Motion Auto Show 2012 Coverage…Part 2 of 2…
Rolling right along now with part 2 of the Motion Auto Show 2012 Coverage… I mentioned yesterday that it seemed as if the show was slower than last year with foot traffic seemingly down but the Motion Auto Show staff released the official numbers today for the event…
This just in: The final counts have been tallied!
Year……………………………2011———-2012
Attendees…………………….5500———-5677
Vendors………………………125————143
Car Show Competitors…….300————360
Media Registrations………..160————200
I guess I was wrong in my assessment, haha… I think maybe it just seemed that way because I wasn’t at the show as long and by the time I had got there, it was already halfway over with. Last year I was there all morning and saw the flood of people come in while this year, I just walked into it later in the day. Congrats to the Motion Auto staff though for putting on a great event and getting the numbers that they did. I got a bunch of stuff to knock out today for the site as well as for work so let’s just head right back into the rest of the photos. I didn’t take nearly as many photos this year so this second portion of the coverage is the final half. If I happened to have missed your car at the event, I either didn’t see it or just didn’t have time to get over to your section. Please don’t ask me if I have any photos of your car. What you see here is all that I got…thanks guys… enjoy…
Cyrus Raagas’ turbocharged S2000 with J’s Racing aero and ASM carbon doors… I was trying to get this thing shot so I could squeeze it into the upcoming Super Street Honda Issue but it was stuck in the bodyshop during that time and we just couldn’t knock it out. Very nice build though and a consistent winner at shows. Usually in the Honda category it comes down to either Big Mike or Cyrus and both are deserving…
Water-cooled turbo set-up… Not sure what types of numbers this produces but it is definitely an eye catcher. If there is one thing left that this S2000 needs it’s a nice tuck job. Rywire can probably do wonders with this thing and the bay will look even better….
Work Meister M1R wheels in a bronze finish…I did a shitty job of capturing it but Cyrus’ S2000 also has J’s Racing brakes…
Not really sure what the significance of South Park and Monster Energy have together or why it is a central theme on this Integra but it just looks like an assault on the brain with total randomness…Owner even sprinkled green glitter flakes around the car…Wouldn’t be a bad car without all the random shit around it but again, I think the theme here is “confusion”…
Y34 Infiniti M45 with what I believe to be an Autech aero kit. I remember I really wanted one of these a couple years ago before I bought my Y33 Q and to this day I still thinking about owning one. If I did it would probably end up sitting there for months on end like the one I have now, haha… This one is really well done though considering how limited parts are here in the U.S….
APR widebody G35 on carbon-faced HRE wheels…
Super aggressive widebody BMW M coupe from Renner Motorsport posted up in the Nitto Tires booth…
If high ranking members of the Illuminati were into cars, they would probably drive this custom Mercedes “SL666″…haha… fucking sick though. Only thing is I wonder how cool you look trying to climb out of the car with those long ass doors in the way…
Clean white Infiniti G37 on gunmetal Work VS-XX wheels…
Always been a fan of the livery on this Kouki S14 240SX on Work Varianza T1S wheels… Got a little bit of that Rosetta Stone and Pepto Bismo splatter feel to it, haha…no for real though, it’s a good looking car…
Milt Salamanca’s 350Z with custom re-barreled Work Rezax wheels… the rears are like 19×17 or some shit, haha…Shit is so deep my camera couldn’t even focus on the rears… The guy in the background is either sayin “Daaaaaamn” or playing the harmonica…
Lexus Sc400 from the Low ‘N Slow crew sitting on some WEDS Kranze Bazreias…
Another Z33, this one on extremely aggressive SSR Professor SP3 wheels… Half the rear wheel isn’t even touching the ground…
Some breezy apparently did some “modeling” on this Z and left her impression on the car with an oil ass print on the rear quarters…
Rywire Ryan jumped in there to do a little sniff test to see if it was fresh… he said it smelled like fresh clams from the Pacific with a hint of strawberry and avocado…
Bright metallic green Subaru WRX wagon from Team Hybrid… Rear flare is pretty aggressive and looks to make the rear door completely unusable… Two-toned bay as well… I try to stay away from taking photos of Subaru bays because the engine layout usually leaves for some pretty cluttered engine bays. There are a few very well executed, tucked bay, but this one isn’t one of them…
Joe Bacigalupi’s Voltex-equipped Subaru WRX wagon that I wrote a story on for Super Street over a year ago. Back then it was silver/grey still but has since been repainted to what you see currently…
S2000 wearing the new Voltex street aero kit… Love the lines of this kit as well as the Volk Racing RE30CS wheels…
BMW wagon representing B&G Suspensions on Work Rezax II wheels…
I didn’t get a whole lot of model coverage at the show but here is a shot of Melissa Riso modeling for Team Hybrid…
SL65 AMG Black Series from SPDV6…
Custom widebody Mitsubishi Evo X from High End/Auto Concept Elite…
The engine bay of the above Evo X…
Import Fashion was the spot if you were looking for models that you’ve never heard of… Nice photoshoot style set-up for the girls and for perverts with cameras…
Big Steve’s Unicorn LS400….
Black 2GS that Autofashion has dubbed “Chicken Little”…I have no idea why… Love WEDS Kranze Bazreias though…
Oscar aka Pancakes’ Y33 Q45 with his new Leon Hardiritt Bugel wheel set-up…
I stopped by to talk basketball for a bit with Neil Tjin from Tjin Edition-fame and his baby boy Colin…
Hakosuka Skyline lurking underneath the Autofashion tent…
Another shot of the Datsun Bluebird coupe from part 1…
Ela Pasion knocking out like 64 poses for every photographer that was in front of her in a matter of 20 seconds. All I got was the rear end shot…
Speaking of red rear-ends, here’s some more of Michael Mao’s NSX on custom gold Mugen MF10s….
Hate it or love it…
EP3 Civic with Mugen front end and Dunlop Formula Hart wheels…
Another EP3, this one with Enkei RPF1 and the dreaded Honda center caps…
EF hatchback with JDM SiR front end conversion and Enkei RPF1…
Amuse-style widebody S2000 on carbon hard top…
Black Integra rocking a “Mugen” stripe and Mugen MF8s…JDM front end conversion as well…
Evo IX with some Voltex gear and bronze Volk RE30s…
Impressive Wrap matte white wrapped widebody Evo looking good on Volk TE37SLs in red…
White VW MK6 GTI on air…
Always enjoy seeing this MK2 Golf at events…he is a consistent winner at shows as well and as I was snapping this photo I saw him walking back to the car with a trophy…
Really liked this Evolution IX with a complete Voltex aero kit and blue concave TE37s…Great looking car…
Tony Lee from It’s JDM Yo!! showing off the fap material that he collected throughout the day at the Motion Auto Show…
At this point, I was called on stage for their announcement for the Motion Auto “Motion Media Award”. As I said in part 1, I didn’t win but it was cool to be nominated and to be on stage for a little bit…
Got the chance to snap this photo on stage behind the trophies… Natalia Marie, Julie Mai, and the other NOS Energy Girls were on hand to give out the trophies to car show competitors…
Freddie from Autofashion was on stage to present the Ruckus Awards and Big Mike was called up to represent The Chronicles so I snapped this crappy photo of them while we waited…
I took a bunch of photos of the Ruckus’ in attendance at the show but I have the terrible shakes and they all came out blurry so I apologize for the lack of Ruckus photos…
After they announced the Motion Media Award, I did the walk of shame off the stage and went back to taking photos of whatever was left that I missed prior…
Stopped by the AEM booth to say what’s up to my buddy Holly Lee…
..and then I walked over to check out this Datsun 510 sedan from Team Hybrid… Love the orange tone on the bronze Volk TE37Vs…
Interior was mint…notice the Katana sword handle shift knob…
KA24DE swap and a tidy battleship grey engine bay…
Another angle so you guys can see the plumbing for the fuel lines and oil filter relocation… That ARC intake originally meant for a non-turbo SR20DE motor has to be one of the oddest intakes I’ve ever encountered…
Ken Suen’s FA5 Civic Si with JDM Mugen RR conversion… Love the offsetting Volk RE30s and CE28s front and back… You’ll be seeing this car soon as it is (in my opinion) one of the heavy favorites to win the upcoming Super Street FF Battle 4 competition…
Jackson Wong’s matte grey-wrapped Amuse-style S2000 on Enkei PF01 wheels…
I couldn’t end my day without stopping by the Falken booth to snap a photo of the Falken Tire S15 Silvia… I love S15s and I think they are one of the best looking cars that Nissan ever produced…
As I was snapping a photo of the S15 Silvia, Big Mike walked by with his Best Honda award so I stopped him to get a photo op with Brad Lim from Falken as well as Falken model Randyl Dawn… Congrats to Big Mike on the award. He placed second last year as the Best Honda award went to Cyrus with the S2000 but this year, he took top honors…
That pretty much wraps up the coverage of the event. I chatted with some other people for a minute before May and I took off to go have dinner with Rywire Ryan. Below is a list of the winners in each class. Congrats to them all for their hard work and dedication. Michael Mao with the NSX ended up taking second place Acura if you guys were wondering…Anyways, here’s the list…
Acura
3rd: Eric lam – RSX
2nd: Michael Mao – NSX (Red NSX on gold Mugen MF10)
1st: Brian Yoshino – TSX (Blue widebody TSX from Part 1)Honda
3rd: Sunny Suravarapu – Accord
2nd: Cyrus Raagas – S2000 (Purple J’s Racing S2000)
1st: Big Mike – Prelude (You already know who this is)Toyota
3rd: Ka Wong – Corolla (Orange AE86 with F20C swap from Part 1)
2nd: Kai Tsukihama – Supra
1st: Richard Carino – SupraScion
3rd: Manny – TC
2nd: Jeff Maldonado – TC
1st: Geisha Events – TCBoxed
3rd: Ellisome Punzalan – XB
2nd: Robert Green – XB
1st: Geneva Pruitt – XBNissan
3rd: Lohit Pattanaik – 370Z
2nd: Forrest Wang – 240sx (Green S13.4 from Part 1 with the 2JZ swap)
1st: Jesse Sabater – GTRInfiniti
3rd: Alfred Serrato – G35
2nd: Dallas Tung – G35
1st: Randy Riggs – G35Mitsubishi
3rd: JB – Evo
2nd: Kelvin Hsui – Evo
1st: Jovi La Victoria – EvoSubaru
3rd: Greg Villanueva- WRX (I believe this is the green one above)
2nd: Jeff Bacigalupi – WRX (WRX wagon on TE37SL pictured in the above photos)
1st: Thomas Milroy Jr.Mazda
3rd: Impressive Wraps- RX7
2nd: Ulysses Aguayo – RX7
1st: Ryan de Guzman – RX7 (Yellow FD3S that I somehow missed out on photographing but you’ve seen it plenty of times here on this site)Lexus
Alan: Hewitt – ISF
Carl: Zamulo – IS
Matt: Tom – CT250VIP:
3rd: Miguel Aguirre
2nd: Jonathon Carino – LS
1st: OJ Bayang – LSJapanese Old School
3rd: Peter Vong – Celica (Green 1st gen. Celica from Part 1 with the F20C swap)
2nd: Mallen Fajardo – 510
1st: Michael Castillo – SkylineJDM
3rd: Eric Lam – RSX
2nd: Jovi la Victoria – Evo
1st: Richard Carino – SupraBMW
3rd: James Lin – 330i
2nd: Gavin Goei – M3
1st: Mert Contapay – M5Mercedes
3rd: John Rhee – S Class
2nd: Sammy Stoicescu – SL
1st: John Rhee – CLSVW
3rd: Bernie Chacon – Golf
2nd: Michael Tao – Golf
1st: Mike Concepcion – GTIEuro Other
3rd: Joseph Liu – Smart Car
2nd: Jose Romo – A3
1st: Francis Fabiculanan – 911Camaro
3rd: Mike Betts – SS
2nd: Gary Shellum – Camaro
1st: Marco Ramirez – SSDomestic
3rd: Eric Degratte – Magnum
2nd: Ken Tickner – Charger
1st: Lance Doss – ChargerStance
3rd: Milton Salamanca – 350Z (White Z33 on Work Rezax above)
2nd: HenryMartinez – 350Z (Black Z33 with the ass print on it)
1st: Christopher Daniels – GS (Lexus 1GS with the unpainted front bumper)Best Display:
Team HybridBest Team
3rd: Hybrid
2nd: R-Rydes
1st: TWCBest Engineering:
Ka Wong – Corolla (AE86 with F20C swap)Best in Show:
Viet Nguyen – Infinity FX (The blue FX from Part 1. This was already a foregone conclusion because nobody can touch that car)
Thanks for looking!
