…
Must be nice to be Ryan Basseri and have this as a weekend cruiser…
Phaze2 Arnel’s 4-door daily Civic on Mugen MF10L. He had a lip kit on the car at the Motion Auto Show a couple weeks ago but he’s since painted it and waiting to re-install it…
I really like the new SSR Professor SP3 wheels on Bryant’s TSX…I’ve enjoyed the progress on this car and it looks better than ever now with these wheels…
Mini Cooper on some old school Rays mesh wheels…
Spotted this K-turbo EK that I haven’t seen before…
Frankstar aka Bolt Boys Frank aka Downstar Frank’s Civic reppin’ Premium Garage Krew…
Always good to see Enrique Rosario and his Civic…this build is also one of those builds that have come a long way. There are always subtle changes to this car that many probably wouldn’t notice. He’s taking his time with this car and working at his own pace, which is a good thing…. I thought the interior shot was interesting because the bag of Lay’s potato chips and the drink from Subway somehow match the color scheme of his car…hah…hopefully this was unintentional and he doesn’t force himself to eat and drink things that only match his car….
Alex Colon’s Civic is another car that has seen some new gradual changes and subtle upgrades…the engine bay is looking good these days with his Rywire harness installed…
Speaking of Rywire, here he is with Brandon from Autolife TV staring at each other with hungry eyes…
Saw this ITR and it reminded me of what ATS Anh’s R looked like before it went through it’s massive transformation…
Always liked this del Sol but never met the owner…he’s always rocking a Chronicles and HellaSUNK sticker so I have to give him a shout-out for showing me love…
This del Sol on Regas is usually parked next to the one above and is also a very nice, simple build…kinda sucks but in this lighting, you can see that his front end doesn’t match the rest of his car…
Went by to snap a couple more shots of Sheepey’s S2000 after he popped his hood…
Really liked this red Civic coupe of Volk NRS wheels…
Chatted with the owner of this Prelude, Colin, for a little bit…he’s a really nice guy and has a pretty rare Wisesquare aero kit on his Prelude…I think it might be like possibly one of two kits that exist here stateside…
This EK was the same one that I was talking about from my Nisei coverage this year. I didn’t get a photo of it at the show so I made sure to snap a shot of it at the meet….Clean build and about as close to a real EK9 as you’re going to get…
This Civic had all the right parts on it…Mugen MF10Ls, parts from Backyard Special, and a K-swap…I just think it would look much better if it was maybe an inch or two lower…
4-door Integra on some black Enkei RPF1…
Donut probably had one of the most recognizable EG builds of all-time (click here if you’re unfamiliar) , but he’s been MIA from the Honda community since he sold his car and bought an Infiniti G35… He actually does still own a Honda and the Integra above is his weekend track car. There really isn’t much to the car, just some basic mods and some black 949 wheels but he takes it to the track and beats the shit out of it and has a blast. I haven’t seen him in awhile so it was cool to meet up with him and cruise out to the meet together…
Speaking of Hondas that get a beating on the track, this white hatchback belongs to Tony Jackson from Eibach Springs…
In this shot you can see how the middle section of the meet was kind of empty. More cars showed up later on but I found it interesting that even though there were plenty of open spots up front, people were still rolling up and parking along the side of the building. I guess people are so conditioned to be parked like how they are at the annual Eibach meets that they automatically assume the front is reserved for “VIP” guests, and that certainly wasn’t the case for this meet…
I really like this 4-door Integra that belongs to “Charlesfoo”…I love the red Bride-themed interior and the black 949s…it’s very simple on the outside but everything just works…I snap a pic of it every time I see it at an event…
Big Mike had left Vegas the night before so that he could go to work Sunday and then come to the meet after so it was strange to not see him there after we arrived at the meet. He’s usually one of the first ones there and I was about to give him a call until he rolled up with Jared in Jared’s Porsche….Jared was all smiles but Big Mike was looking kind of upset about something. I asked what was wrong and he said that the drive home from Vegas and then work just beat him up that whole day….