Motion Auto Show 2012 Coverage…Part 1…
Welcome to the first part of The Chronicles’ Motion Auto Show 2012 Coverage… Before I begin, I’d like to mention first off that I didn’t take nearly as many photos as I did last year. The main reason behind that was because of the fact that I didn’t make it home to California until around 11:30am or so, after the show had already started. I had to take care of a couple of things back at home and I didn’t even get down to Long Beach for the show until around 2:30pm. When I got there I didn’t have a whole lot of time to take photos like I did last year so I apologize in advance if this coverage lacks the “depth” that my usual coverage entails. Add that with stopping to chat with people and seeing the usual friends, there just wasn’t nearly enough time to get everything I wanted. Last year, Motion gave me a booth space at their show so I was at the show from the moment they let competitors back into the building in the morning, until the hour after the show ended. That was more than enough time to get the cars, models, and whatever shenanigans was going on at the event…
As for my thoughts on the show itself, hmmm…I mean, I missed the first couple hours of the event but it seemed like foot traffic was way down from last year. It just didn’t seem as if they had as many spectators as they did in the past. There also weren’t as many cars as last year from what I saw. The main area by the stage last year was just packed with vehicles and major car crews like Auto Concept Elite had huge displays. This year the area was mostly empty with a few row of cars. Even Auto Concept didn’t have their usual display and just had a couple of cars on hand. The quality of the cars was still there but it just didn’t seem as “full” as it was in 2011. Overall the show was good though. From what I saw everybody seemed to have positive things to say about it and the only points they made were the same as I listed here. I want to say that it was slow because there are so many events coming up and people are saving up, but it wouldn’t be a fair assessment because Motion fell into the same block of time as in 2011, when they were just a week apart from the new Spocom show…
The models seem to be kind of lacking this year as well. Again, I didn’t get to the show until it was half way over, but it seemed like there weren’t as many “big names” as before. There was a lot more up and comers and some girls probably should just reconsider this whole modeling thing. That sounds like an asshole thing to say but after being a part of this import community for over a decade now, I’ve come to realize which girls have lasting power and which ones will quickly fade away. I applaud them for taking a chance and putting themselves out there though, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t see many of these girls a year from now. It takes a lot for these girls to put themselves out there wearing what they wear but it’s tough to really stand out in a crowd of so many would-be “import models”…
Another reason why I decided to come back early from DPK David’s bachelor party weekend in Vegas was so that I could make it back in time for Motion to see if I won the “Motion Media Award” that I was nominated for. It was an honor to be nominated and placed in a category where I was competing with Performance Auto Sound magazine and MotoIQ but in the end, I didn’t take the award home. MotoIQ ended up with the trophy but it was a good experience overall. It’s cool that I’m getting recognition for all the hard work I put into this site and the nomination means a ton. This is a one man show over here and I do everything from the writing, to the photos, to making and packing all the merchandise so I’ll gladly accept the nomination against a publication with a full staff as well as a website with multiple contributors. It was cool being on the stage for the awards too as I’ve never been able to look at the show from that point of view. One thing I was a little confused about was why they called Big Mike on stage and called him “Big Mike from The Chronicles”. Though Big Mike is a friend and a regular of the site, he is by no means a staff member or contributor to the site. I have no staff after all… I guess that’s my fault though for walking into the show at 2:30, haha…Makes more sense to have Big Mike go on stage since he had been there the whole day than me, who was nowhere to be found until the afternoon…
Alright, that’s all I really have to say about the event. It was a overall a good show and one of the shows to look forward to every year…
Kicking off the coverage with a shot of the car that everyone seemed to be talking about at the Motion Auto Show. Michael Mao’s NSX with his new custom re-barreled Mugen MF10 wheels by Wheelflip stunned many a showgoer when they spotted it. The bright gold finish was an instant eye-grabber and the first car that I went to go look at when I walked in…
The MF10s with the custom step-lipped set-up has also been a big topic on the internet as of late. Many like it and seem to be very fond of the look, while others completely despise it and are crying blasphemy at the idea of cutting the faces off a classic Mugen wheel. Either way, Mao’s NSX is getting quite a bit of attention, whether it be good or bad. I am a purist about certain things but I have come to embrace the idea of refinishing and re-barreling original Japanese wheels. I’ve done so myself actually with a set of classic Work Equips but a set-up like this was very surprising for me. I know the Wheelflip guys personally but hadn’t heard from them regarding this set-up. I think the craftsmanship itself came out great and the wheel itself looks good. I just don’t know how I feel about seeing a set of Mugen MF10s with a step-lip look. The finish sort of throws everything off because your eyes are already messing with you because you’re not used to seeing MF10s like this, and then the gold just presents sort of a “visual overload” feel. It’s cool that Mike was able to pull it off though because somebody was bound to do it eventually. His NSX is looking great these days with the new twin-turbo set-up but I think people were so busy looking at the wheels that they probably didn’t even notice…
I tried to get a good shot of the engine bay but I couldn’t reach over the rear hatch without me having the shakes and taking a horrible photo. I’m sure the car will be at Wekfest Long Beach in a couple weeks so I’ll be sure to get a shot of it there… For now, check out his custom dual exit exhaust set-up…You can spot one of the intercoolers behind the exhaust in this photo…
I love the look of the pie-cuts and the burned finish on the exhaust tip…
Parked in the same row as Mike’s NSX was Big Mike’s Prelude. He’s been doing a couple things here and there to freshen up his BB4 and the bay is looking wild as ever…
He’s always been recognized for having one of the cleanest engine bays in the Honda community but lately with the new additions, he’s geared his bay more for function than just simple visual appeal…
The first thing you probably noticed are the multiple wire harnesses protruding out from the Bisimoto header. These wires are attached to four individual O2 sensors…
…that run to this AEM 4-Channel Wideband UEGO Controller. By having this set-up, precise individual cylinder tuning can be achieved and Big Mike can get the most out of his F20B motor…
S2000 with Mugen (or Mugen-style) hard top, BBS RS wheels and matching red BBS caps…
Armand Pranadi’s MR-2…now 863 days without the rest of his rear wing…
Forrest Wang’s S13.4 drift car on Work VS-KFs representing M7Japan…
Very nicely executed engine bay rocking a 2JZ-GTE swap…
Garret Nikolich’s S13.4, a twin of Forrest Wang’s S13, also with a S14 front end conversion and Work VS-KFs…
Jose Romo’s Audi A3…
EP Civic on BBS RS wheels…
Peter Vong’s new 1st generation Toyota Celica project car… I didn’t even know this was him and Theresa’s new build until I talked to them as I was getting ready to leave the Motion show…
They plan to repaint the car and do plenty more to it next year but for now, the only thing Peter has really done is swap in this F20C Honda S2000 motor with individual throttle bodies…
Legit, right-hand drive Datsun Bluebird on bronze Watanbe wheels…
Next up is my favorite build from the Motion Auto Show… this LS430 from Vegas has a completely custom made aero kit that was created by the owner at his own house! He used plywood to create the structure of the kit and then used sculpting clay to make the rest of it. Not only that, he also painted the car himself and did the interior on his own as well… You have to see his build thread to believe it. If you’ve never been on VIPStylecar.com, click this link HERE to check it out… I fucking love this car, completely unique in its own way and fully built by the owner. You have to respect that…
Custom brick-red interior…sorry if the red is really bright in this shot, I couldn’t capture the detail of it without using an overhead flash…
This shot of the door panel will give you a better idea of what the red looks like…Love the stitching on the inserts…
Trunk set-up in the LS430 is nice and simple…
20-inch Leon Hardiritt Ordens….a wheel much like the Volk TE37 that looks good on just about any vehicle…
Dennis Kiyan’s Infiniti M45 with a complete Seraph (Huntington Cruise) aero kit and WEDs Kranze Magiss wheels…
FD3S RX-7 drift car on ING’s wheels sitting in the Falken Tire section…
Justin Pawlak’s RX-7 slammed on bronze, concave, Volk TE37 wheels…
Also in the Falken Tire area was the Bisimoto Porsche. Ryan from Rywire was talking to me about this build recently and he and Bisi have done a ton of work to it recently to get it up and running…
Twin turbo Porsche 997 motor in the 70s chassis…
5Axis-built Scion FR-S on display…
I spotted this S13 a couple months ago at a meet and was happy to finally be able to get a closer look at it at the Motion event. I love the OEM Nissan 180SX Type-X aero and I’m sure many of you know how much I love Work Equips by now…
No 180SX conversion would be complete without an SR-swap… Very clean build. Feature-worthy if it hasn’t been in a magazine already… hit me up if you’re interested!…
CR-Z on teal BBS LMs and hammered on Airrex air suspension system…
VIP F50 Q45 with WEDs Maverick wheels…
I really liked this Y33 Q45 because this is what mine would have looked like if my JDM Cima Touring model front bumper didn’t get burned down in the Midnight Garage fires a couple years back… The bumper is unique because it has that OEM add-on lip to it that was exclusive to the Touring models. I think it looks great on the body itself without a kit and had my bumper actually made it out of the fire unscathed, I would have taken my Wald kit off and just rocked this Cima bumper… oh well, sad face…I didn’t even get shit for losing my bumper in the fire either, sucks… Good to see someone actually found another one and did it though because they are pretty hard to come by with that lip…Love the bronze/black finish on the wheels as well…
Brandon Burke’s S13 that you’ve seen on this site numerous times. I shot this thing for Super Street magazine earlier this year and it is still looking as good as ever. Nice to see that he hasn’t changed it or attempted to sell the car after his feature came out…
This custom widebody TSX is a regular here in the Socal show car circuit…
Linda’s TRD supercharged, VIP style, Toyota Matrix at the VIP Modular booth…
I was surprised to see Alex Doan’s S2000 at the show, seeing as how he was in Vegas with us for DPK David’s bachelor party…
Ka Wong’s AE86…still one of my favorite builds of all-time…
GM LSx-swapped RX-7 on SSR Professor SP1 wheels…
I was surprised to see Viet Nguyen’s FX at the Motion show since it had been a good while since I’ve seen it at any event. I didn’t even know it was still around honestly so I was happy to see that it is still in immaculate condition…
Viet’s engine bay on his FX… just a beautiful build all-around and probably one of the best import show cars ever…yes, ever, even back when it was silver and appeared on the cover of Turbo magazine…
Widebody Nissan R35 GTR from Auto Concept Elite…
E65 7-series BMW on Luxury Abstract Mador wheels… Pretty crazy looking with the concavity of the rear wheel on the long wheel base of the E65…
Interesting face design on these Luxury Abstract wheels… “abstract” is appropriate…
Slammed UCF21 LS400 on SSR Vienna Dish, reppin’ Liberty VIP car club…
CubanGS aka Chris’s 1GS also from Liberty VIP. I asked him why he was rocking an unpainted front bumper and he said that he just went to the show for fun and didn’t get a chance to finish the bumper in time. I believe he ended up taking home the “Best Stance” award at the end of the day… Not into the whole “demon camber” thing but he is just down to roll around everywhere like that…
Closing it out for today with this 2GS from Liberty…note the custom rear quarter panel work…
That’s all for today… check back tomorrow for part 2 of the Motion Auto Show 2012 coverage…
Wekfest SF 2012 Weekend Coverage…Part 5…The Finale…
…and now, it’s finally time to close out The Chronicles’ coverage of the 2012 SF Wekfest event. I hope you all have enjoyed my take on Wekfest and taken the time to read my thoughts on the show. My only regret from the weekend is that I didn’t get a chance to cover a very small portion of cars that were parked outside by the roll-in area. I didn’t even know there were cars parked out there until the end of the show. I saw barricades surrounding the roll-in area and it didn’t look like people were allowed to go over there so I didn’t take a chance to walk out there with the strict security walking around. It turns out that there were some very nice builds out there that I missed and I apologize to everyone as well as the owners of those cars for missing them….
Today we will take a look at the rest of the event from the late afternoon into the evening when the awards ceremony took place. I didn’t cover the awards that much this year because I was busy cleaning up and tearing down my booth with May and others. I did capture some photos of the winners with their awards though. One of the cool things about this year’s awards was that the winners of first place also received a keychain along with their plaques. Before I get started, I’d like to thank a couple of individuals who made this event great for me…
Maybelyn for operating my booth and making sure everything was organized and went out in a timely matter, thank you very much and it means the world to me that you continue to support The Chronicles and everything involved with it…
Tony Lee for carrying all my booth stuff up to Norcal in his car. May and I went up in a Toyota Yaris so it didn’t leave much room for the canopy and what not. Tony came through and helped big time for bringing everything…
Salem, Murdock, Keith *Keychain” Cheng, Holly Lee, Jay Mayuga and his girl for the caravan up to Norcal. Rolling together as a group made the drive so much easier…
Rodrez, Tes, the baby, Ryan “Rywire” Basseri, OldManJames, Big Mike for the caravan on the way home…good times as usual fellas…
Dougie, J.P. BonB, and all others that stopped by and helped out at the booth throughout the day. I know it was a little overwhelming for May at times with all the people that came by and I’m happy to know that I have friends that are always down to help out…
The ATS Garage family for always being so kind and courteous and taking time out of their busy schedules to come hang out and show us around San Francisco….
Last but not least, I have to thank Adam, Ken, and Junior from Wekfest for accommodating me and always giving me such an amazing spot to have my booth at. I’m proud to see the growth of this series of shows and I wish you guys nothing but success in the future. It’s been a fun ride so far and it’s only going to get better…
With that said, let us close out this coverage with the final batch of photos…
Sam Ip’s supercharged FA5 Civic SI…
Loreto Garcia’s beautifully done EK…
Loreto’s bay with the Chinese woman’s foot binding header…
The interior of Loreto’s EK…
Volk TE37V with Wilwood big brake kit…
Purple Kouki S14 with aggressive aero…
Datsun 510 sedan on Work Equip 03…
Always been a huge fan of this Nimbus Grey BMW 3-series sedan on BBS LM…
Pretty sure this Evo won an award at the end of the day…I personally think that the brown Evo with the teal Work Meisters deserved a nod but this one is pretty sick. The Voltex aero alone puts him right up there to win… The only thing I don’t really like about the aggressive Voltex front end is that it’s not really meant for street driving, which means that people have to keep the front end pretty high off the ground to prevent them from hitting the front and blowing all kinds of money. For guys to be able to drive it there is usually a considerable amount of front wheel gap and it makes the Evos look a little odd… On race cars running this front end, they are literally millimeters off the ground…
Lexus LS430 from Endless Projects…
Love this NSX just for the pure reason that it has Advan AVS Model 5 wheels… One of my favorite wheels of all time…
This S2000 was probably one of the most slept-on cars at Wekfest IV… People probably didn’t notice it because it was in the back of the Herbst Pavilion and it was somewhat understated in nature with it’s OEM white paint. This S2000 is actually turbocharge, has a very rare and expensive Amuse hardtop, Ohlins coilovers, Advan wheels, just to name a few…very well done build and I’m sure you’ll be seeing more of it very soon…
Civic posted up in the Blox booth… purests will probably not be very fond of the combination of the Spoon front lip and Mugen sideskirts… why? Well, it’s common knowledge that it’s a no-no to ever combine Mugen and Spoon products together…It doesn’t bother me as much as the painted sides and carbon lip combo though, just looks a little odd…
I liked this MR-2 with gold Work Meister S1s…Haven’t seen one of those rear air ducts in awhile and the carbon fiber fan shroud is a nice touch…
G35 coupe slammed on Volk GT-S wheels…
SR-swapped 510 sedan aka Bluebird SSS on Panasport wheels… Bay is looking really good…
Lloyd Morales’ Vertex Kouki S14 is always on point… Liking the new cage and it’s looking close to completion. Might be time to get this thing in a magazine…
I’ve had a discussions with a couple different people in regards to what my favorite car was at Wekfest IV…Man, I couldn’t narrow it down to just one but this IS300 is definitely up there on the list. I just plain fucking love this thing. Color and wheels are just money!…
Tiffany-themed Scion xB…
E46 BMW M3 on 3-piece Work Meister S1…
Linda’s TRD supercharged Toyota Matrix is always on point and a consistent award winner at every event it attends…
Michael Johnson’s TL freshly repainted and now sitting on VIP Modular wheels…I wish I had more time to check this car out…
Trying to figure out why Downstar Frank was giving me the bedroom eyes but I hope he had success selling his nuts…all homo…
At this point I decided to walk out of the Herbst Pavilion and head back to the booth for a break…
Make sure you guys pick up your black Chronicles tees when they are back in stock again at the end of the week…
May and I were hungry so I decided to check out the Norcal food trucks that were present at Wekfest… It was fucking freezing outside but I decided to order some food from the Mogo truck…The other truck had Hawaiian food but since it was their first time at a Wekfest event, they had no idea about the volume of people that would be coming and they ran out of food by the middle of the day…
I was a fan of this Ruckus in the Good Life Entertainment booth… The Recaro seat was a nice touch…
Japanese right-hand drive Toyota Hi-Lux pick-up truck… While it was cool to see one there, I spent more time wondering how someone actually got a hold of one of these and decided to build one… Looks to be a fuel-injected 22RE motor in there too, nice touch…
Sportcar Motion’s “Dirty Hybrid” Honda CR-Z… K-swapped with white TE37s…
One more crappy shot of Loreto’s EK… Peep the Bomex mirrors… Good luck seeing anything out of them but they do look cool. They actually made power versions of these mirrors too so you can continue to not see anything at the flip of a switch…
That pretty much wraps up the car coverage from that day. It was time to clean up and watch everyone head out so I just walked around in an attempt to capture a photo of the winners and their awards….