That’s about it for today, I have another batch of photos but that will go up tomorrow…It got dark real quick so I had to switch cameras later on in the night to be able to continue coverage. Stay tuned for more tomorrow…thanks for looking…
Motion Auto Show 2011 Coverage…Part 3…The Finale…
What’s up everyone, time to close out the third and final installment of the Motion Auto Show 2011 Coverage. Sorry for the lack of an update yesterday. I was running around taking care of some everyday shit like getting new tires for my beater as well as doing some product photography for Rywire. Judging how the hits have been lately, it seems as if everyone is happy with the coverage up to this point. Any time you have a combination of cars and girls with their asses hanging out it always makes for good hits…
Umm, not really much else to say about the show…it was definitely one of the best of the year so far but there wasn’t any crazy funny stories going on or anything dramatic. Gonna probably just close this out with the last bit of photos now…enjoy…
This was what I was talking about in part 1 with the girls standing inside the engine bays and shit…In all my years of going to shows, this had to have been a first…Hope it doesn’t become a regular occurrence at events because then you will have girls trying to climb into engine bays at local car meets and outdoor shows and shit where the engines are going to be hot…haha, nothing good will come of that. It’s not like they can just like hop out and shit either. I mean, that leg gets caught in a hot ass exhaust manifold, that shit is DONE…or like a girl with her ass hanging out trying to sit on a valve cover that’s been sitting out in the sun…uh yeaaah…
Ryan’s NSX sitting in the Falken Honda display section…
Ms. Maureen Chen was modeling for Team Hybrid that day but took a moment to walk over to the PASmag model search area…
Playboy mode Julri Waters did the same…
Here she is with Joselyn Cano at the Sony or something or other booth….I’m not sure if that’s really her name either so if you go and Google her name and an old lady with 2 crusty vaginas show up, it’s not my fault…
APR widebody G35 from TWCompetition…
Toyota MR-2 from Team Hybrid…
Lexus LS460, also from Hybrid, with wheels that look too small for it…
Chameleon-ish 350Z…someone should tell the owner that chrome vinyl will fuck your paint up pretty bad if you apply it directly to your car. That’s why I always tell people to put the stickers on the windows and glass instead of on paint…
I don’t know if you guys remember this WRX wagon or not but I did a story on it for Super Street a couple months back (towards the beginning of the year I believe) and it used to be silver. I had no idea he had the car repainted so it was a little surprising to see it at the show… it’s a cool build. Originally meant to be a beater wagon, then he started adding all kinds of shit to it, even customizing Voltex aero pieces to fit on the wagon chassis…
Crappy ass shot of Sheepey’s S2000. I honestly forgot the car was there entirely until Sheepey came up to the booth the hang out. By the time I got over there to get a shot of it, everyone was cleaning up already and the hood was closed…
S14 from Garage Boso…
Saw this really nice Mazda RX-2 towards the back end of the show. I missed out on all these cars at Nisei Showoff so I had to get a shot of it at Motion…
This one looks like it’ll fuck some shit up…
Spotted this NSX during roll-in the night before…the kit itself is really aggressive but I kinda wished he would have gone with more “fitting” wheels…if you know what I mean…Not only in terms of sizing and all but just the style of the wheel in general…
Oh okay, so here is a shot of one of the trophies that were specially designed by Troy Sumitomo from 5Axis for the Motion Auto Show… It’s pretty wild. Like one of those things where if you left it in your living room and then tripped and landed on it, you might rip your neck open…
JonJon’s IS350 from 1-Up…
Charles’ widebody S2000 from 1-Up…
Jose Romo’s Audi A3 on Work VS-XX wheels…
One more shot of Dennis’ STi while they were taking the tent down at the Mizu Cooling Solutions booth…
I think a lot of people slept on this Hyundai at the Motion show. I first saw it at the SEMA show in Vegas last year when it was parked in the Hyundai area in the center hall. You wouldn’t really think much of it, other than the kit and the HRE wheels but when you look at the back of it, you can tell that there’s so much more going on…
This is a crappy photo but if you look into the rear hatch glass, you can see that the motor is actually mounted in the rear…
You can see here how the exhaust is mounted through the rear bumper and how the vent has been added to the rear hatch where the emblem sits…Also notice the vents where the glass runs along the shoulder of the car…pretty sick build…
Abraham’s Civic, absent are the females that were crawling all over/inside it…
Arnel from Phaze2 recently installed a new lip kit to his 4-door….
2GS from Infinit Wheels…
Not really sure how I feel about this new look on Ejay’s DA….I really loved the SSR Super Mesh and I felt that it was the perfect set of wheels for his car. He said he has these on now instead because he doesn’t wanna have to deal with camber and ride height issues anymore…Ehh..I don’t know…
Downstar Frank’s right-hand drive EG on SSR Shumachers with optional center caps…
Top Secret Supra from Auto Concept Elite…
Billy’s HKS-themed IS300…
Mini from Auto Concept Elite…
Another angle of the Auto Concept line-up…
One more shot of the Falken Tire Honda display…
I loved the Motion Auto Show but I was scratching my head when I saw this DA inside the show by the back gate parked next to this stock Mustang…I like, stopped what I was doing just to take this photo…
Here’s something to make up for that last photo…haha…
That was pretty much it for the Motion show. After that I kinda just stood around and chatted with people until the awards ceremony ended and they let the cars out…I didn’t really go to the stage to check out what was going on for the awards because the majority of our guys were not competing that day since they were a part of the Falken Tire display…
Here’s a shot of ATS Angel’s S2000 as I was walking out to the vendor parking lot to pick up my 4Runner…. It took quite a while for me to get back inside with my truck since they wanted all the show cars out first but eventually they just let me in so we packed up the truck, said bye to the Falken Tire staff, and then took off..
Since the Long Beach Convention Center always has strict regulations regarding how much fuel can be in a car that’s parked inside, the guys had to get gas right after they left the venue…
One more shot of Ryan’s NSX while it was posted up at the gas station…
After that we all met up back at the Rywire facilities to drop off the cars, then we met up with the girls at a local Vietnamese food spot to have dinner. We hadn’t really eaten anything the whole day so we grubbed like no tomorrow. Nothing crazy went on once dinner was finished. We just talked and hung out and then everyone went home to get some rest….
That’s a wrap…thanks for looking…
Motion Auto Show 2011 Coverage…Part 2…
Uhhh….possibly….maybe….most likely…NSFW…
Here we go, part 2 of the 2011 Motion Auto Show coverage. Pardon if the coverage and photos seem to be all over the place. As you should know by now from reading PART 1, I was running The Chronicles booth all day and only walked away to take photos whenever I had the opportunity to…
ASM I.S. Design aero on this yellow S2000 that belongs to S2KI member “MaDara”… Good looking S2K, I actually stood here for a good 10 minutes waiting for this one fucking guy to get out of the way so I could take the photo. Guy wasn’t even looking at the car or anything, just standing there like a floating douche…
Edgar Lozoya’s G35…Why I have a rear shot of it and not a front shot I will never know. Probably because someone came up to me and started talking or something, I’m not sure. It’s a nice, clean G though. Not really sure why there’s like a random sticker raked across the trunk but oh well…
8th gen. Civic Si with a FD2 R conversion…
Cyrus Raaga’s Honda S2000…This car has been quite a hit since it started making appearances at all the Socal shows. Apparently he has full carbon ASM doors too on top of everything else that you see…Not really sure how functional the water-cooled turbo set-up is on a street car but it looks cool nonetheless…
Walked over to the PureHotModels booth to see what was crackin’ over there and installed my new Canon see-through lens to test it out on some of the models…It has this auto-focus feature that makes the top layer of clothing disappear, as shown in this photo…
Haha, seriously though…imagine if they actually had something like that? Shit would be pretty cool. I don’t know if you’d want to get past just the first layer of clothing though. If you had it where you could see through the bra and shit, then the titties would look all weird cuz they’re all smashed together…haha, just imagine a set of titties pushed up against a glass but there’s no glass, it’s just floating around and smashed together and shit…one would be pushed higher than the other and it’d look all cock eyed, weird…
Anyways, here’s another shot…I believe her name is Alecia Rabaya…
Varis-kitted Evo X…If I remember correctly, this Evo used to have bronze Volk CE28s on it, which I think is a much better look…
This is the same model that I took a photo of in part 1 when I went off on a tangent talking about how she looked like Rachel Roxxx…As I was walking back to the booth, I snapped this photo of her posing on this Scion…I don’t know if she knows anything about cars or not, but it’s safe to say that this car probably wasn’t her first choice of cars to pose with. At one point the owner asked her to like point at their crew sticker and do like a thumbs-up or some shit, it was totally awkward… I mean, any time a Scion with lambo doors pops up there’s an immediate sense of awkwardness anyway but this was just magnified because there was a group of guys just hawking at this girl point at some Scion crew logo and trying to look like she’s cool with it…You can tell by looking at her expression in this photo that she’s half pretending to be happy and half trying to hide her “I think I might have just smelled a fart” face…
Dennis from Team Hybrid’s STi in the Mizu Cooling Solutions booth…
Mercedes Benz CLS55 AMG from TWCompetition…
Voltex-equipped Evo from Team Hybrid also at the Mizu booth next to Dennis Kongvongsai’s STi…
Alex Doan’s Honda CR-Z…
Honda CR-Z built by Eibach Springs…
This matte clay colored-looking Bentley sat at the DUB booth…
Once I got back to the booth, me and the rest of the guys just sat back and hung out for awhile. A couple people came by to purchase some goods and then this girl who started hanging out at the It’s JDM Yo!!! booth and started doing some posing at the Takeda booth in front of us. Loi and I were just sitting there anyway so I picked up the camera to capture the moment…
It’s like every girl there decided to call the night before to let each other know to have their asses hang out at the Motion Auto Show…
Stopped by the NOS area to pick up another sample…This NOS model’s expression says “This job probably pays well but having to pour hundreds of cans of NOS through this ice sculpture seems a little ridiculous”…The girl on the receiving end is probably thinking, “She’s doing a good job but all this pouring makes me want to urinate…”
As I was leaving the NOS area, I walked by the PureHotModels area again and saw Tracy Linh posing for a photo while holding up some random ass flyer for this guy…I don’t know what the flyer was for and I really don’t advertise for people so I took the liberty of changing it to a photo of me sitting on the shitter and talking on the phone…
Spotted this S2000 on one of my random walks through the show. I really liked the pearl white paint and the contrasting red/orange wheels and cage…I don’t know how I feel about the widened front fenders though and then the rear quarters being stock. It almost looks incomplete that way….Like if you just widened the front half of the car, it almost sort of a front staggered look to it…
Kane Chan’s EJ1 coupe at the DC Sports booth…
R35 GTR with some deep concave wheels…
370Z at the Venaci wheels booth…Never been a real fan of the half carbon front end look…You can also see here that the car was originally blue too with the hinges and the area under the front fenders exposed…
My flash was acting up all day, possibly because of a battery issue, and that’s why this photo of Natalia Marie was ruined…
Didn’t expect to see Julri Waters at the Motion show…1. because I’ve never seen her at any import events before…2. I didn’t really recognize her with clothes on…She’s been in Playboy a couple times in some of their like special edition issues or whatever. I don’t think she was ever a Playmate though. If you Google her name you’ll find plenty of her photos. I’m not down to post up or link any of her Playboy photos because that shit will get me in all kinds of trouble…trust me, she’s all over the web…
Some photo shoot action with Steve Bitanga (I think that’s him) at the PASMag area…