Sunny from Franklin Autobody stopped by to hang out and saw Big Abe’s Vip Modular wheel just chillin so he wanted to try it out and see just how heavy it was… If you must know, he now has Scoliosis…
Big Abe decided to come by and help Sunny stay upright…
Nick Caster and his J’s Racing-themed CR-X surprised everyone including himself by winning 3rd place in the Honda class…
The Sakai family also took him one award each…Dina’s S2000 earned her a 2nd place award in the S2000 class and Chris earned 2nd place as well, but in the overall Honda class…
Sam was all smiles as he took 2nd place in the model-specific Civic category and stopped for a photo op with his girlfriend Linh…
Fred Chapman and Anh Truong earned a 1st place nod in the Acura class…
Big Mike continued his winning ways and earned a 1st place finish in the Honda class with his Prelude…
Ryan Der from ATS Garage won the 1st place award in the Civic class…
Salem from Phaze2 took home two award that day for his functional J’s Racing-themed TSX…3rd place “Import of the Festival” and 3rd place in the Acura class…
Junior from Wekfest didn’t win any awards but he was nice enough to come by so I could get this photo of him in his brand new Chronicles t-shirt…
…and that as they say, is a wrap on Wekfest IV. It took us awhile to leave the venue because we had to wait until all the show cars left to bring our car in to load up the booth stuff. After that a couple of us met up for dinner down in the city at one of our favorite food spots out there. We had some good laughs and then went home and got some rest. I thought I wasn’t tired until I got back to the hotel… I was watching TV and just dozed off and woke up the next morning to grab breakfast before heading out to load up the car with luggage…
Keychain’s Accord ready to make the trip back to Socal… It had rained during the late evening and we thought we were going to drive into a storm on the way back. Fortunately for us, the sun was shining bright on the way back to Socal…
While we were hanging out outside after breakfast, I spotted Frank from Bolt Boys loading up his EG…
A quick shot of Sam and Keith’s cars next to one another in front of the hotel…
Big Mike’s Prelude eager to head home…
That’s it. A small group of us headed out after we loaded up the cars and made it home early in the evening. The drive wasn’t too bad and we even managed to stop and grab a quick lunch down at Harris Ranch in the middle of nowhere. It was a great trip overall and we look forward to making the trek once again next year…
Thanks for looking and that concludes Wekfest IV…
Wekfest SF 2012 Weekend Coverage…Part 3…
Okay, time for part 3 of the ongoing Wekfest SF 2012 mini-series. I really wanted to get this coverage up yesterday, probably around 1-2pm, but Flickr was mysteriously down for most of the day. It barely went back up late in the afternoon so we can finally move forward with the pics. I don’t know why there was a problem but oh well, let’s move on. I even woke up super early yesterday to try to get this update online early so that I could spend the rest of my day just enjoying my birthday. Everything seems to be working now though so I’m just going to get a super early start since we technically skipped a day. Hope many of you used that time to catch-up if you haven’t already. It’s crazy how we have already gone through two parts of coverage and the show hasn’t even started yet. When we last left off, we had just gotten through a majority of the ATS Garage cars and I had started to make my way further down the lot…
Today will be much the same, just a bunch of photos from me walking in and out of each building before the show started… No need to say much else, the captions and photos will speak for themselves…
Sunny from Franklin Autobody’s Honda Insight…
PlusOne Randy’s new DB8 Integra…
3rd Generation Lexus GS on air…
Another shot of ths AB Flug CHP-themed Supra since so many of you guys are fascinated with it…
Austin aka Amoney’s Y33 Q45 with side-exit exhaust and VIP Modular wheels…
Teddy Timoteo’s Civic is looking good these days with the First Molding front lip, CP-R, and ARC hatch spoiler…
Sloppy’s Honda Fit on CP-R…
Loved the aggressive set-up on this white Evo…The INGS bumper and Voltex wing along with the TE37SLs look great…
While the crazy aero is always a good look for the Evos, I’ve always been a really big fan of how Evos look without rear wings on them…This one has the Voltex sides, rear over fenders, but still looks great without the wing on it… The WEDSports with the colored spokes flow very well also…
Another wingless Evo, this one with an INGS+1 N-Spec aero kit…
Loved this IS350 from Sonic MS with Endless big brakes and VIP Modular wheels…
This E-Class on air with a complete Wald Black Bison kit had to have been one of my favorites of Wekfest 4…Even has a Wald brake kit…
This MX-5 Miata was one of the most talked about builds at Wekfest SF. It has a really oddball retro-style conversion that comes from a Japanese company known as Pit Crew Racing…
Jeremy Duarte’s new look…Same Chargespeed lip as before but now with mag blue Volk RE30s, Camaro Synergy Green color, no more neo-chrome stuff… It’s a big departure from his previous look but it’s not bad at all. He had been posting up some teasers on his Facebook page with the new exterior color cut-out but I was one of the few lucky ones that got to see it in full color before the show so it wasn’t much of a surprise for me, haha…
Mike’s Ferio also debuted at Wekfest SF with a completely new look. Not sure how I feel about it since I liked the old look so much but it’s definitely interesting to see him go with a completely different theme. All the guys from Bandits seem to be going with these really wild, bright colors this year. Danny, who owns the Laguna Seca blue 4-door, also had his car repainted but it wasn’t finished in time for Wekfest…
Not much going on here, just a couple guys eating ice cream together in the back of a right-hand drive Toyota Hi-Lux pick-up on Mitsubishi Starion wheels…
Older Datsun 280Z on Work Equip 03s that is RB-swapped….The caption would probably help if I included a shot of the bay, but I’m a pretty credible source so just believe me…haha…Really though, it had the swap…or did it…
Mark Sutakajana’s 4-door Integra looking good with the new front splitter…
…and a retro-fitted Mugen Ferio wing…
Another shot of Jeremy’s DB8R…
Mike Trevino’s engine bay, fresh with a K-swap….I heard he was having problems with his water pump so hopefully he got the car home safe…
Danyelle’s Mugen Fit on custom re-barreled Mugen M7 wheels that was once owned by MemoryFab…
Pretty sure I stood there for a good 5-10 minutes waiting for these guys to stop staring at Chris Sakai’s EK before I gave up and moved on…
How many ATS Garage members does it take to put on all of Anh’s sponsor decals??…
ATS AJ’s Integra is probably one of the more slept on Honda builds of the last couple years…
Nick’s J’s Racing front-end on his CR-X…I like how he incorporated the two-tone look to the new body parts even though he’s eventually going to have the whole car re-painted…Also interesting to see how J’s Racing incorporated spots in the front bumper for a front license plate, even though it was made for race applications…If I was Nick Caster I would have just had that area shaved and smoothed down but if I was Nick, I’d also be rich and successful and not as boyishly good looking as Stickydiljoe…
Kelvin Bulda’s EK9-inspired Civic from Speed Addicts…God I love and miss Advan RG1 wheels…They are still in my top 5 Japanese wheels of all time, ever since I saw them on the original Top Fuel turbo EK9…
Custom widebody Mercedes S320L from JDM Palace on step-lipped Work Equip wheels…
Nissan 370Z with satin black Volk RE30s and Powerhouse Amuse aero from Speed Element…
This flared Evo on teal metallic Work Meister S1s is another personal favorite of mine from Wekfest…passenger in the photo above looks kinda crazy though…Oh, note the implemented trunk spoiler as well…
VIP Toyota Previa from JDM Palace…
Bryant Nguyen and his bagged TSX came up all the way from San Diego to Norcal for Wekfest 4…
After saying what’s up to Bryant, I decided to walk back inside and chill at the booth for a bit…If you guys remember last year’s Wekfest, my booth was located up front and next to me was NWP4LIFE’s booth. Well, with Rodrez recently having his baby boy Maddox, he wasn’t left with much time or patience to do a booth this year so the spot for Wekfest 4 went to the guys from Canibeat. I had no idea who they were going to put next to me but Canibeat was cool with me. They generate all kinds of fucking foot traffic and even though both our sites generally have a different demographic, it was good to see how busy both our booths were even before the gates opened. It was also good to meet Cristian and Dave from Canibeat as well… Another reason why I knew our area would generate a lot of traffic was because of Canibeat’s official SF Wekfest model…
….Holly Lee…We had traveled up to Norcal with Holly so it almost seemed fitting that she would be spending the entire day at the booth next to our’s….
You can see how busy they were getting with Holly there…
…it didn’t stop her from taking a moment to say “hi” to Leon Casino’s baby boy…
I gave May’s Canon S95 camera to our buddy Dougie to snap photos throughout the day and this guy managed to take like 6 photos, 3 of them being blurry…
Danny Avina’s Mugen RSX looking good…
Some custom-fabbed pieces color-matched to the mag blue tone of the Volk CE28Ns….
The rear of Danny’s RSX…
Those two dudes finally walked away so I could get a better shot of Chris’ EK without anyone stepping into my shot…
DPK JP and ATS “Right Said Fred” Chapman… The newer generation won’t get the reference but ever since Fred Chapman took some time away from cars to do his own weight reduction, he was heard walking around the Wekfest show singing this song…
AE86 coupe with a Levin front end conversion and Honda F20C-swap…
Oh man, the Photoshop possibilities of this photo featuring one of the NOS girls is endless….
…but seeing as how she was rocking a wedding ring, I’ll just leave it alone, haha…
Another respectable young lady representing NOS Energy…
I was pretty happy with this idea I had to put up the banners on two light stands… It created a backdrop for people to take photos at and also created a wall that preventing millions of weird kids from staring into the back of my booth. I also had Moe from PG+K doing security and patting down visitors who wanted to sit in the canopy…
Saw an opportunity to take a shot of Big Mike’s Prelude without people hovering over it…
…when I got back to the booth Big Mike was hanging out with Jay from PG+K…It must be a southern thing but I don’t see too many dudes sitting down legs-crossed with their hands in their pockets….looks awfully uncomfortable… Go ahead and try it right now, I’ll wait…
While you’re busy trying to untangle yourself, take a look at the new Chronicles t-shirt…
Closing it out for today with a shot of the line right outside, moments before the show started… People outside were getting pretty restless because the gates ended-up opening an hour later than scheduled. When I first go to the venue at 7:30am, Junior was telling all of us that they had planned to open the doors an hour early since there were so many people already waiting. Of course that didn’t happen though because the fire marshal decided to show up and just fucked up all kinds of shit. They were trying to make people move their cars all over again, enforcing all kinds of ridiculous rules, etc., and the crowd outside was forced to stand there and wait until the fire marshal was finished and Fort Mason officials agreed to start the show…
Check back tomorrow with Part 4…Thanks for looking….
Wekfest SF 2012 Weekend Coverage…Part 2…
Back with part 2 of our ongoing Wekfest SF 2012 mini-series of coverage. When we last left off yesterday, I had just started to walk around the event after helping May, Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!, and Big Abe set-up The Chronicles booth. I decided to ask Tony if he wanted half my booth space at Wekfest because I knew that he had really wanted to go but couldn’t get a booth space. May is usually swamped from all the people trying to purchase merchandise and I can’t always be there since I’m trying to cover the event, so I thought that having Tony there would be a big help. He would man the booth with May, and usually other friends step in to help out, so we would have the traffic covered. In return for having Tony at the booth, he could also sell some of his own merchandise from It’s JDM Yo!! so it all worked out. While May was busy working her ass off and organizing everything for the onslaught that would occur after the doors opened, I was running around trying to capture whatever I could. I really wanted to get as much coverage as I could before the spectators come in because 10,000+ people make it virtually impossible to get a photo without someone stepping into the shot. It’s bad enough at shows normally, so at an event of this size, it’s very frustrating to not be interfered with while taking pictures. That and everybody seems to have a camera nowadays so you also have those people who are trying to take the photos standing in front of my shot and they take longer trying to take the pictures than spectators passing through. Watching Rodrez do the same thing throughout the years has taught me to follow suit and it’s become a habit now just to do coverage before the event starts…
By this point, a chunk of the cars had started to line-up outside and many were starting to come in and park in their designated spots. One of the best things about Wek’Sos giving me such a prime booth spot is that I can capture a lot of the cars coming in since my booth was located by the gate…
An old school Toyota Corolla 2-door wagon from ATS Garage alongside a DA Integra built-by Junior from Wekfest for his son…
A first-look at Ryan Der aka Airbagclub’s new set-up for his Civic…he went with red/blue accents this time around and it was a good look. He’s always changing things up all the time and the car continues to evolve…
A better shot of Junior’s DA…
Chris Sakai’s EK is also another car that is constantly changing…for SF Wekfest, ATS Cre18 took his Rando Sports kit off and installed a Chargespeed lip… I liked the kit because of the rarity of it but the Chargespeed lip is one of my favorites all time for this chassis so I’m a big fan of this new look…
Nick Caster aka NickRPS is also another guy that debuted an entirely new look for his car. His CR-X retained a mostly OEM-type of appearance throughout the years but for Wekfest, he debuted his J’s Racing theme…
Being that there were so many cars trying to move around and get situated inside, it made it hard to get clear photos so I stepped outside to check out some of the cars that were still making their way in…
Junction Produce-themed 2nd generation Lexus GS…
Brian Nguyen’s white-on-white Mugen CR-Z on MF10 wheels w/blue caps…
Salem from Phaze2 rolled-out of the hotel bed and got his TSX to the event early…
Here he is applying some Honda Tuning decals on his fenders…
I walked back to the booth to see if May needed anything, sat down for a bit to chill, took this photo of a new Rays Gram Light wheel on display at the Mackin Industries booth, and headed out again to get some more shots…
….ran into Yee Vang who was smiling at something funny on his phone while one of his baby hairs was tickling his forehead…
Spotted this yellow Infiniti G35 coupe on black Volk GT7s…
S2K representing TNT Autobody on Work VS-XX wheels…
Walked into the other hall to see how it was looking and saw that Loreto’s Civic was settled in. He was busy wiping down the outside of the car so all i got was this crappy photo of his engine bay…
Really simple white Acura NSX on aggressive BBS LMs…
Since there was nothing going on in that building either, I walked back outside where I saw Sheepey and Bobby 8 o Ate walking by…Bobby was happily doing his early morning Shake Weight routine…
Lexus LS600 getting cleaned-up before heading inside…
Bert and the “Dripset” Ruckus…
Onlookers checking out Big Mike’s engine bay as he cleans it up…
ATS Phil looked like he was working hard that day…
PlusOne Randy’s old EG, now owned by Albert Yeah…
Saw this Z at one of our gas station stops on the way up… Work S1 wheels are like TE37s, they look great on practically every kind of car…
This was one of my favorites from the SF Wekfest event…I always loved how the Japanese Toyota Altezzas looked so it’s cool to see this owner retain the front grill, even though he has a T&E Vertex kit on it…
Love the root beer tone and the bronze Work S1R wheels…Simple and straight to the point. If I ever had an IS, I’d build it in a similar matter…
This Hyundai Genesis didn’t look bad either…
I stopped whatever I was doing when this older Porsche 911 rolled up, slammed to the floor…
Looking great on 18-inch BBS RS wheels…I liked this shot with the older Porsche next to the newer VW on Rotiform wheels. You can also see the huge crowd waiting in the back…
One more shot after it founds its parking spot outside…
An S13 coupe on Work Lead Sleds from MEKAN1ZM….This car was featured in Import Tuner not too long ago…
…as was this Integra, also from MEKAN1ZM… Haven’t really seen a hood like that before, I wonder what it is or if it’s a custom scoop…
Custom widebody FD3S RX-7 on HRE wheels with a GM LSx engine swap…
R35 GTR on BBS LMs…
This Supra was one of the more shocking arrivals at SF Wekfest…Dressed in a unmistakable AB Flug aero kit while bearing the resemblance of a California Highway Patrol vehicle. Pretty wild stuff. The kit makes the Supra look like something that a Power Ranger would drive but the styling of AB Flug has always been very off the wall, so it’s almost kind of cool to see someone fork out all those dollars for it. The CHP theme just puts it that much more over the top. It even has lights inside the vents so it must be quite a sight to see when the sirens and all the lights are blaring…
PlusOne Danny pulled into the roll-in area sans front lip probably because he didn’t want to risk the chance of breaking it while going up and down the streets of downtown San Francisco…
Liked this Mugen-themed 4-door DB Integra…The color of the body itself on the mag bluish Mugen MF10s give it a really one-off look…
Pristine 1st generation Acura Integra on Mugen CF48 wheels…
Acura NSX from Rising Sun Motorsports…
For those who were wondering, this is what the crowd outside looked like by around noon….crowded but not too bad right?…well…
…not bad until you look further back and see the rest of the crowd…holy shit…the line reached all the way out across the street into the Safeway supermarket parking lot as well…
Meanwhile back inside, set-up was looking close to completion…here you can see Big Mike’s Prelude with his newly made metal cowl…Nick and Salem were crouching down next to the car for no particular reason…
Keychain’s Accord, looking like it never made a 7 hour drive to Norcal with no blue tape…
Mauricio from Phaze2′s JDM right-hand drive EF Civic hatchback on Mugen M7 wheels…
Sunny from Franklin Autobody brought out his wild Honda Insight on Airrex suspension…
Nick Caster’s J’s Racing-equipped Honda CR-X… This current look is way more aggressive than his old set-up and he will be putting all these parts to use because his CR-X was a weekend track toy long before he started popping up at shows…
ATS J*Blood aka Jay Powers’ Honda CR-X, which was the number 3 Honda on The Chronicles 2011 Top Ten Hondas list…
The engine bay is looking as clean as ever…
Good to know that his CR-X is wearing the Top Ten 2011 sticker proudly…
Lisa Powers’ Integra…I apologize for the darkness of the photos, error in settings on my part…
ATS Anh’s Integra and its new look…no more BYS front and Mugen Gen. II wing. It’s looking a little more similar to Circuit Hero Gil’s DC2R now…
Engine bay looks untouched since the Norm Reeves Honda Show last December…
ATS Dina’s S2000 was just looking absolutely amazing with the new rear quarter panels…One of the air bags on her suspension busted awhile back and damaged parts of the car since it airred-out while she was driving. They brought the car back to Sunny from Franklin Autobody and he took on the task of repairing everything. To fit the more aggressive black Volk Ce28s, Sunny also flared the rear of the S2000. I love how the rear flare lines up with the original lines of the body and flows perfectly. If you look closely, you can see the cut-off on the bottom and how well it flows. The cut-off not only works with the body lines, it also matches the front fenders in a way as well… VERY well-done and the execution couldn’t have been any better in my opinion…
Nick is just popping up every in my photos, haha…here he is talking to Ryan Der about his updated look…I told them to get out of the way and all Ryan did was wave at the camera…
No more bass boat green valve cover…it is now powdercoated to match the red Volk TEs….