A closer look at some of the vehicles from High End/Auto Concept Elite…these cars took home the majority of the awards at the Motion show…
Liked the front aero and fenders on this Evo X, not really feeling that rear quarter section that much though…The Wedsport wheels are a good look…
Saw Frankstar aka Mexican Zach Efron chatting this young lady up later on in the day…wonder if anything good came out of it…haha…
A couple shots of Gabby Jeanne…
Top Secret Supra…
After taking a look at the Auto Concept Elite cars, I went over to say what’s up to Anthony Do and the Infinit Wheels crew and saw these two girls contorting their bodies to try to fit inside Abraham’s engine bay…
She was probably looking down because her heel was caught inside one of the fins on his radiator or something, haha…
That’s that new import model shit right there, sit on the engine, lay your big ass heels on the radiator support…just be all over the car. This photo is deceiving because there were more girls inside the car. One girl had a titty in between the steering wheel, another girl was standing upside down and her pussy was hanging out of the sunroof…Abraham’s hood is airbrushed and some other girl figured out a way to airbrush herself into his hood…just madness everywhere…one girl like removed one of his seats and then positioned herself in such a way that she looked exactly like his passenger seat…fuck, it was wild…some girl took her pubes and shaved them in a way where it looked like dry carbon fiber and then laid down on top of his Spoon wing and managed to camouflage herself…haha, okay I’ll stop…
Back tomorrow with the final installment of the 2011 Motion Auto Show coverage….
Motion Auto Show 2011 Coverage…Part 1…
So for the delay, I just had a couple things I had to knock out before finally getting to the Motion Auto Show coverage. I have to first off give a huge thank you to Paul Nguyen from Pro-Motion Distributing. I never intended to have a booth at the Motion show, but Paul was kind enough to approach me at the Eibach 2011 event earlier this year to offer me a spot. I honestly kind of slept on the idea and just totally lagged it and fucked everything up. I didn’t hit Paul up about it again until probably the week leading up to the show and he was kind enough to squeeze me in and gave me a terrific spot. I had never met Paul previous to that but he was so great about letting me know that I was a welcome part of the Motion Auto event. Even on the day of the show Paul came up to me to thank me for coming out, shit was unbelievable…if anything I owed him big for giving me the opportunity. For that, I give a huge thumbs-up to Paul and Pro-Motion…
Now onto my thoughts on the show….Man, with a three week block of shows, I was expecting to be completely burned out from doing car shit week after week. Spocom was cool, but it wasn’t anything that I would run and tell people about….Nisei Showoff 2011 is always a show that I will be a huge part of because of the history of the Showoff events….and the Motion Auto Show, was the perfect ending to that three week block because the show itself, had all the elements of a well organized, well thought out event. Obviously with all these shows going on, you’re going to run into the same cars over and over, that’s expected. Spocom lacked the amount of cars that I would have preferred to see and almost seemed to take on more of an “Extreme Autofest” feel. The Motion Auto Show hosted way more cars, and the quality of cars was just better. I’m not going to compare it to Nisei obviously, because they are two completely different shows. Motion and Spocom are both heavily backed by the aftermarket parts industry so they had the funding and location to have huge events. The Motion show was great because it had elements that everyone would enjoy at a car show. If anything, it is the new “standard” of how all import automotive events and competitors should follow their lead. It had the cars, it was held at a great venue, and the girls…holy shit, there was a fucking shit ton of females there. If you are a guy or gal that goes to car shows just to stare at females, this was the show to be at. There were models at every corner, everywhere you looked. If you are there for the cars, then the females were a bit of a distraction, but that just comes with going to a car show of this size. I’m sure Tony and the It’s JDM Yo!!! staff was having a fucking field day shooting photos of girls. There were so many girls there that some were posing inside the fucking engine bay of some cars. It was a first for me for sure…but I literally saw girls standing like inside the engine bay of people’s cars. I mean, I don’t think you get what I mean….For example, I saw a girl standing inside Bolt Boys Frank’s engine bay like, inbetween his radiator and header. How she managed to cram herself in there I have no idea, but they managed to do it. Sometimes you would even have like 3 cars on one car and girls had to like dislocate their fucking joints and shit to fit inside a photo….it was crazy…
I wish I would have been able to cover the event with more depth because I have taken a look at other site’s event coverage and there was a significant amount of vehicles that I did indeed miss. Instead of spending all my time shooting though, I was busy operating The Chronicles booth. May had taken all of her time last weekend preparing for Nisei and also spent the whole day working the booth, so I didn’t want her to spend another weekend stuck at a car show, so I worked the booth with DPK David while May and David’s fiance, Jackie, went out to have a girl’s day. It was all good though because I thought it would be good to just sit back and enjoy a show for once and make a little bit of money. Whenever I had a free moment, I did go out and snap some photos though. A lot of the cars will be the same as you have seen during this entire month so expect that. There wasn’t that much debauchery from our side because we spent most of the day at the booth. The most interesting element of this 3-part series of Motion Auto Show coverage will definitely be the models. I’m sure that’s why you’re looking up Motion Auto Show coverage anyways…I didn’t go hunting for model shots or anything, that’s just not what I’m about. That’s Tony and It’s JDM Yo!!!’s prerogative…I captured whatever I saw at that particular moment and if it ended up being a good photo, so be it…Models don’t like to be photographed by me at events anyways because I usually just snap photos of them without waiting for them to pose for me. One reason behind that is because I’m always on the go snapping other photos, and the second reason is that I have the terrible shakes and by the time I’m able to focus and snap a photo of the model, they already think I took the shot already and start looking elsewhere or doing other shit….That’s why a lot of the models you’ll see on here are like, not looking at my camera. They started out doing that but probably thought I was fucking with them because I just stood there with a camera pointed at them and nothing was happening…haha…