Here’s a better shot of it minus the weirdos…
I liked Dina’s S2000 so much that I’m just going to close out the coverage for today with another shot of it…
Check back tomorrow for more coverage from the 2012 Wekfest San Francisco event… Thanks for looking…
Wekfest SF 2012 Weekend Coverage…Part 1…
Man, what a weekend…
By now, I’ve become pretty accustomed to the way things work during the week of Wekfest San Francisco, but no matter what, it always manages to be quite the overwhelming experience. All I can really say to sum up the entire weekend was that it was just completely spectacular. The main difference with this year’s Wekfest event was that I was the most well-rested I have ever been. I’ve been going to these events long before it was even a Wek’Sos production and I’ve always been just drained going into the day of the show. This time around, I got everything done by the middle of the week and found some time to sleep. Even while we were all in Norcal during the weekend, I made it a point to not stay out too late. By that Sunday I’m usually walking around like a zombie with blood-shot eyes from lack of sleep and dry contact lenses. I’ll barely be able to make the drive back to the hotel and when I get back, I just crash out and don’t talk to anyone. It was almost the complete opposite this year though, as I changed my procrastinating ways and even showed up everywhere on time…if you know me, you know that I am notorious for being late. Hopefully entering my third decade of life, I can apply that to all aspects of my life so that I can be better rested and have more energy to do more things…
Another thing that I really wanted to change about previous years of being at Wekfest was managing my time hanging out with different groups of people. There are so many different friends from all over that come out for the show and I always regret not being able to spend time with everyone. It was virtually impossible because it didn’t seem like there were enough hours in the day to spend it with everyone in one single weekend. We have the usual Socal people that I love spending time with, and also the Norcal folks that I don’t ever get to see enough of. On top of that, we also had guys from the east coast/mid west making their way out and even the guys from Mayday Garage were going to be there. Luckily I was able to finish everything for the booth this year with time to spare so I didn’t have to spend too much time organizing it in the hotel room. This allowed me to have more free time to spend with others. I don’t know how it all came together, but we all managed to book rooms in the same hotel so I was able to see a lot of people by the time I got up for breakfast. There were some that I wish I could have hung out with more, but that’s just how it goes. It’s hard to really coordinate with so many others staying in different parts in the city but I think we all did a good job of hanging out. It seemed like everyone made a better effort this year. While we were in the city, it seemed like every time we stopped, more people were able to meet up and we had a big group of people from all over… In year’s past I’ve always had an amazing time in SF, but this time was definitely more diverse and I’m happy that I was able to see everyone and spend even a small moment to chat with them…
Now, as for the show itself…Wekfest San Francisco proved once again this year why it was the “mecca” of car shows in these last couple years. It was just bananas… I know a lot of people complained and many more couldn’t even get into the show because they were turned away, but that just shows you how big SF Wekfest has gotten. They outgrew the old parking structure and moved it to the Fort Mason/Herbst Pavilion, and easily outgrew that venue in just a year’s time. It’s tough guys, it really is. For everyone that complained about how crowded it was and how long the wait was, you have to understand that putting an event of this magnitude is an enormous amount of work and managing a crowd of that size is no easy feat. Just simply from being there in the morning to watching the entire roll-in process, organization improved by leaps and bounds. It was very well put together. I remember last year I was even a little annoyed by the roll-in process for vendors but I had zero issues this year. The main issue with using this venue is the people that run Fort Mason. They are incredibly strict and were not shy about making things inconvenient for everyone. There strict rules put a lot of pressure on everyone and they, along with the Fire Marshall, were the key reasons why the crowd was let into the show an hour late. You wanna know just how ridiculous certain things were? We were inside a large venue with hundreds of cars filled with gasoline (which isn’t an unusual thing for an indoor car show), and for whatever reason, I had to have a fucking smoke detector hanging from my canopy at my booth. It literally was tied and hanging to my canopy. If that wasn’t enough, I also had to have a fire extinguisher just to even have a fabric top on my canopy. I am not too familiar with how things work in San Francisco, but I have never set anything on fire selling stickers and t-shirts. If there was going to be a fire somewhere inside of the venue, believe me, my smoke detector wouldn’t have been much help in alerting me that there was a fire. In any case, the rules were ridiculous last year, and seemed to get more ridiculous this year. Whether or not they will use this venue again is unclear, but I don’t see it happening again, especially after how many people were told that they wouldn’t be able to get inside the show because it was at capacity. I heard people were turned away at 4pm because of the sheer number of people inside and they were upset. I too would be upset if I had waited in line for however many hours and then told I wouldn’t get in. That’s terrible, but I would also have tried to show up earlier, knowing how big Wekfest is every year…
It’s a shame that that many people couldn’t get in…it really is…Every year the organization is getting better and I am sure that the Wekfest staff is working hard on trying to alleviate the problems for the future. Over 10,000 people were at Wekfest, with the numbers maybe even reaching 14,000 maybe…you can’t please everybody. People have a right to be upset. But people also have to have a better understanding of how shows like this work. The Wekfest SF show has reached the levels of popularity that I haven’t seen since the old days of Hot Import Nights and Import Showoff. It took years for those shows to reach the point where they were a well-oiled machine and able to absorb that many people. Wekfest will get to that point, it just takes time. The hype around the event is just crazy right now. Hell, I don’t even understand how it got this big and I’ve been going to this show for how long now? Shit is just wild. If you didn’t get in this year, it sucks and I really hope you have a better time the next year if you plan on coming back. I wish I could sympathize with all of you but I have other things I need to worry about. I’ve been doing car show stuff for about ten years now and I would never wait in a line that long to get into a car show, and fuck, I LOVE car shows, haha…Best of luck to all of you who want to try again next year. It’s hard for me to gauge it and say that it’s worth waiting that long to get inside but my priorities are different. If you got the time and the patience, fuck, feel free…
I had a great time overall. I’m really happy that people were excited about the new shirts and the new merchandise. I didn’t go into it with any expectations but man, I was surprised by how much merchandise went out that day. I thank you for all of your continued support and it’s a great feeling knowing that you guys love The Chronicles. Stickers were going faster than ever and I ran out of a majority of shirts before the doors even opened that day. Thanks to Junior, Adam, and Ken for putting this event together and allowing me to be a part of it. These guys work their asses off and deserve all the success that is coming to them.
With that said, let’s get on with the coverage. If you are here to just see photos of cars, then you obviously are not a regular here on The Chronicles. I like to cover any and everything that is going on to give people an idea of what our experience is like overall. You can see photos of the cars at SF Wekfest EVERYWHERE. Everyone these days has a camera and is covering events like this. The way I am going to present it to you is more personal and like no other. This site has grown because of the idea of presenting the “lifestyle” to viewers throughout the world. Remember, it’s not about how many people are doing it…it’s how it is done that matters. Execution is everything. You want to see cars, scroll past everything else and look at just the cars or go to any other website to see car photos. You’ll see everything that goes on here, from the show, to behind-the-scenes, etc. Don’t like it? You’re welcome to leave, but buy a sticker first, haha…
Here we go…
The Wekfest SF weekend kicked off for many of us on Friday morning. If you saw last year’s coverage, we had a pretty large group of people to caravan with. This year was a little different… Some couldn’t make it this year, some were still putting their cars together, and some had babies so they couldn’t just up and leave right away. For the 2012 SF Wekfest road trip, May and I had just a couple of people to cruise with; Salem and Murdock in the J’s Racing Phaze2 TSX, Keith aka Keychain from It’s JDM Yo!!, Ms. Holly Lee, and a couple new friends in Jay Mayuga and his girlfriend, who apparently didn’t say a word all weekend, haha…
After meeting up for breakfast at Denny’s in the morning by Magic Mountain, we headed over to the Chevron across the freeway to gas up. I had to pick up an energy drink as well and buy tissues since I had a cold coming…why I needed a energy drink at 11am in the morning is a mystery but I probably purchased it by habit since I was usually going to bed around this time on a normal week day…
Jay Mayuga’s TSX with Modulo Voltage front bumper and Volk CE28s….Jay is also the only person who was down to blue tape his front end. Salem is Mr. Race Car guy now so his bumper is beat up anyways, and Keith apparently just didn’t give a shit… May and I rolled out in her Yaris. We didn’t blue tape shit because her car is so high that it usually does the job of kicking the rocks at everyone else…
Random thought but, it’s nice to know that even year’s after I sold my Accord, I can’t get away from them and they are still following me everywhere, haha…
Keith scratching his head and wondering how his freshly-painted lip kit is going to survive the streets of downtown San Francisco…
We got on the road and were overjoyed that there were no indications of rain…Last year, we drove through a storm and ended up taking the 101 north-bound all the way to San Francisco, which ended up taking us almost 9 hours…
We stopped at Kettleman City for a pee break and a stretch, then got back on the road immediately…
I didn’t take too many photos after that because there wasn’t anything very exciting about the drive. We got to our hotel around 5:30 or so in the evening and just relaxed for a bit before going out to dinner. There wasn’t any crazy pre-Wekfest private dinner party this year so we just rounded up whoever was in the city already and went out to grab drinks and eat. Those photos are actually on May’s camera so I’ll just toss-up those photos in part 2 tomorrow…
The next morning, we all got up early to eat breakfast downstairs in the hotel. One of the main reasons we stay at this particular hotel was because of the free breakfast. Most other places just offer simple fruits and maybe some travel-size cereal but this joint had everything…eggs, sausages, biscuits and gravy, bagels, etc…and all you can eat. It’s the best free meal of every day, haha…
Some of the homies from the other coast were up bright and early… Here’s S2kJay chillin with Widdy after breakfast in the patio area of the hotel…
Sloppy, Sam, and his girl Linh enjoying some free food…
Ryan, OldmanJames, Ray from ATS Garage, and DPK Darryl grubbing…Ray lives in Norcal and didn’t even stay at the hotel, but probably stops by the hotel to eat everyday because the people at the hotel don’t even pay attention…Actually, Darryl didn’t stay there either, haha…
After breakfast we all decided to meet up again and take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) aka a train down to the city to hang out. There were so many of us that it wasn’t even worth driving all the way down to the city and trying to find everyone so we all agreed to take the train and stay together…A couple of us had cars to show that weekend too and parking them in the streets of San Francisco is not something that anyone was down to do…
I hadn’t taken the BART in a couple of years so I forgot how to buy tickets and what not, but we figured it out with just a couple of minutes before the train arrived…
Ryan Der from ATS showing off his faux-camera iPhone case…
May doing her favorite activity, iPhone apps and Instagram…
Salem, who I am wishing the best for, since he was set to have surgery on his eye today, just a day after he returned home from Frisco…
Murdock doing what he does best…
Ryan “Rywire” Basseri was probably happy to have a moment to relax and is not trapped at the shop building engine harnesses…
Phil from ATS Garage hopped on the train a couple stops later and then we all got off the train on Powell St… it was pretty busy being that it was President’s Day weekend so happy shoppers were everywhere…
A couple of the guys wanted to check out the Ferrari store so we waited outside while Salem played around with the Ferrari FXX motorized toy outside…
May was just happy not to be doing car-related shit for a change… I know how much she likes to take the BART down to the city so it was good that we had the opportunity to take it again…
Outside of one of the stores, I spotted this guy across the street who was so fucked up off of muscle relaxers that he was falling asleep in the middle of the street…At one point he almost fell off of the sidewalk and into the street with cars approaching. I don’t know what this guy was doing but he was messed-up. Eventually he got halfway onto the street and then had to turn around to get his bags but before he could pick them up, he started dozing off and was just all over the place. We all stopped to see what was going to happen next but he eventually stumbled off so we moved onto Chinatown…
Ryan stopped for a photo op with the lions that stood guard at the gates of Chinatown San Francisco…
They had these cool bronze statues throughout Chinatown…this looked like a nice family gathering…
…nice until you see one of the statues playing a game of grab-ass…
Good to know that some Chinese guy decided to create this jade statue to honor the ancient Chinese sport of American football. I’m sure you guys know who Jeremy Lin is by now and how he’s been doing great things on the basketball court…well, here is his great great grandfather, Terrell “Sweet & Sour Fingers” Lin, who was the Michael Jordan of Chinese football. He lead the league in touchdown receptions and his team, the Beijing Fighting Communists, went undefeated for three straight seasons because nobody in China plays football and they were the only team. Lin was also the quarterback on his team and threw the ball to himself because nobody else was on his team. He retired after he realized that nobody in China plays football, EVER….
Only $10.99 for these apple bottom jeans featuring your favorite celebrities from the early 2000s…Nothing says “wear these jeans” then having Carmen Electra on your back pocket…
Chinatown still bearing decorations from Chinese New Year a week or two ago…
Deejay Murdock doing work…
The trolley system rolling through…
Our buddy Nick Caster arrived from Roseville in the afternoon with his CR-X and then took a cab down to Chinatown to meet up with us…
A piece from famed street graffiti artist Banksy on some random wall in Chinatown SF…He was down there not too long ago for the debut of his documentary and took to the streets early to knock out this piece. They even have a plastic cover over it to protect it…that’s when you know you’re doing big things…when you tag on a wall and steps are taken to preserve it…
One of the more interesting things beside the Banksy piece that we saw down in Chinatown were these crazy dragon knives/blades/swords…While I’ve never actually seen anyone try to rock these in a fight, I’m confident in saying that I’d run like I was on fire if someone chased after me with giant blades with dragon handles on them…
Elderly Chinese street musicians playing for by a busy intersection…
Sam and his girlfriend met up with us also and we decided to stop by a local Thai food spot to eat lunch…everything looked absolutely delicious and everything was also only 5 bucks a plate…
After eating, it was starting to get dark so we made the trek back to the BART station to head back to the hotel…
The train was pretty crowded by the evening but we managed to all get seats…
Sloppy dropped Sam and his girl off earlier in the day so he didn’t get to take the BART with us until our trip back to the hotel… Turns out that it was his first time ever being on it and he seemed pretty excited to experience it…
Speaking of Sam, it was his birthday on the day of Wekfest so his girl Linh had this cool birthday cake made for him…It’s a cake made to look like his Civic driving through the Golden Gate Bridge in SF…
We parted ways for the most part after we got back to the hotel. Salem and Murdock headed out to meet up with Junior from Wekfest at a local car meet, while the others bought alcohol and pre-gamed for the night. ATS Phil met up with them later that night to go party at a lounge in the city. May and I hung out in the room for a little bit before meeting up with Rodrez and his Fiancee’ for dinner. Not much excitement after that since we had to wake up early in the morning for the Wekfest show…
The morning of Wekfest, we got up early and got ready to head to the Fort Mason venue for vendor set-up. Rodrez didn’t have a booth this year but he wanted to roll to the event with us so he could cover the show before spectators got there. Breakfast was ready right around the time we got down to the lobby so we stopped to eat really quick. We weren’t in too much of a rush since I got back to the hotel early the night before and had the car loaded-up and ready to go…
On the drive to SF that Friday, Salem and I had joked around about putting the free hotel food in our pockets to bring to the show, so I thought it would be funny to put a couple sausage links into a styrofoam cup to give to him when he got there. The last sausage turtling-up out of the cup wasn’t planned but added to the randomness of having a cup of sausages, haha…
When I got to Fort Mason, I checked-in and drove right into the venue. There was no wait this year because they were much more organized….This 510 was one of the first cars I saw that morning rolling into the show…
I thought it was a little crazy to see people already waiting in line to get in, but I later found out that these guys had been camped out there since 1am in the morning….fucking crazy…That’s when you realize how big Wekfest has gotten, when people are camping out like they were waiting for a new shoe release or something…
Some of my favorite photos that I took last year at Wekfest were during the roll-in process so I was happy to have plenty of time to get more this year in-between setting up The Chronicles booth with May and Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!…
A wingless Subaru STI sitting on some red Volk TE37SL…
Adam from Wek’Sos giving some instructions to one of his staff members…
Junior directing the 510 to his parking space inside the show…
A boosted CR-X drag car making his way in…
DSR Loreto posted-up by his “Shark-teal” EK on new Volk TE37Vs…
R33 Skyline GT-R on Prodrive wheels…
Evos were represented very well at Wekfest SF 2012…
2GS on SSR Vienna Kreis wheels…
Subaru with Work Schwert SC4s…
I had no idea Mark with the white 4-door DB would be making the trip to Wekfest so it was a cool to see him pull-up….He made some more additions to his Integra like a front splitter…
…and a retro-fitted Mugen wing…
ATS Anh’s ITR with a brand new look….say goodbye to the BYS front bumper…
Here is Anh mounting a camera to his windshield… He had this nifty idea of doing a time lapse video during the event so it’ll be cool to see later what came of it…
I wanted to see what was going on in the other building so I walked over and saw Mark Arcenal’s Rauh Welt Porsche…
No new additions to the car itself…It looked about the same as it did during SEMA last year…
Not even sure if Mark was even there at the show but there were guys moving the car around while others set-up the Fatlace booth…
PG+K Moe and Bon made the trip out to Norcal…Here they are chatting it up with Rodrez in their brand new Chronicles Ver. IV tees…
I walked outside to see if anyone new popped-up and spotted DPK Slappy and Jay Powers in his CR-X…
Absolutely loved this Evo…Never really imagined how teal and brown would work together but for whatever reason, it does on this car…
Traveling all the way from Japan was Tetsuya Yamaguchi of USDM Jam-fame… Here he is chatting with Big Mike…
Lisa from ATS Garage and her always-clean Integra on Almight Grey Regas…
Her husband Jay and his timeless CR-X on SW388s…
Nick Caster debuted his new J’s Racing set-up on his CR-X…more on this later…
ATS AJ and his C-West Integra on mag blue Volk SE37K…
Closing it out for today with a quick snap of Rywire’s NSX…under-exposed but I thought it made for a cool shot…
That’s all for today folks, come back with WAY more. I shot about 650 photos at the show and am still in the process of going through all of it… Thanks for looking…
“So You Think You Can STANCE?” Coverage…Part 2 of 2…
Back now with the second half of It’s JDM Yo!!’s “So You Think You Can STANCE” event coverage, brought to you by The Chronicles. When we last left off, the competition had just started and people were gathered along the street and driveway to check out all the “action”. By “action”, I mean cars going up driveways slowly…haha. I know an event like this usually has it’s fair share of supporters, and also it’s share of people that just think that it is out right stupid. To be fair, it’s totally okay to think that it’s completely retarded because there is a growing number of enthusiasts within our vast community that is starting to dislike this whole “stance” movement. Any time you mention anything about low offset wheels and aggressive fitment, you will have a number of people that will detest the idea and show their disappointment with where the scene has shifted. The whole stance/hellaflush/fitment scene has become it’s own subculture now within the community and it doesn’t look to be going anywhere any time soon. It just goes with different people liking different things. There’s no definitive right or wrong because people don’t always like the same thing or share the same ideas as others. Being in the magazine industry opens my eyes to a lot of different styles of tuning and I’ve learned to appreciate them. I don’t necessarily have to agree or like what some enthusiasts are doing nowadays, but I also don’t have to always be vocal about it. If you don’t like the “stance” movement, just take a gander at the photos, read some of my stupid comments, and move on. This site isn’t solely devoted to wheel fitment and if you’ve been around for a lengthy-amount of time on The Chronicles, you know that I like to bring you a variety of things. Now let’s just move on with the photos and knock out part 2 of the “So You Think You Can STANCE?” coverage…if you want to read my thoughts on the event as a whole, I invite you to take a look back at part 1…
Now when we last left off, Milt had just kicked off the competition and did his run through the driveway…
He didn’t look like he had very many issues getting up the driveway…
…but coming down proved to be a little more interesting…
As I said in part 1, I don’t know the criteria for judging or what they were looking for, but on that particular run…Milt Salamanca garnered a score of 27 out of a possible 40…I didn’t even bother catching score after this because I really didn’t know what was going on. We all basically stood there to watch people potentially fuck their shit up…
A TSX narrowly missing the pavement as he was barely angling out…You can see Holly Lee and Tony from It’s JDM Yo!! standing in the middle of the driveway because they were basically the markers used to cut the driveway in half….Guy in the photo with the 49ers gear on is either whistling his favorite tune or over exaggerating his shock…
A strawberry-faced S14 240SX on Leon Hardiritt Ordens getting set to make his run….I thought the competition was a little unfair in that guys with aero or front lips already in need of repair competed against guys whose cars were in better condition…I mean, in terms of willingness to take a chance of breaking something to win, wouldn’t you have less to lose if your shit was already messed up already?…Then again, I don’t know how it was judged or scored so I can’t really say anything, just raising an interesting point….