Let’s get started with the photos…
I posted up some photos from the whole Saturday set-up process last weekend, but one of the photos that I left out was a shot I took while we ate lunch at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. Roscoe’s is a staple of Long Beach, CA so whenever we get a chance to head to that area we try to grab a bite there. After we finished setting up The Chronicles booth at Motion, we all met up at Roscoes along with Bakari Howard and the some of the other guys from Falken Tire…
Not much really happened that night. We met up for dinner, hung out for a bit, and then went home to rest up for the show that Sunday. I got back to the Long Beach Convention Center around 10:30am along with DPK David and Ben from ATS Garage and spent an hour or so prepping the booth. I didn’t feel comfortable leaving all my merchandise at the booth over night at the show so we brought it on Sunday and the guys helped me carry it in…
I had a couple stickers on display so that people could decide which Chronicles decal they wanted to purchase. That day I had the 2011 Nisei Edition “Battleship Grey”, the traditional black on chrome, as well as the Eibach 2011 edition of the Chronicles decal…
I also debuted the brand new Ver. II HURT FEELINGS t-shirts. We updated the design a bit and had a new grey shirt available as well as black versions…
The show opened up at 11am that day so I just hung out at the booth for awhile. Some people came by to say what’s up and show their appreciation for the site, which was really cool. DPK David and ATS Ben then took off to go move some cars around in the Falken Tire section. Loi Song from Sportcar Motion then arrived at the show to hang out. He really didn’t have anything planned that day so he just sat in the booth with me while we people-watched…
It was a little slow so I decided to pick up the camera and take some quick snaps. Here is a shot of the Falken Tire area, where they had set-up an all-Honda/Acura display. You should be able to identify a majority of the Hondas in this photo because they are some pretty familiar faces…
There wasn’t much done to this Honda CR-Z but it was in the Takeda booth directly across from mine, so we spent most of the day staring right at it….
To the left across a wider walkway was the Injen booth where they had this Volkswagon CC on display as well as a 3-series BMW…
Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!! and I actually shared a 10×20″ space at the show, so that was pretty cool. I knew if and when I had to go walk the show, I could rely on him to operate my booth for me and take care of things. He had all kinds of people around his booth the whole day. It’s pretty crazy to think how big his site has gotten since he started it. He’s got a couple guys shooting for him now and at the Motion show, he had this model at his booth. I believe her name is like Rachelle Viado or something similar to that. I’m not good with names…
I got a bit thirsty so I had Tony watch things while David and I went over to the NOS area to grab some drinks…When we got over there, we were greeted with this crazy ice sculpture that helped to serve NOS samples to show attendees. It was a pretty cool idea…I doubt it really sped up the process of getting drinks out to people, but it was cool nonetheless…If I ever became like, filthy rich or some shit, I think I would have one of these NOS ice sculptures delivered every single day and placed in front of my toilet. Then I could have fancy pee sessions because ice sculptures make everything more classy. I don’t know how long it would last and because my pee is probably hot but whatever, I’m fucking rich. I could even take a dump into it and use it as some sort of NOS ice turd cannon…
After I spent some moments staring at the NOS girls and their sample serving, I turned around and spotted this model, who reminded me of this porn star named Rachel Roxxx. As I was taking this photo, I was thinking about this one scene that Rachel Roxxx did recently where she was getting DPed by two dudes…If you don’t know what DP is and aren’t well-versed in the lingo of the adult movies, try to picture an electrical outlet where both outlets are plugged-in….yeah it’s kinda like that….If that also doesn’t make sense, just think of a conventional hot dog and bun set-up, but this particular hot dog….has two hot dogs instead of just one…Do you get it now?…
Two McDonald’s chicken nuggets….ONE sauce…haha, okay moving on…
After I finished grossing myself out thinking about nasty shit, I stopped by the Falken Tire section to say what’s up to everyone. Big Mike had just gotten off work and returned to the show, and guys like Mike G. were standing around chatting with other guys…Here’s a shot of Mike’s “Tank” next to Anh’s ITR…
The “Tank”…
Anh’s Integra Type R…
Angel’s S2000 with Big Mike in the background with others…
Big Mike’s Prelude…
This black RSX with Backyard Special aero was parked in the Falken Tire area along with Big Mike and the others…
Danny from PlusOne’s coupe…
There wasn’t much going on over there so I headed back over to the booth to sit down…The 5Axis booth was also pretty close so I snapped this shot of a matte white tC that I spotted. That red contraption you see in front of it was actually one the Motion Auto Show trophies, designed by Troy from 5Axis…I have a better shot of it later on in the coverage….