People gradually started to get more into the event as more cars made their runs…Even Holly Lee was using the camera and trying to get some action shots…Tony for whatever reason, was showing off his hella hyphy THIZZ face circa 2006…
A clean white S2000 on CCW wheels stood next in line to make his attempt…
Antonio from Motormavens.com didn’t seem too impressed….Big Mike on the far left was taking a standing nap…
While I was happy to see that this S2K owner’s fenders weren’t fucked-up, his front lip has probably seen better days after this event…
Next up was the RHD CR-X from Infinit Wheels…
The CR-X’s run was one of the more interesting ones because they chose to drive the car straight up the driveway without angling at all and when it came down, it struggled to get traction and created some tire smoke…
Thanks to drifting, enthusiasts these days are conditioned to cheer and go ape shits anytime there is tire smoke so Infinit Wheels got some dap for creating the smoke show…
Armand with the TRD widebody MR-2 decided to participate/fuck his shit up…If anyone had anything to lose in this competition, it was him. His car is in pretty good condition and I don’t think damaging that kit would really be a good idea but he went for it anyway. During a test run, he mysteriously broke the wing off that he had just recently not replaced EVER, so this will be day 837 of wingless widebody SW20…
It didn’t look too bad as he was making his way down…
…but the more angles he had to make to get out, the more stress it was on his front end…if you look closely, you can see his fender cracking where it meets the sideskirt….
Next up was this S2000 with a CR lip and what looks like F-Zero Blue Volk CE28s…
If you ever wanted to know what a CR front lip would look like if it was driven into the ground with the weight of the car on it, here you go…
If that wasn’t enough scraping for you, here is a BB6 Prelude that also participated…Good to know that he had that plastic lip under his bumper to give the driveway more contact patch…haha…
This EF was one of the more ridiculous competitors of the day…not only was he making sparks under his car as he was exciting the driveway, he also was sparking when the car was driving normally on flat pavement. The guy decided to lower his car so extreme to the point where his car would flip over if he ran into a dime. The owner was also very serious about this competition and constantly asked later if he made it into the later rounds. Being low and fucking up the bottom of the car is serious business…
Last time I checked, IS350s weren’t cheap and neither are the parts made for them…Tell that to this guy’s front lip…
After most of the cars had finished their runs, out of nowhere, people decided to start acting like dipshits and revving their cars or driving really fast as they were leaving the venue to show off and/or mow people down who were spectating. Tony and many of us started to get kind of iffy about keeping the competition on an open street, so Tony and crew told everyone to get back inside where the parking lot was. The highlight of douchebaggery was when a 15 year old kid smoking a cigarette driving an STI his parents bought for him pulled in front of a crowd and started revving. Instead of just waiting for people to disperse, he felt it was a better idea to rev his shitty car at people and ask them to move. He was also accompanied by his other douchebag 15 year old friends who think that mounting two 25mm spacers on each wheel qualifies as “aggressive fitment”. The runner-up for master of douchebaggery was some jackass who was sitting on the passenger side window, hanging out of his car while his friend peeled out and hauled ass down the street. It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. Apparently these kids thought that they were participating in an event called “So You Think Your Parents Will Want to Visit You In The Hospital When You Are A Brain Dead VEGETABLE?”…
People acting like complete idiots sort of put a damper on the event, even though a majority of it went very well and without any real issues. There was a break during the competition to tally up the scores and see who would advance to the later rounds, but I was pretty set on going home. I had just driven back earlier that morning from my trip to Las Vegas so I wanted to get home to get some much needed rest. Before that though, I made the rounds and finished up the rest of my coverage of cars that were at the event…
Michael Mao’s Acura NSX…
G35 on DPE wheels…
A couple more shots of the Amuse-inspired S2000 from DTM Autobody…
…as well as the KE70 Corolla wagon parked behind it…
JonJon’s supercharged IS350 from Vanguard Collective/It’s JDM Yo!!….
Y34 M45 on air…
Oh this was cool…It’s virtually impossible to see a modified Lexus ES300/Toyota Windom EVER so it was refreshing to see one at the event with a kit and old school Work Equip mesh wheels…These cars are terribly unpopular to modify, because they are basically fancy versions of Camrys, but I’ll always have a soft spot for this car because my parents owned one when I was growing up…The last time I saw one of these ES300s modded was back around the early 2000s when I would spot the same one always cruising through LA. It had a HKS turbo kit and everything, shit was crazy and way ahead of it’s time…
Ryan Delosreyes’ Scion xB on old school Work VS wheels…
The Kouki S14 from part 1 with the crooked intercooler…As a whole, this car wouldn’t look bad if it was all one color…
FC3S RX-7 from the most un-intimidating car crew name ever, Nuisance…
Acura TSX from Low’N Slow on gold-faced CCW Classics…
3rd generation Toyota Celica from Low’N Slow…
Armand’s MR-2, post cracked fender…Aspiring breezies in the background doing hoodrat stuff…so hood that the guy photographing them is standing on the train tracks…
The BB6 Prelude on white-faced Work Equips that competed earlier…front lip scuffed up, but still intact…
The most aggressive S2000 ever to park in front of a dumpster…
Real clean EK with a iridescent hood shield…
Hubert Barnum male modeling on the Ruckus he and his brother built…
One more shot of the 350Z from part one on the SSR Gartmaier wheels…
The Barnum brothers’ Ruckus…draped in orange jizzum…
The IS350 that competed earlier on SSR MS1 wheels…
The S14 that also competed earlier…
DPK David’s EJ1 coupe just before he left…
Keith aka Keychain’s Accord sedan on polished MB Battles…
That’s about it…after that I left so I didn’t really get a chance to see who won the whole thing. I believed after things calmed down for a bit, they went back and finished the competition on the driveway where it started. Overall, a pretty successful event I would have to say…It wasn’t really meant to be anything taken too serious and I think that’s what people left with. At the end of the day, it’s just a couple guys showing off how they get out of driveways in their lowered cars. The meet portion of the event was cool. The diversity was good and wasn’t only limited to just beat-up cars on aggressively-fitted wheels. Congrats to Tony and staff for putting together a good event….
Thanks for looking… Back tomorrow with other stuff…
Oh before I go, I had to post this up. It was on Facebook late last night but I figured I’d post it up here since a lot of you don’t have Facebook accounts…
Haha, the expression on this guy’s face just made it too easy…
“So You Think You Can STANCE?” Coverage…Part 1…
Well this was different…haha. I mean, in terms of just being “different”, this event takes the cake so far. When Tony first came up with the idea to do this whole “Stance” competition, I was really up in the air about it. The whole name is something that we’ve been throwing around as a joke for the last year or so now, but when he decided to dub his event “So You Think You Can Stance?”, trust me, it was met with a collective “what the fuck are you thinking”. Tony is a pretty smart guy though with some pretty innovative ideas…he’s a massive pervert, but still, he is a smart pervert. If you don’t know which Tony I am referring to, I am talking about Tony from It’s JDM Yo!!. He’s always been a great friend and a huge supporter of mine so whenever he comes up with an idea, no matter how out of the box or random it is, I will support him….
Michael Mao’s Acura NSX on Volk CE28 Genesis…
The whole idea behind this “So You Think You Can Stance” event was very basic in principal…almost too basic. We were to have a pretty aggressively sloped driveway, in which people would sign-up and attempt to show everyone how they could go in and out of the driveway with their slammed/lowered/stanced-out vehicles. The original driveway that was chosen for the competition was over by the Rywire facility. It’s got a pretty big slant to it, but it wasn’t impossible to get up and down. DPK David takes his Civic coupe to work on occasion and has little issues getting in and out and even my Q45 aired down to about 40-50psi with a big kit and get out pretty easily. There are a number of cars that come through the shop and I’ve never really seen anyone have any problems. Being that the venue was also good enough to host a small meet though, Tony decided to use it for the event. What he would do would cone off a large chunk of the driveway, and as the competition progressed, the driveway would become smaller and smaller…
Linda’s Toyota Matrix on VIP Modular wheels from Team Praxis…
How it would be judged would also prove to be pretty interesting…There would be a panel of three guys who would determine the winner…Keith aka Keychain from It’s JDM Yo!!, Noel Barnum from Canibeat, and Yogi from Fatlace. These guys know about all things low so they would be good judges. Yogi I don’t think has ever really had a car that low..his Accord never moved and now he drives a Nissan pick-up, but still, he works for Fatlace/Illest so he encounters his fair share of lowered vehicles. I don’t know what was a point of emphasis for judging, nor do I know what they were looking at…I really didn’t want to know because then I would wonder if they were judging it correctly and with this being a first-time competition, there are a lot of unknowns. Even after the event has come and gone, I still have no real idea of how they judged this. There were so many different types of cars and they all went about going up and down the driveway different…it’s one of those things that can have real open interpretation. In the end, I believe a 1st generation Lexus GS300 won so congrats to the owner. I believe Falken Tires was a co-sponsor of the event and the winner got a set of tires. The other co-sponsor was VIP Modular wheels, which offered a significant discount (20-30% I believe) on a new set of VIP Modular wheels…
350Z on SSR Gartmaier wheels fro Royal Origin…
On the days leading up to the event, Tony realized that there was a chance that the event would be bigger than originally anticipated. I guess he had more than enough responses on social media outlets where he believed the event might be larger than the Rywire parking lot could hold, so he changed the venue entirely. Instead of having it at Rywire, he moved the event over to the city of Santa Fe Springs, inside an industrial section of the city that was quiet and had plenty of space on a Sunday. Overall, I think the event worked out great. The whole idea of it on paper just sounds kind of silly, but man, people fucking love all things “stance”. You can literally throw the word “stance” into any event name or website and there’s a high possibility of it being successful. As much as people love to talk shit about stanced-out cars, it’s become a genre in our community that has become quite popular. I’m a fan of everything as long as it’s done right in my eyes or in moderation. There are some absolutely ridiculous looking cars that showed-up… as with every stance-related event, there are often times when people just try way too fucking hard to be cool and somehow totally fuck up their cars in the process…
VIP Modular booth on display…
If you want my honest opinion of this event, I would kind of relate it to like pro-wrestling and figure skating, but without the excitement of wrestling and without the grace of figure skating…haha, if that makes any sense… I didn’t think that many people would be into the competition side of the event but damn, people were on edge after the first couple cars did their driveway sessions. I think many of us were skeptical but eventually we were also into it and wanted to know who was going to win. I knew that the meet portion of this event would be good because Tony’s events always have good turn-outs. He can bring a good crowd in just by blasting the event on Facebook. The competition was cool, but like I said early on, there’s a lot that needs to go into judging criteria if Tony and crew decide to put another event like this on again in the future…
Lowered cars going up driveways is something that every enthusiast has to go through practically everyday…turning it into a competition just sounds totally absurd…but you know what? It just works…haha. Congrats to Tony and the It’s JDM Yo!! crew for putting on another successful event…
Standard Functions brought out a couple of really nicely-built Ruckus’ for display at the Fatlace booth…
I spotted my favorite car early on in the day…DPK David and I were walking around while I did coverage and stumbled upon an AE86 on HRE wheels…
HREs are not a typical wheel that you see on an AE86…this one might be the first one ever actually…You don’t see these wheels on Corollas of any kind because they are often times worth more than the cars themselves. It’s a high end wheel that belongs on more appropriately high-end automobiles. Anytime you see something like this though, it’s definitely a cool sight…
Turns out that this beautiful creation is actually owned by Mickey Andrade who works at HRE. David and I were a little shocked at first to see a perfectly fit set of HREs on a Corolla but after speaking to him, it all made sense. The car itself was built by John Russakoff from JSPFab in Vista, CA…
John Russakoff’s claim to fame, besides being a talented drifter in Formula D, is performing S2000 F20C swaps on older Toyotas like the AE86. He has a whole kit that is made just for the swap and even has this custom made F20C spark plug wire covers with the Toyota 1600 insignia on them…pretty cool stuff…
I’ve seen this EK with purple Work Meister S1s various times before online…I believe it’s from Northern Cali…
The It’s JDM Yo!! booth with an assortment of the latest It’s JDM Yo!! gear…
The Z33 from above on SSR Gartmaier wheels…
Jay Borcena’s Acura TL on VIP Modular wheels and Accuair suspension…
The guys having a moment…(From left to right: Jay Borcena, Big Mike, Noel Barnum, DPK David, and Noel’s girl Emily…)
Ms. Sheila working the NOS Energy booth…
3GS on Auto Couture wheels…
A good-looking wingless Mitsubishi Evo X on concave Volk TE37s…
JonJon Usaha’s Job Design Lexus IS300 representing It’s JDM Yo/Vanguard Collective…
S2000 from Infinit Wheels sitting on CCWs…
2GS on Work Eurolines, also representing Infinit Wheels…
WRX rolling through with some aggressive blue Work Meister S1s…
Powerhouse Amuse-inspired Honda S2000 on Enkei PF01 from DTM Autobody…
Clean Boso-style Corolla wagon on really clean old school Super Advan Racing wheels…I dig the red interior on this thing…
Keychain cruising up to the event fashionably late…
Noel Barnum taking a seat on his Ruckus to check out the event…
I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason why the intercooler on this S14 is cock-eyed…probably insert a “Because Drift Car” or something stupid here…
Antonio from Motormavens was in charge of MCing the event but also had his camera and massive lens on hand to do some coverage for his site…
This G35 on white-faced Work Meister S1 wheels was just stunning…Shows that you can have a clean set-up on aggressive wheels without making your shit look absurd with haggered fenders…
Yogi from Fatlace/Illest standing the in the middle of the street with a giant “Illest” flag…
A couple hours into the event, it was time to begin the competition and people got together by the driveway in anticipation…
Evo X on green Volk CE28s posted-up on the side of the street…
Here’s an incorrect way to be “stanced-out”….fake TEs, chewed up tires inside and out rocking two gigantic wheel spacers just to be “flush”…What is that shit, like 50mms wider now??…
Jimmy from Team Praxis rolling through before the competition started in his FJ Cruiser…
RHD CR-X from Infinit Wheels lined-up and ready to compete…
Milt from Low N Slow was the first car on hand to try his way up the driveway…he and his crew took the competition seriously and had their team flags and shit all up in Milt’s Z…
Milt’s license plate was a popular topic of mention at the event…
The judges and Antonio huddling-up and discussing the rules…
Milt and his Garson Deep Racing wheels ready to go…
…Judges ready…
…and….
…back tomorrow with part two of the “So You Think You Can Stance?” coverage!…
Stay tuned and thanks for looking!
Autocon 2011 Coverage…Part 4…The Conclusion…
Time to close out the Autocon 2011 coverage with a bang…Today we will be taking a look at the remaining cars of the event. I felt that Autocon was a great success and with a more knowledgeable and more organized staff, it’ll be even better in 2012. With that said, let’s get to the photos…
In case you missed the previous parts, here are the links that will take you them…
If Ly Say with the red TSX owned a Subaru STI, I imagine it would look exactly like this one from Royal Origin because they both share a similar color and wheel set-up…it’s definitely a good look…
Mazda 3 from Royal Origin on Rotiform TMBs…
Another Mazda 3 from Royal Origin, this one with Work Emitz wheels and fender flares…
Gerald Reyes’ Acura Integra on Work Equip 03…
Chivas’ sunburst orange EM1 on Sprint Hart CP-R…
White 2nd gen. IS on Junction Produce Scaras…
Keychain aka Keith from It’s JDM Yo!!! recently got his lip kit on his Accord sedan repainted and the car is looking fresh…
FG2 Civic coupe on Work Equips…
Instant Gentleman S14 coupe with MMR wheels…
Yellow 1st gen. Lexus IS on Rotiform NUE…
Black 2GS with way too much fitment…fenders just look absolutely haggered…fucking terrible looking…Just.Awful…
This LS430 on the other hand, looks exceptionally good…
S13 convertible on some AME Tracers with a gold roll bar and pink steering wheel…
Liked the cement grey tone on this BMW…
Liberty Walk Lamborghini Murcielago from Japan…
Brandon Burke’s slammed and static S13 coupe on SSR Professor SP1…
A pair of Subaru Legacy wagons…
Lloyd Morales’ Vertex-kitted Kouki S14 coupe…
Loved the color combo and the red overall on this Hyundai Genesis…They’re just great looking cars in general just slammed on some wheels…
White on black two-tone Chevy Camaro on Rotiform wheels…
Tjin Edition Ford Explorer….
Tjin Edition Chevy Camaro…
Tjin Edition Chevy Cruz…
Clean BB6 Prelude with gold Volk Racing CE28Ns…
Ranz Motorsports Mazda RX-4 with 2JZ-GE swap and retro-fitted Lexus IS300 dashboard… To read more on this wild RX-4, click here…. or here….
Ranz Motorsports 1st gen. Toyota Celica aka “The Dark Knight” featuring a Honda S2000 F20C powerplant…To read more about this build, click here….
Ernie’s timeless 1st gen. Acura Integra on classic SSR EX-C Neo…
Porsche Panamera representing Heavy Hitters on DPE wheels…
G-Power twin-supercharged yellow BMW M5 on HRE wheels aka “Sabine”…Many non-BMW guys like me don’t know much about this car but there’s actually quite a bit of extensive work done to this thing. Even the rear quarters have been widened but the lines are so subtle, it’s hard to notice…check out the build-thread here, trust me, it’s pretty sick…
Custom widebody BMW M5 by Ranz Motorsports aka “Gunther”….This Lamborghini-white M5 features a catalog of Radenergie parts and wheels and rocks 355-series tires in the rear…nuts…if you want more info on “Gunther”, peep it here…
Chevy Camaro with a Extreme Dimensions kit, Vortech-supercharged on USW forged wheels…didn’t even have to Google shit to figure that out like the Beemers above…haha…
Ryan Deguzman’s FD3S RX-7….
R-Rydes’ custom widebody G35 with Kenstyle aero, Vortech-supercharged, and 21-inch Modsport S1 3-piece forged wheels…
Varis-kitted EVO on AME Tracers…I think this might be the first time I’ve ever been to an event where there was more than one set of AME Tracers…One of the most slept on wheels EVER…
No idea who this is but I was more concerned with what the dude behind her was up to…just mildly creepy looking, that’s all…
FC3S RX-7 from the crew “Nuisance”…they were parked to some other crew that called themselves “Aminorannoyance”…
I really wanted to get a closer look at this EVO since it looked like it had a nice collection of parts on it, but I couldn’t get close enough since all the cars in this section were invading eachother’s personal space…
After Jamarri Whiteside from Auto Concept Elite defeated the Chrysler 300Camaro at “Ye Old Hot Import Nights in LA Conventionshire”, a new challenger appeared for the next duel, in the mystical purple form of a Chevy Malibu with a Cadillac CTS-V front end…The epic battle was Swift and Elite….in the end, I have no idea who won because it was cold as shit and I left early…
JonJon’s supercharged VIP IS350 on WED’s Kranze Vishunu…
One more shot of Michael Mao’s Acura NSX on TE37s…
…as well as another shot of Wilson’s Carlsson E-Class Benz on BBS wheels…
A couple more of Big Mike’s Prelude and its new look…
Andrew Lim’s beautifully-built Toyota Supra on DPE wheels…
Gonna close out the Autocon 2011 coverage with a shot of Alisa Ali Marie posing next to Andrew’s gold Supra…
Well, that’s about it…4 parts, over 200 photos,…it doesn’t get any more in-depth than that…Hope you guys enjoyed it… Thanks for looking. Make sure to check out the previous three parts if you missed them…
Autocon 2011 Coverage…Part 2….
Back now with part 2 of the Autocon 2011 coverage….today will be slightly different in that I plan to run more photos today than in part 1. I was in a bit of a rush yesterday so I didn’t get to put as many photos up as I planned but I’m about 95% finished with all the photos from the event and I have a better idea of how many I need to toss up per day to keep the different parts divided proportionally. The first half of it will continue to be like it was yesterday though and consist of random stuff that I observed during the day. I was hanging out at the booth with May and a couple others for a huge chunk of the day at Autocon 2011 and I didn’t plan on shooting until later on in the day. Reasoning behind this is because the sun was casting such a harsh light on the cars the whole day and everything would just look blown out in the coverage. Photos look better towards the end of the day when the sun is coming down anyway so if you’re looking for your car here, wait towards the end or wait until the following posts come. You’ll know when a majority of the car coverage is coming, believe me… Now, on with the photos from the first half of the day…
BEST. OPENING. PHOTO. EVER…Haha…while Autocon did feature some very well-built cars of all makes and models, there were a couple of these that were floating around…I mean, I’m not saying that “MUFASA 8″ is not built with the best of intentions and to the highest caliber, but it just doesn’t fit the style of the show, I guess you can say. The CR-X leaves a little bit more to be desired…especially considering the idea that the owner might be trying to fix his “Lambo” door and prevent it from slowly sliding downward and closing on it’s own…It’s just really odd to see him pull up with these other Dodge Chargers and what not…haha. It even had a Batman theme and the owner was wearing a Batman shirt… Imagine if every car had doors like this, Everybody would be opening their doors into each other and all their door dings would be on the bottom of the door, haha. That and if you tried to close your door at the same time as the guy next to you, the doors would like, scissor into each other and get stuck…
The only thing that’s really comparable to Batman is that they share similar facial expressions in this photo….haha…
Hot pink/magenta Infiniti G35 on gold-plated Leon Hardiritt Ordens from Import Fashion…
It’s JDM Yo!! had stacks on stacks on stacks of NOS Energy drinks to distribute, free of charge, to everyone at Autocon 2011…There were only two flavors available and not surprisingly, people complained about getting free shit and demanding other flavors…“Do you have the sugar free one?” No motherfucker, I don’t even know what flavors these are. I got purple and I got green, pick one. What do they taste like? Umm, it fucking taste purple and the other one tastes like GREEN…
Bryant Nguyen’s Acura TSX on SSR Professor SP3….
A pair of matching M3s on CCWs…
Really liked this yellow FD3s on bronze Volk Racing TE37s…Random but the owner that drives that Nissan Sentra next to him calls himself “The King”…He is the king of Nissan Sentras.
Mildly lowered Audi A3 on BBS CK wheels…sarcastic comment is sarcastic…
This MK2 VW Golf GTI had to be one of my favorite builds at Autocon 2011…I love the simplicity of it, the color, and the old school BBS mesh wheels…Also like the way he colored in the Falken logo on the tire. Great attention to minor details…
This isn’t supposed to be “Tiffany Blue” right?… Nicely assembled xB, I’m a fan, otherwise I wouldn’t have taken multiple photos of it…
A shot of JonJon’s WED’s Kranze Vishunu and his neo-chrome Endless brake calipers…
JonJon’s wheel invading his wheel well’s personal space…
What’s up copyright infringement? I actually attempted to go on “Hellaflushstuff.com” to see what it was all about and it wasn’t even a functioning site…that and this chick was lookin at me like I was crazy…Apparently when you’re hellaflushstuff, it means you need to have a Jumpman-style logo but the bitch ain’t dunking shit…She’s just flying through the air spread eagle…
Models from the model lounge section next to us were busy grabbing NOS drinks all day to give out to perverts…Somebody should tell this girl that she has a plexiglass sign with “It’s JDM Yo!!” stickers stuck to her head…
I was about to message Tony on Facebook to find out the name of this model for this caption, but when I got to his page, I saw her posting on his wall…Her name is Trinity Dang….I now know the purpose of Facebook…
My favorite Mercedes Benz from the SEMA 2011 show ended up coming down all the way from Norcal for this event and it ended up parking with us as well…I love everything about this build…
Big Mike, his beard, and Neil Tjin took a moment to exchange pleasantries….Meanwhile, horrified Batman can be heard screaming in the background: “They have an educational website about Urinary Tract Infections?!!”…
Big Mike’s new look featuring his Chargespeed front lip…We had a discussion about whether or not he should modify his bumpers in a way to delete the front turn signals and leave just an opening there…I said he shouldn’t but he seems pretty keen on the idea…
I am happy to see that he paint-matched his valve cover though…I normally don’t like color-matched valve covers, but in this case, it works…I don’t always drink beer either, but when I do, I drink Dos Equis…
Nitty Beat walking by the booth after grabbing some food from the food trucks outside…I’m sure that’s the same face he made later that night when he went home to SD to take a massive food truck dump…
The adult in me thinks that smoking is bad for you…the kid in me thinks that it’s funny that the tattoo on her arm says “Wang”…haha…her name is actually “Lily Zenna Wang” so the tat makes sense. I’m just giving her a shitty time because she didn’t have very nice things to say about the model lounge that Tony and crew set-up all morning and almost seemed demanding…
Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to take a photo of Julie Mai at Autocon, but I did catch her tying this kid’s shoelace, which I and everyone around thought was pretty cool…it was cool until I seen this kid walking around to like 3-4 different models and getting them to tie his shoes…The dudes that this kid was with were walking around using him as a baiting chip to get girls to go over to their cars to take pictures…stay classy car enthusiast!..
OHH….are you guys ready to see Amy Fay like you’ve NEVER seen her before on the internet???? Well peep game…
Get ready because this is one of those rare, once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunities…
Here is the back of Amy Fay’s head. She’s on the right by the way…haha. Amy Fay was at the It’s JDM Yo!! booth with her signed posters and what not and she received quite the reception when she arrived… Guys were coming over left and right to take pictures of her. I am probably in a majority of them. I went to go get food at the Dogzilla food truck and when I got back, everyone was trying to get a picture of her. I on the other hand, wanted to enjoy my food so I just ate at the table behind her…So if you are looking at photos of her and you see an attractive asian dude eating a hot dog in the background, it’s me…
Another shot of Lily Zenna Wang…
Man, Autocon 2011 brought out a fine crop of creepy fucking perverts….This little guy was posted up in front of the model lounge area exactly how you see him in this photo for a good 20 minutes. He was doing his creepy thing and peeking over the table at the models and made the models super uncomfortable… Eventually, one of the models got so creeped out that she called one of the security guys to come over and they made him leave. He didn’t though and just stood up, walked to the other side of the lounge and stared at the girls some more…
On a lighter note, here’s some photos of Ela Pasion…
Here’s the same creepy pervert taking a picture with Ela…
Titla McBoob was in the house…good to see she’s getting work consistently at different events. I think she’s been at almost every major event this year…
Ms. Holly Lee doing her thing and who also later won the Autocon 2011 Spokesmodel Search Award…
Cara Skye, who I committed an epic photo bomb on at HIN, chuckin the deuce up for me in this photo…
Big Mike chatting with Robert Chew from Falken Tire and his girlfriend Yuri…Robert did not want to be photographed, haha…
Norman and Sloppy from AS1…
DPK David and Preston Dawson from Function&Form Autolife…
Pretty fucking random shot of Jamarri Whiteside’s purple SSR Professor SP3 wheel…Didn’t know it had stickers on the lip….
Gabby Jeanne modeling for Auto Concept Elite…
I liked this shot of DPK David’s front wheel…
…also liked his new Skunk2 low-profile valve cover hardware…
Christine Vu liked it so much she ripped the bottom half of her shirt off…
Thanks to Sunny from Franklin Autobody for providing heel-safe paint…
At this point, I hung out at the booth for a while and put my camera away. Maybe an hour or so passed when the sun was about to set and that’s when I set out on a mission to walk the entire show and get as many cars that caught my eye as I possibly could. It was a race against the sun but I’m happy with how the photos came out…
Bryant Nguyen’s Acura TSX once again, on SSR Professor SP3s….
Ly Say’s beautifully done Acura TSX on Work Meister S1Rs….
Lexus 2GS on some newly released Work VS-MS wheels…
Christian Ruvalcaba’s “El Smurf” Civic coupe…I didn’t name it that…
Jackson Wong from DTM Autobody’s S2000 on black Enkei PF01…
1GS from Platinum VIP with a Job Design kit that was originally meant for a Lexus LS I believe…
Love this LS430 on WED’s Kranze Bazreias…
Celica that came up all the way from Mexico…It has nothing to do with what geographic location he’s from but I don’t believe those are real Work Meister S1s…
370Z with Powerhouse Amuse kit from Ar-Kan…
Preston Olson’s 350Z on VIP Modular wheels…
Autofashion USA’s new 2GS project car…coming along nicely…
Scion tC also reppin’ Autofashion USA, on Leon Hardiritt Ordens…
It’s nice to see M45s done up nicely with proper wheel fitment…
Big Steve had his LS400 teleported from his mansion in Dubai to represent at Autocon 2011…this would have been a better photo if his camel wasn’t casting a shadow on his car…
Another 2GS, this one on polished Ordens…
Many of you probably don’t know or care, but I sold my AME Shallen AX wheels a couple months back and they ended up on this 3GS…looks good and I want to say I miss these wheels, but I haven’t even put my new wheels on yet so I’m not sure if I even like them, haha…
Closing it out for today with this Dodge Challenger, designed, built, and owned by none other than Jon Sibal…check out his blog here since I still get consistent hits from his site to this very day…We have a lot in common. He’s a artist like me…the only difference is that he’s actually good at what he does and gets paid for it, while I’m busy occupying my time by having delusions of grandeur…
That’s all for today…back with more tomorrow…now off to Rywire to gawk at his Integra…
Autocon 2011 Coverage…Part 1….