At this point, people were beginning to trickle in so I decided to walk around a do some more coverage while I still had the chance too…
Michelle Yee modeling for Savini wheels….
E46 BMW M3 with Japanese Voltex aero…
Scion xB rocking the Gulf livery…
Infiniti M on AME Shallen LX wheels…
I journeyed over to the area where all the TWC cars were and saw that they also had an elaborate ice sculpture. I then remembered that I had seen the TWC crew rocking ice sculptures in the past at other events so they were probably responsible for the one that was also at the NOS booth…Later on in the day, Salem told me he saw this ice sculpture fall over and almost hit Ka Wong’s orange AE86…
TWC went all out for the Motion Auto Show. They had their own DJ, a fucking ice sculpture with their own crew name on it, a bunch of nice cars, and also had their own models. Here is one of them rolling around on the back of some huge fucking truck… The funniest thing I saw all day was the two go-go dancers that were in the TWC area. They were dancing like they someone had the fast forward button pushed and a majority of the time, they weren’t even dancing to the beat of the songs that the DJ was playing…shit was crazy…
Melyssa Grace posing on a motorcycle in the TWC area…The guy in the background snapping the photo of her cleavage looks like DPK Darryl making a pouty-face…Melyssa Grace probably went blind after I snapped this photo since the brightness of my flash was so intense….Shit was acting up all day and was just a total pain in the ass…
Yellow FD3S RX-7 from TWCompetition…
Ka Wong’s F20C-swapped AE86 Corolla…
Always love seeing this widebody orange Infiniti G35…
A model passing out some flyers about AutoImportCraze’s new website…
Widebody Toyota Supra representing Squad One San Diego…
A couple shots of Tracy Linh…
Genevieve Chanelle and friend…
Oh here’s a good example of what I was talking about earlier…Genevieve Chanelle was hawking at me wondering why I was taking so fucking long to take the photo. At this point, she was already over it and saying “fuck this guy” to me while her friend stepped-in and picked up the slack…
Another shot of ATS Angel’s S2000…
I’m sure you guys remember my photo from Spocom of this young lady posing alongside an old ass man who was making a jerk-off motion with his hand….Well she was back in black at the Motion Auto Show…I think someone mentioned that her name was Kai Lansangan or something like that, but I prefer to call her the name I coined for her after I saw her at Spocom….TITLA MCBOOB…
Here’s Titla flippin’ her herr…
Titla McBoob striking a pose for another photog….Haha…seriously though, her real name is Kai Lansangan…That may be her real name or an internet persona, I don’t fucking know but it sounds pretty legit to me…If she wanted to go by an easier, more recognizable name, she would probably have gone with Titla McBoob…
Gonna close it out for today with a couple shots of Big Steve’s LS400…This thing has been sitting in a garage for what seems like 49 years now, so it was cool to see it out again, especially since it was the car on the Motion Auto Show flyer…Big Steve and I are a lot alike…we are both Asian and drive cars…haha, I’m just fucking with you, it’s late and I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about…I’ve been up for almost two days straight so it’s time for me to hit the hay…
Two more parts of Motion Auto Show Coverage to follow, thanks for looking….
Nisei Showoff 2011 Coverage…Part 6…The Finale…
Alright, time to close out the 2011 Nisei Showoff coverage with some random photos towards the end of the show, the awards ceremony, and at the end I’ve attached some of my favorite photos that I took from the show. Those won’t be in any particular order, they’re just shots that I thought were good. Overall, I think it was a great event. Foot traffic of course was a bit slower than in year’s past, but that was expected because of the 3-week block of shows. It’s really unprecedented to have that happen and definitely a first, but I’m happy to say that I was able to go to every show during those three weeks and was able to experience each of them. It’s crazy that it wrapped up with the Motion show because that was probably the most anticipated event of the summer. That’s not taking anything away from Nisei Showoff though. Nisei has and always will be a staple in our community’s history and it was more than kind of Ken Myoshi to have me be a huge part of it. I hope everyone enjoyed the 6-part mini-series of Nisei Showoff. I like to cover these events in such a way that you get to see not only nice cars, but also details behind their builds and stuff you may miss if you aren’t actually there in person. The GENERATIONS line-up came together quickly and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I think the general consensus from every Honda head that was there was that it was a positive move in bringing everyone together for one show. Hopefully in the near future I will be able to do the GENERATIONS line-up again but with even more people participating and more Hondas that we have all grown to know and love throughout the years. With that said, thank you everyone for coming over to The Chronicles to check out the coverage and I am appreciative of your continued support…
Now, let’s move onto the last batch of photos…
Lance Uchida, who helped drive Billy Shea’s IS300 out to the show, packing up along with some friends before awards took place…
You can’t look at Billy’s HKS-themed IS300 without taking a look at the amazing engine bay…
Billy’s HKS T51R turbine…
Sportcar Motion’s newly-built drag K24 Civic…I think a lot of people are misinformed when they see this car since they have become so used to Sportcar’s involvement with time attack. This is purely a drag car for their personal use. Nothing but pure straight line racing…
The motor currently makes around 350whp but plans are already underway to boost the K and make even more power. As of this week, the parts from AFI Turbo have already arrived at the shop and tear down will begin shortly…
Speaking of turbo Ks, one more shot of RC’s work-in-progress 4-door Civic…
Mike G. and DPK Jared having some fun and posing for a shot…
Mike G.’s buddy had this pristine real deal Civic Type R park with us since I ended up with an extra parking space when Will from Circuit Hero let us know that he couldn’t make it out…
Rywire Ryan and ATS Angel discussing some future plans, whether it be car shit or what to eat for dinner…
ATS FCB with his son Jaylen…
May and I were at the show for the whole day watching over The Chronicles booth, so we didn’t get an opportunity to go walk around J-town to grab a bite to eat…Luckily there was a sketchy-ass cart right outside of the front gates to Nisei Showoff where they sold “Danger Dogs” aka bacon-wrapped hot dogs. Definitely not the safest thing to eat, especially considering that there is meat being cooked on a rolling cart and mayo has been sitting out all day, but hey, sometimes you have to live dangerously…
As unsafe as it sounded, the thought of eating a bacon-wrapped hot dog inspired everyone’s appetites so the homies also went and bought some dogs…If there’s germs, the hot ass peppers are sure to kill them right? Haha…
Rhett and friends taking a closer look at Anh’s ITR…
Miss Chaba with an impromptu pose…
Rom, Jared, and Ryan beginning the sticker-removal process so that Jared and drive home with clear visibility…
After that came the hood re-install…Apparently it takes 5 dudes to put on an S2K hood…
WheelFlip model Tina striking a pose…
One more shot of Big Mike’s Prelude as the sun was making it’s way down…
Dennis from Team Hybrid’s STi that was near the front stage where the awards ceremony took place…
Even though Ken doesn’t have any major sponsors backing the Showoff series anymore, it doesn’t mean that he’s ever skimped on the awards at his shows. He’s always been more than generous with the number of awards and awards classes and appreciative of every make and model that participates…
It’s JDM Yo!!! x 1-Up, Tony’s super crew (aka The Vanguard Collective), anticipating some awards…
Peter Vong holding up his 3rd place trophy in the Nissan/Infiniti Class for his LS14…
Salem from Phaze2 holding up his 3rd Place Acura Class trophy for his J’s Racing TSX….
Big Mike with another 1st Place Honda trophy…
Jonathan “JonJon” Usaha holding up his “JDM VIP Showoff” award…
Jaylen and Fred from ATS up to receive the Integra/RSX showoff award for Anh Truong’s Integra Type R…
Sam Ip winning back-to-back years in the “ES/FG Civic Showoff” award with two separate cars…
Chris Sakai won the “EK Civic Showoff” award…
Mike G. with his “EG Civic Showoff” award. These awards are given to the best of that particular chassis at Showoff so it was cool to have Mike, Chris, and Anh win in their respective classes. It was cool to see Sam win again as well and the “EF Civic Showoff” award (if I remember correctly) went to the 4-door red EF Civic and that was definitely deserving…I didn’t get a chance to snap a photo of Angel winning his 2nd Place Honda Class award because I was busy shooting off a mini-confetti gun at him…
Peter up to grab the “Team Showoff” award for It’s JDM Yo! x 1-Up, which was given to the best car crew of the event…
We were all watching the Toyota and old school class awards fly by with no mention of Ka Wong’s name and we were honestly all a bit surprised. Ka of course is the owner of that beautifully-built F20C-swapped orange AE86. He’s usually a lock at almost every show to bring something home like Billy’s IS300 so we were thinking that maybe he was overlooked by the judges…
…and then they called his name and he walked up to the stage to win the coveted “Custom Showoff” award, which is the 1st runner-up to what basically is “the best of show” honors…Very well deserved. Ka’s Corolla is a remarkable build and a contender for best of show at any import event…The guy is also one of the most humble people ever as well so he couldn’t be more deserving…
…and the winner of course for the best of show, known as the “Showoff Auto” award went to Billy Shea’s HKS IS300. The photo above is Lance picking up the award since Billy couldn’t be there. It’s practically automatic for him to win because the car has it all, exterior aesthetics, performance upgrades, interior mods, custom paint, and custom audio…Congrats to Billy and the rest of the winners at Nisei Showoff 2011…
I was pretty happy with the results that the GENERATIONS line-up was able to produce… Integra/RSX Showoff, EK Civic Showoff, EG Civic Showoff (not pictured), 3rd Place Acura Class,2nd Place Honda Class, and 1st Place Honda Class…Doesn’t sound like much considering we had over 20 Hondas but you have to remember that these guys were pretty much competing with one another in the same classes…
After the annoying ass announcer was done promoting his own shit while giving out the awards, we walked back over to finish cleaning up and saying buy to everyone before they took off…
Here’s one more shot of Jorge Hernandez’s gold EG as the night quickly approached…
…and a shot of Mike Schietroma’s EM1 and Ejay Adriano’s DA Integra…
Ryan snacking on some JDM crunchy peas as we were getting ready to take off from the downtown Los Angeles lot…
Nothing to exciting happened after we left…We all went home to shower and take a break, then we headed down to the city of Irvine to go have dinner together and talk about the show….