Damn…I took a lot of photos at this event. I’d hope to be done going through all of them by now but there’s still a gigantic chunk of it in my memory card that I have yet to touch. I know many of you have come on here the last couple days since the event to see coverage so let’s just go ahead and kick it off today. I’m going into this not really knowing how many parts there will be, but it’ll definitely be more than just 2-3 parts. How I ended up taking that many photos I don’t know, but I think I did a pretty good job of covering the event. Obviously there is some stuff I missed but seeing as how I had a booth at this show, I think you will get a pretty good idea of how this show was…
Now my thoughts on the event…Hmm…I know many of you have already heard about the lack of organization and how the roll-in process was anything less than “hassle-free”. It probably was, I don’t really know because I got there early and set-up right away. A lot of people came by to the booth and brought it up to me, probably in hopes that I would mention it when I posted up the coverage. For all intents and purposes, shit, I have to say right now that it was a great event. I didn’t go last year because I made other plans, but I don’t think missing out on the 2010 Autocon show had any effect on how I felt about this year’s. Foot traffic was great, there was a diverse crowd of cars,…I don’t know, it looked to me as if it went well. If this was an event that I was putting on I’d be pretty happy with it. Okay, roll-in was probably a pain and I did notice how it was kind of unorganized, but you almost have to expect it with guys that are fairly new to putting on events like these. It was definitely under-staffed, but that can be alleviated pretty easily by just hiring more people. Organization just comes with better planning, and as time progresses, I think Justin Fong and staff will get better at it with time. It’s okay to bitch about it as long as you understand that it’s not something that can’t be fixed. I had a good time and it seemed as if everyone else did too.
There were some pretty beat ass looking cars that I don’t think should have been there but I don’t believe there was a screening process so it’s not like you can prevent people from PAYING YOU to show up, you know what I mean? Autocon is off to a good start….will it continue to get better? I would certainly hope so. Will they ever be as big as Wekfest and the other top tier shows of this current generation? Ehh, I don’t know if I want that to happen. I’m cool with the success and all but isn’t this show designed to be for a good cause? Justin originally put on this event as a simultaneously running toy drive. People bring in toys and gifts for children that are less fortunate during the holiday season. If this does turn into a major event, do they just continue to do toy drives at every location they go to, even if it’s not during the holidays? And if they don’t do they just move on as a major car show, leaving behind the original intent of the show itself? It’s kind of a grey area… I mean, if they abandon the whole Toys for Tots things, it would seem as if they used it as a stepping stone to move on and expand the Autocon name, and that doesn’t seem right at all…I don’t know….For now, I think we should all just be happy that this event was a success and everyone there enjoyed it. I also liked the idea of having all the food trucks outside the whole day. That I know for sure took some careful planning and it helped that people didn’t have to be there all day without food or eating some crappy, dry, convention center food…
Anyways, let’s move onto the coverage. Today we will be taking a look at the roll-in early that Saturday. I wouldn’t know about how painful roll-in was because I got there early and went in with It’s JDM Yo!!! Tony. If anything, if it was pain-free for me because I didn’t have to wait long and I took the spare time I had and shot photos…There are a lot of random photos mixed in with the cars because I had a booth and I tried not to leave it after it was set-up. Everything that you are seeing in the first couple parts are just things that happened around me and stuff I could capture from a distance….Enjoy… If you don’t like it, go log onto some other blog where they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about and have no comprehension of sentence structure…
We rolled out early in the morning and got there around 7:30am. I had no idea where It’s JDM Yo!! Tony was so I just pulled my camera out and started shooting until he came and got us…This yellow BMW M5 on HREs was one of the first cars I spotted…
First generation Toyota Celica waiting in line to roll-in…
You can see here how the R35 GT-R dwarfs the original Mini Cooper….
Evo X on CCW Classics…
I’m a big fan of the Powerhouse Amuse kit on the 370Zs…I liked how this owner added the black on the sideskirts to add some contrast and also to match the black lines of the front…
BMW E46 M3 on CCW Classics…I’m not gonna lie, Autocon 2011 was probably the only show other than Import Alliance this year where I saw this many sets of CCWs…Most of them were found on BMWs too, which was really interesting because I never thought CCWs were that popular in the BMW community….
Big Mike used Autocon 2011 as a platform to officially debut his new look…You haven’t seen his car at various meets/shows lately because he’s been busy getting his Chargespeed lip molded to his front bumper, color-matching his mirrors, and getting his wheels powdercoated a high gloss black…
I eventually found Tony…he was busy going over the floorplan with one of the Autocon staffers with Freddie from Autofashion and we rolled into the venue soon-after…
Once we got inside, we waited to see where they wanted our booths to be set-up so I continued shooting…
Ryan Deguzman’s FD3s RX-7 cruising in…
DPK David posted up next to my crappy 4Runner…
The guns and DTA theme I get…what I don’t understand is why you would put crappy Varrstoen wheels on a Porsche…and I don’t really give a shit about the sponsorship argument either…
Buddy Club Honda Fit show/sometimes track car…
Andrew Lim’s DPE S20 wheels on his gold Toyota Supra…
Matte red BMW 5-series wagon from VIP Modular wheels…
S2000 on teal BBS LMs…
TSX on mag blue Volk Racing RE30s…
Another shot of the BMW wagon next to Team Praxis Jimmy’s FJ Cruiser…
Nimbus Grey BMW on custom bronze BBS LM…
We checked the weather forecast early that morning before we left and it showed that it was going to be a pretty cold day… May was all dressed in her winter gear but then we arrived to the venue and the sun started to beat down and it was actually getting pretty warm…
VIP Y34 Infiniti M45…
Another shot of the M3 on Classics…the one parked directly next to it looked almost identical to this one…
Stanced-out DB Integra on some black steel wheels…
Ly Say’s Acura TSX on Work S1R…
Jamarri Whiteside’s award-winning Subaru STI from Auto Concept Elite… This build just won “Best of Show” at Hot Import Nights just a week prior to Autocon 2011…
Auto Concept Elite’s ENEOS-themed widebody R35 GT-R…
Big Mike’s Scion xB…haha…just playing, but they share a similar tone…
Justin and Autocon had advertised that there were free hot-air balloon rides that day and sure enough, there was…
Man, I fucking loved this Toyota Tundra on Volk TE37s…That truck couldn’t look any better…
Scion xB on air and BBS wheels…
Big Mike prepping his Prelude…
Slammed Lexus SC300 from Royal Origin (I think…)….
Chivas rolled out from Vegas with his orange EM1…I just recently finished a story on this coupe for a future Honda Tuning feature so keep an eye out for that…
Gerald’s DC2 Integra on Work Equip 03s….also from Las Vegas…
DPK David all set-up and ready for the show…
JonJon was still busy prepping his IS300…
Step-lipped multi-piece Mugen M7s…
Jamarri Whiteside cleaning the door jams on his STI…check out the door panels on this thing…
Gonna close it out today with a couple shots of Michael Mao’s Acura NSX on aggressive Volk TE37s…
Back with much more tomorrow!! Gotta run for now…
Thanks for looking…
Exclusive Content…The Bisimoto Engineering 2012 Honda Civic SEMA Build Revealed…
As you should all know by now, the annual SEMA show kicks off this week which will serve as the grand unveiling to many of the industry’s latest and greatest automotive projects. It’s probably one of the most anticipated of the year and many aftermarket tuning companies save their best work for this event. One of the companies that brings out their absolute best to Las Vegas every single year is Bisimoto Engineering. Last year, I had the pleasure of unveiling their 400+hp fully-functional hybrid Honda CR-Z project to the world and this year, or today rather, I have the esteemed honor of revealing their 2012 Honda Civic coupe build. This build, in my opinion, is possibly their best yet. During the build-up, I told Bisi Ezerioha that this has to be his best-looking car yet….I was a little premature in my praise of course, because while I still believe this is his best-looking build yet, I had not had a chance to see the dyno numbers and how much power the new K24z7 produced. This car is absolutely insane. I’ll leave you with a bit of suspense until you can see the horsepower numbers for yourself on the Dyna-Pak screenshot below. What he’s been able to squeeze out of this K-motor is pretty crazy…just hearing it start-up was intense enough…
I was lucky enough to be able to cover more of this build than last year’s Bisimoto CR-Z project. In fact, by the time I saw the CR-Z, it was probably at about 85-90% completion. This year, I was able to see the 2012 Civic from the point in which it was completely stripped down, all the way until the final moment of re-assembly and right when it was loaded on to the trailer and sent off to Honda of America. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to cover every single moment of it, but I’ll tell you this, I spent a couple sleepless nights over there snapping away with the camera while also lending a hand wherever I could to help Bisi and crew finish up the car. The time table was definitely tight on this one but I feel that this 2012 Civic will undoubtedly be a hit at the 2011 SEMA show. What I love about this year’s build is that Bisi also touched on the aesthetics of the car, something that isn’t always a focal point of his builds. Overall, it’s just a very aggressive looking build and it definitely has the guts to back it up….
I have to thank Bisimoto Engineering and Rywire.com for giving me the ability to be present during the build process. It’s a great feeling to be able to unveil such a huge project to the world today. For those of you who will be able to participate in the SEMA festivities, please stop by the Honda section in the main hall to check out this build for yourself. For those of you who aren’t able to go to SEMA, you guys are in for a real treat today. I am going to put up photos and video today from the point in which I first saw the car in raw form to the moment it went back to Honda for shipment to Las Vegas….
I would have liked to have been able to do a more traditional “shoot” like I did last year with the Bisimoto CR-Z but we just ran out of time this year. Luckily I was able to cover more of the intricacies of the build and you get a chance to see the process instead of just the final product. With that said, I would like to formally announce the first official photos of the 2012 Bisimoto Honda Civic coupe….enjoy and if you’re new here, I hope you stick around…
Note – There are quite a bit of photos so please allow them to load…I would have separated them into sections but since I am currently away in Las Vegas, I don’t know if I will have the ability to upload different parts throughout the week…
This is the state in which the 2012 Honda Civic was in at around 1am on October 20th, 2011…The only visually complete items on the car were the Stop-Tech big brakes, cut-out hood, and full roll cage…
Ryan Basseri from Rywire creating custom brake lines for the Civic…
Bisi Ezerioha, Supertwinz John from AEM, and Ryan Basseri going over some ideas for the engine bay…
I was thinking that Bisi would go with his signature Bisimoto Fighter Special wheel since a couple of them were either mounted on the car or around it, but that wasn’t the case because he had a new wheel to debut on the Civic…
At this point, the exterior was still basically stock, other than the cut-out on the hood…
A look at the cage that was built by Steen Chassis…
Stop-Tech big brake kit…a small wheel spacer was needed to clear the caliper…
Ryan doing work…
Supertwinz John holding up the Burns Stainless short muffler that will eventually go on the Civic…
Ryan under the car working on the custom lines for the rear brakes…
The lines running to a Wilwood proportioning valve…
Bisi and Ryan going over the brake lines….
Bisi swept a little…
This next batch of photos were captured 3 days later. By this point, the motor had gone back into the car, the vehicle wrap was complete, and re-assembly had begun…
First look at the K24Z7 since going back into the coupe…
One of the most noticeable additions that I spotted right away were the AEM High Output Ignition Coils….Definitely didn’t expect Bisi to go back to using a more conventional, external coil over the O.E. coil-over-plug set-up…
I did however, expect to see this massive Turbonetics turbo…
Custom relay and harness set-up built from scratch by Rywire…
Cool little addition that Bisi had found off of an airplane…I forget what it’s used for now but Ryan actually rewired this thing and made it functional…
Ryan working on the fuse box….
Your first look at the graphical livery and vinyl wrap layout. You can see here that the chute has been installed and the new wheels mounted…
How the engine bay looked before the radiator support and everything was reinstalled…
Your first look at the Bisimoto “Eins Gramm” wheel…
Ryan and Bisi working on the engine harness…
Ryan installing the Odyssey battery beneath the headlight…
The K24Z7 engine coming together…
I didn’t get a chance to stay very long that day… I just wanted to stop by for a bit and check out the progress… The next batch of photos came another 3 days later, on 10/26/2011, just 5 days before SEMA. The car had to go back to Honda of America for press photos and what not, so there was definitely a sense of urgency to finish. The 2012 Civic actually had to be delivered the next morning so Bisi and crew stayed up for a couple days to knock it out…I had pulled an all-nighter for work and other reasons, but I had to make the drive out to Ontario to see this build through to the end…
Random shot of one of Bisi’s Porsche projects sitting outside next to his trailer…
When I got there, Bisi was busy on his laptop configuring the Racepak dash display while two representatives from Extreme Dimensions were busy installing some carbon fiber pieces from their “Carbon Creations” line of products…
In the days that I was away, the car was actually sent out to Bisi’s fabricators for more stuff, including this custom rear wing…
Guys from Extreme Dimensions installing the carbon fiber half-splitter pieces/canards or whatever you call those things…
I forget the exact specs on the wheels right now, but I’m sure wheel fitment and “stance” guys will appreciate it. I think this had to be the first time where Bisi ever had to worry about wheel fitment. There are only so many suspension components out for the 2012 Civics at this point so messing with the camber adjustments and what not was definitely interesting…We eventually where able to get the wheels to fit without that little area of the rear bumper being pushed out slightly…
The “Eins Gramm” logo on the wheel which means, easily enough, “One Gram”…
The engine bay with the radiator, core support, and front mount intercooler re-installed…
At one point in the afternoon, we stopped to eat lunch since Bisi had ordered pizza, and it was great to see a photo of Misa Campo hanging inside the Bisimoto offices after staring at car parts and dudes all day…haha…
After we finished eating and chatting for a bit, it was back to work. I took the time to get some more detail shots of the Bisimoto Civic coupe…
A closer look at the custom vents on his drag wing…
Bisimoto-themed custom graphical livery…
Better look at the AEM High Voltage “Smart” ignition coils mounted to a plate on the Golden Eagle intake manifold…
The massive Turbonetics turbocharger…
Okay, so speaking of the giant turbo, Bisi had tuned the K24Z7 motor earlier on in the day and revealed to us the final numbers from his tune…
There were still some very minor issues that will need to be resolved once SEMA comes to a conclusion but your eyes aren’t deceiving you…the Bisimoto Engineering 2012 Honda Civic produced 1004 horsepower and 623LB-Ft of torque… One-thousand and four horsepower K24!…
A shot of the front bumper…
A shot of the rear of the Civic….
Bisi Ezerioha putting some of his vinyl decals on to support his many sponsors…
Big Mike helped with the rear window decals…
A shot of the cockpit with the custom airplane “launch” switches…
Almost complete…Below is a video of one of the start-ups so you guys can get a chance to hear the motor….
Corner of the front bumper featuring another batch of sponsors….
Vibrant Vanjen clamps…
Golden Eagle Pro Series fuel rail…
All hands on board to help!…
The Turbonetics unit in motion…
Ryan going over some last minute details in the bay…
A final look at the Bisimoto Eins Gramm wheel on Falken Azenis…
Bisi applying the “BISIMOTO.COM” banner to signify it’s completion…
Below is a video of the 2012 Civic making it’s way out of the facility for the first time and getting onto a trailer for SEMA…
See you at SEMA 2011!…
That’s a wrap…if you guys are going to be attending the SEMA 2011 show, make sure to stop by the Honda section and check out the 1000+ horsepower Bisimoto Engineering 2012 Honda Civic. Remember where you guys saw it first….www.stickydiljoe.com!!!
I apologize for not being able to get better shots of the Civic outside of the facility, there just wasn’t any time. Below is a link to a larger sized photo so you can have a better view of what the car looks like…
Thanks for looking, and thank you to Bisimoto Engineering for the opportunity!!
See me in Vegas, I’m outta here!!! I will definitely try to update whenever I get the chance!
“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….