Gonna close it out today with some bonus stuff for you guys. Below is a video of Nisei Showoff 2011, created by Honda Tuning head editor Rodrez…peep that. And when you’re done, I’ve included a couple of photos that I really liked from Nisei but in a larger format for your viewing pleasure. Thanks everyone for looking, thanks for supporting The Chronicles, and thanks for supporting Ken Myoshi and the Showoff events…Until next time…
Click on the links below each photo for larger versions…
History in the making… Larger Version (1400×933)
Fin.
Nisei Showoff 2011 Coverage…Part 5…
Just one more section of Nisei Showoff 2011 coverage after this one. I honestly didn’t even realize I took so many photos until I got home and went through them. Overall I’m happy with it and I think it’s a good representation of what was at the show. My only regret was not taking some more time to look at all the old school Mazdas that were there. There was a whole line-up full of them and I just completely missed them. Ah well, next time. I think I spotted a couple of them at the Motion show and I did snap some pics. In any case, you guys are probably here to see Hondas and shit anyways so all the other non-Honda stuff should be a plus. I just try to capture what please my eye so if you don’t see something that you like on here, I either missed it or we just have differing tastes…
Today we are going to be taking a further look at some of the other cars at the show and at the end I’ll give you some more detailed shots of various engine bays with some details that I really liked. Enjoy and I hope all of you have enjoyed the Nisei Showoff 2011 coverage…Tomorrow will cover the end of the day and stuff like that and there won’t be as much car content….
Always been a fan of Linda’s Toyota Matrix from Team Praxis. I think this car often gets overlooked and doesn’t get enough credit simply because it’s not a very popular platform. It’s definitely a top quality build though and it’s nice to have seen it progress to this point…
Linda’s VIP Modular wheels…
TRD Supercharger and custom wire-tuck and harness via Rywire.com…
Jay’s TL on Work Varianza T1s…
Michael Johnson’s 1st gen. Acura TL…
Joey’s Scion tC on Jline wheels…
Robert’s Civic with a custom front end adapted from a Mugen-style RSX front bumper…
Jared checking out some wheels at the Infinit Wheels booth…
DPK David once again…
Kane Chan’s girl Annie’s DC2 Integra on white Advan RGs…
Another shot of Parnell’s DA…
1st gen. Toyota Celica…
Mark II Toyota Celica Supra….
It was cool to see all the old school Toyotas parked along this row with a brand new Lexus LF-A in the middle to show off all the different generations of Toyota sports cars…
Wald IS-F…
Dennis Kongvongsai’s Subaru STi representing Team Hybrid…
350Z also from Team Hybrid…good looking car but I do feel like vinyl roll calls along the side of the door are a bit tacky these days…
Really liked this Miata on SSR MK2 wheels with the original caps…The custom rag top over the cage was a really cool idea…
Always see this hatchback from GTS at every show. At Nisei he ended up placing in the Honda category as well I believe…
This EF is always in immaculate condition and was recently in Honda Tuning magazine a couple months ago…
Always been a fan of the Lexus RX chassis. I’ve never seen this one before but it was definitely a pleasant surprise… There was an EK next to this car that I really liked too but there was this hoard of people around it and I could’t wait very long for them to move out of the way for a photo since I had to go back and clean up…
Charles from 1-Up x Its JDM Yo!!!’s Honda S2000…
Andrew Lim’s gold Supra…
Andrew’s brother Jason’s IS300 and JonJon’s IS350…
Old school Skyline GT-R…
Jose Romo’s Audi A4…
Lowfat Pie attempting to sexually assault Jared in The Chronicles booth…
Gonna close it out today with some engine bays like I mentioned at the top…
Arn Reyes’ white on white on white engine bay in his DC2…
A couple more shots of Sheepey’s turbo set-up since I saw some photos over the weekend of a particular S2000 owner on the east coast who is basically copying Alex’s exact turbo set-up…You’re welcome for the shots… If you guys are wondering who it is…think of a S2K out there that looks almost identical to ATS Angel’s S2000…haha…
Mike Schietroma’s bay with a Spoon Sports valve cover signed by Ichishima Tatsuru…
Ryan Der’s new white valve cover and coil over plug set-up…I love the blue beauty washers that are used throughout the car, from the interior to the bay all the way to his ignition coils…
Chris Sakai’s wrinkle black-themed bay…
…his breather and catch can set-up…
…and his custom Trick Flow fuel set-up…Note the hardware and the spacers used for fuel pressure regulator position in relation to how the fuel filter is mounted…all very minor touches that add up to a great overall bay…
Custom teal powder-coated horns for Anh’s individual throttle bodies…
Closing it out today with a shot of ATS Angel’s matte black TE37s and blue Project Mu brakes…
That’ll be all for today. Back with the final installment of the Nisei Showoff 2011 coverage tomorrow…