The Top 10 Hondas of 2010…A retrospective…Part 2…
Back now with the second half of the Top 10 Hondas of 2010 retrospective…Yesterday we took a look back at spots 10-6 of the Top Ten and today we will be looking at the other 5 spots on the list. One interesting note to consider when I was putting yesterdays and today’s list is that there seems to be less change with the 2010 group in comparison to the Top Ten Hondas of year’s past. I don’t know what it is, maybe because these builds are in more of a completed state than the others but either way, as a whole, you don’t see very much of a difference. There are minor changes here and there but the guys on the 2010 list seem to be the types that hold onto their cars and aren’t in any rush to build something completely new. Of the guys from 2010, there’s just one person who has sold their car and moved on. You can maybe consider RC Chacon’s new project as him moving on, but he actually still has his white EG and I’m sure he’s planning on rebuilding it…
Moving on…
5. JDMYard/Yonas Liu’s “EGK24A”…
What he’s up to now: You’ll be very happier to hear that Yonas is still very active with his Civic build. While he probably has one of the most recognizable Civics in all of the world today, Yonas tends to keep to himself mostly and only posts occasionally on forums like NWP4Life. Thankfully, we have social media outlets that allow us to keep in contact with people like Yonas Liu who are on the other half of the world. I’ve been chatting with Yonas recently on Facebook and he’s been updating me on all the new things he’s been doing to his Civic. It’s good to know that after all these years of him owning his car and all the abuse that he puts it through that he is still excited to try new things with it and making his build better than ever…
He sent me a photo the other day actually of his latest major modification. It was a decent photo from his Blackberry or something and I was going to post it, but I promised him that I would hold off until next week to show everyone, since he’s planning on some major unveiling some time around the 10th of October. It’s a very drastic change from what he’s been running in the last couple years and I think you guys will be just as surprised as I am when you see it. For now, take a look at Speedhunters’ feature on Yonas’ EG which actually dropped today…
“GOLIATH, MEET DAVID” – via Speedhunters.com
4. Chris Sakai’s Civic/Angel Ramos’ S2000 (Tie)
What he’s up to now: Chris Sakai has taken a more subtle approach with the aesthetics of his Civic in 2011. After his cover feature in Honda Tuning and landing on the Top 10 Hondas list, he kicked off 2011 by ditching his wing, hood, and mirrors. OEM Civic Type R pieces make their way back onto Chris’ car now and he also went with a different set of wheels…
I wasn’t sure how the white Regas would look when I found out about the switch but when I saw it, I honestly felt that it was probably one of his Civic’s best looks yet. Other than those aesthetic changes, not much else has changed. Chris has continued to participate in all the major Cali car show events and picked up a couple new sponsors here and there… The car looks so good in it’s current state that there isn’t really any reason for him to have to do anything else to it…
What he’s up to now: In 2011, Angel Ramos has gone with the old adage; “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Other than a new set of brakes and a different set of Volks, Angel’s S2000 has remained exactly the same. There isn’t a whole lot he can do to it without having to tear down and start over. His S2000 has a very unique look and continues to stand out in the deep S2000 community…
I spoke to him for a while at this year’s Nisei Showoff and he does have one more major overhaul coming for his S2000. 2010 was the debut of Angel’s build and there was so much going on that I think he’s taken a step back this year so that he could breathe and just enjoy the fruits of his labor. There are definitely some big things that he plans to do to this thing but the ideas are still very premature. It’ll be interesting to see what actually happens to Angel’s S2000 but all we can do now is wait until next year…
3. ATS*Anh’s Acura Integra Type R…
What he’s up to now: Anh Truong has probably been the most active in the top 5 in terms of adding new stuff to his build… His ITR probably hasn’t even been in his possession much in 2011 because it’s spent a chunk of it’s time either down here in Southern California for events or over at ASC Speed Metal for custom fabrication…
Anh’s car has been down at ASC because they have been hard at work on fabricating some new catch cans and misc. things for his engine bay. They also added a custom roll bar/half cage to the ITR. I think as a whole in 2011, I probably have seen Anh’s ITR more than I have seen Anh himself… The exterior of the ITR has remained basically the same, with the exception of some brand new Almighty Grey Regamaster EVOs…
2. Bisimoto’s Honda Civic Wagon and Honda CR-Z…
What he’s up to now: Bisi currently is hard at work on a brand new 2012 Honda Civic coupe for SEMA. The wagon is exactly the same as it was last year and for the most part, so is the turbo CR-Z. Bisi is a mad man so he’s constantly hard at work on either his own projects or tuning customer vehicles but the spare moments that he’s had, he’s spent it cruising around in the CR-Z. I was just over at the Bisimoto facility last week and he was talking about how often he drives the CR-Z. If you’re wondering, the answer is “yes”, he does drive it around with the chute in the rear and everything, haha…
There are some minor kinks electronically here and there with the hybrid motor but he has taken the car out for test runs at the track. I doubt he really has any major changes planned for this thing because he’ll be busy finishing his 2012 Civic and campaigning it for 2012. Another thing that might prevent him for doing anything else to this CR-Z is all the different Porsche projects he’s working on. I haven’t had a chance to see his Porsche SEMA project but he promises that it’ll be one-of-a-kind. I don’t know how he has enough hours in the day to do as much as he does but I’m very interested to see the debuts of his new projects when the SEMA show rolls around in November…
1. Ryan Der’s Honda Civic and Big Mike’s Honda Prelude (Tie)…
What he’s up to now: Ryan surprised a lot of people in 2011 when he decided to take off his complete C-West aero kit. He usually takes it off to track the Civic anyways and with so many track events to go to this year, I guess it just made sense for him to remove it permanently and go back to a Mugen front lip and splitter. At the Wekfest event that occurred in early 2011, Ryan also debuted a new set of custom refinished Work Meister S1s..
There aren’t any other major changes. Under the hood he’s switched over to a C.O.P. ignition system and different valve cover but that’s mostly it. He spent much of the year attending car shows as well as beating up his Civic on the track at events such as Super Street’s annual FF Battle….
What he’s up to now: Big Mike is always busy running around all over the place but his Prelude is pretty much the same as it was in 2010. There aren’t very many builds that are as in-depth or as detailed as his and it showed in 2011 when he consistently continued to take home awards at shows all over Cali. His Prelude even appeared on the cover of Banzai magazine, which is a U.K.-based publication. There are many that are starting to think that he needs to switch things up because it’s remained the same for the last two years and Big Mike definitely has some cool new things coming for his Prelude.
While he’s busy working and collecting new parts for his Prelude, Big Mike has started on a Honda Accord side-project to keep him occupied for the rest of the year. 2012 looks to be another big year for Big Mike, so stay tuned…
That rounds out the list. Hopefully this has given you some insight as to what these guys are up to these days. All are very much deserving of being on the 2010 list and continue to be a force within the Honda community in 2011…
The only question that remains now is… who is going to make this year’s list?….
Thanks for looking…
Productivity…
I normally don’t get more than one or two things done on an average day because I’m too busy doing absolutely nothing, but yesterday was a pretty decent day. I was sent out on assignment to Gearspeed in Rancho Cucamonga for work, spent the majority of the day there, and then I headed over to the Bisimoto facility to check out DPK David’s tune. Bisi was tuning David’s K20 Civic coupe and dropping by Bisimoto Engineering also meant that Bisi was going to give me a first look at some of his latest projects…
So I woke up early Thursday morning and drove an hour from the Orange County area to Rancho Cucamonga, which is in the Inland Empire. I really didn’t have any idea what I was supposed to do out there, as Rodrez only told me to go out there to cover a tech story for Honda Tuning. Big Mike happened to be off work that day and was good friends with James over at Gearspeed so I asked him to come by and hang out while I shot whatever was going down over there. When I arrived at Gearspeed, they gave Big Mike and I a tour of their facility and then we walked over to a work station where I was greet to a pleasant surprise. The tech story I was sent out there to cover that day was actually a tear down and reassembly of a legit Spoon Sports K-series transmission from Japan…
I can’t really get into full details of what actually went down, you’ll have to wait until a future issue of Honda Tuning magazine for that, but here’s a quick shot of the Spoon tranny, assembled by Spoon, straight from one of their race cars…
It’s crazy to see what goes down at a place like Gearspeed because these guys that work there take apart transmissions and rebuild them like it’s a very simple job, when in reality, it is everything but. I mean, these guys can tear down a tranny, throw every single removable piece into a bin, machine-wash it, and put it all back together in about 30 minutes time. Shit was wild man, I’m telling you… Just to think about how intricate each Honda transmission is and how these guys know them like the back of their hands is mind boggling… The Spoon transmission was way more than I expected it to be because I honestly don’t have that much of a favorable view of Spoon Sports stuff, but honestly, I was impressed. They actually did some work on this transmission and didn’t just like, throw a different final drive in there and plaster a Spoon badge on it like every one of their other products. That shit was definitely a learning experience, and I have a ton of respect for guys that work on transmissions on a daily basis. These guys are very systematic and almost robotic in terms of their ability to work on these transmissions. Big props goes out to the guys over at Gearspeed for not only their skill, but also their hospitality. The facility itself is a trip too because it’s a gigantic warehouse filled to the brim with Honda transmissions and parts. The craziest thing about that facility is that they have a full gym next to their lunch area, and one of the offices even has a tanning bed inside of it…haha…I’m serious, you can’t even make that shit up…
I definitely stayed there longer than I expected to though. I got there around 11am and didn’t get out of there until almost 4pm in the afternoon. The time spent there was a productive one, so I can’t really complain…
After that Big Mike and I hopped into our cars and made our way down to the Bisimoto Engineering facility. DPK David’s tuning appointment was at 2pm so they were almost done by the time we got there. Luckily they still had one more final pull left on the dyno and I was able to witness it…
Here’s what it looked like when we pulled up. The coupe was still hooked up to the dyno, but Bisi was taking a little break to have a nice cold drink…
Bisi taking a moment to chat with Big Mike…
As for the tune….the numbers at that point were pretty decent but Bisi felt that there was quite a bit of restriction coming from the intake area…
He recommended to David that they take his filter off and mount a velocity stack to it for the final pull. David removed the filter he had on, mounted the velocity stack and aimed it upward to get maximum air flow…
Here’s a crappy video of the final run…
The filter did prove to be the issue as the final run yielded some pretty good results…
Final horsepower numbers can be seen above…
Both Bisi and David seemed to be pretty happy with the results. 218HP on a internally stock K20 Type-S motor tuned on a AEM EMS Series 2 is not too shabby… There isn’t anything else done to the motor but the basic intake, header, exhaust combination…
By the time they finished taking the car off the Dynapak, it was time to close up shop. The photo above is Bisi and DPK David after they came back from a test drive. David was all smiles because his motor has never run better…
While David and Bisi were busy finalizing the details of David’s tune, Big Mike asked me to take a new photo of his side project, which is a 1996 Honda Accord wagon. He recently put some Work Leadsleds on so he wanted to get a decent photo of it…
Big Mike claims he’s not gonna do anything crazy with this car but we’re all waiting for the day when he let’s us know that he’s doing a full Mil-spec harness and ITBs for it…just wait, it’ll happen…. Overall, the wagon is mint, The interior is like new and everything seems to be working very well mechanically. He’s always wanted a wagon and the perfect opportunity came up to purchase one….
That’s all for today. Make sure you guys click above at the top of the screen to pick up your Year.Three Chronicles Anniversary spots if you haven’t done so already. Spots are moving quickly so it’s a good idea if you jump on them now…
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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 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 2…
Back with part 2 of the Nisei 2011 coverage. Today we will be taking a look at some cars that were in the first two rows of the show where my booth was. I was still hanging out at the booth at the time and didn’t really want to move since the sun was blazing hot. Before the event started, a bunch of us even drove to one of the Japanese markets down the street to buy some nice cold drinks to cool down while we waited for May to finish making her fruit drinks. It was definitely hotter than we expected so it was a good thing we had a canopy to be under. I went out in short spurts to take photos and then quickly ran back under the canopy as to not get burnt, so the photos in the first few sections of the coverage are just of the front area. I didn’t make my way through to see the rest of the show until much later on in the day. Anyways, hopefully today will be drama free in the comments section and everybody can just sit back and enjoy the photos…
A couple people are complaining that I always cover the same shit over and over, so to start it out today, I’m gonna post some photos of cars that I have posted before….
Edgar Loyoza’s purple G35 was one of the cars that I really enjoyed staring at all day. I love the SSR Professor SP3 wheels and the subtle aero…
Ka Wong’s AE86 F20C-powered Corolla has to be, bar none, one of my favorite builds of all time. Everything is executed as close to perfect as it gets and to top it off, Ka is a very nice guy and I always enjoy running into him at events…
His engine bay has a lot of little nice touches. Look at the bolts with the purple beauty washers used in every part of the bay possible, even where the wiper used to be mounted…And as weird as it sounds, a Honda S2000 motor looks like it belongs in an 8-6….
Shooting his Corolla and doing a story on it for Super Street magazine was also one of my favorite shoots. I loved the way the photos came out and it’s cool to see that he brought the plaque out with him to display at Nisei Showoff…
ItsJDMYo!!! and 1-UP crew…
DPK David in the GENERATIONS section…Told this dude to move his car back like 16 times because it was sticking out past everyone else’s cars and he was busy DJing in one of Tony’s booths with his friend…
Sheepey’s S2000 parked in what I call “the ditch”…I had the exact same spot last year and Salem parked there. That groove was so deep that Salem’s TSX looked like it was flipped over on its side when he had his front wheel sitting in the groove. We were kind of joking around that Sheepey would be mad his car was parked right there but it wasn’t intentional. That’s how all the cars lined up and he just so happened to be at that exact spot. I was gonna put my booth there but with 22 cars even, I divided it up evenly down the middle and my booth ended up being 2 car spots down from there…
Sheep’s wild turbo, dump tube, and dual waste gate set-up…
Jared talking to Alex from WheelFlip about his custom M7s…
Big Mike talking to one of the judges, Amy, while she was judging his Prelude for the Honda Class category…
Big Mike’s Prelude on freshly refinished Volk SE37Ks…
A quick look at Jeff Campbell’s engine bay…
It’s crazy to think that the last time this Civic made a public appearance was at the 2006 Eibach Meet…Thanks to ICB Matt for bringing it out for the line-up…
2GS that was parked with Infinit Wheels…I liked how the rear fender was modified but doesn’t look haggered like a lot of other guys who are trying to fit aggressive wheels on their cars…
Really loved this BMW with Japanese Voltex aero and HRE wheels…Very nice mash-up of styles…
Says it all…
Mike G. enjoying one of the drinks that May prepared…
Anh’s loves teal…
Frankstar aka Mexican Zac Efron checking out Sheepey’s bay…
Billy’s IS300 came out once again to collect a best of show trophy. I’m starting to think that this car is untouchable in that class and it’s very deserving of the praise….
Engine bay shot of Sportcar Motion’s newly debuted Civic….
Phaze2 Salem’s TSX was a part of the GENERATIONS line-up. Not only does it have the best TSX components that J’s Racing has to offer, it’s also turned into quite a capable weekend track car, as evidenced by it’s great performance at the Super Street FF Battle 3…
Leon Casino’s CR-X was a late addition to the GENERATIONS line-up. I had contacted him about possibly being a part of it but with his baby due any time now, he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to make it out. He called me at the 11th hour of roll-in and asked if I had a spot for him and we made room. I really wanted him to park with the older guys for the “past” section but that area was filled up and I had a spot up front since Will from Circuit Hero no-showed, and that’s where he ended up…
RC Chacon’s newly debuting EG sedan build. He wasn’t quite finished with it yet, as I stated in part 1, but it made for a perfect fit for the “future” portion of my line-up…Interested to see what else he plans on doing to this Civic. Maybe when the 3-year anniversary meet goes down towards the end of the year, he will make another appearance in it’s finished state…
Always enjoy seeing this GR Subaru STI on Volk TE37SLs… I think I use this exact same line every time I post a photo of this car…haha…
PlusOne Danny’s coupe…
Sheeps and ATS Angel…
RX-8 on BBS wheels…
Vincent Shu’s LS400… He used to have a 2GS and I actually bought my AMEs off of him…
TL on HREs…
As usual Socal car events usually have celebrity appearances from time to time. At the Super Street FF Battle 3 dyno day, we saw an appearance by Birdman. At Nisei…
Richard Attenborough aka the old man from Jurassic Park showed up in period-correct attire in honor of GENERATIONS….haha. Loi spotted him first and I asked him which Jurassic Park movie he liked the most, and he clearly enjoyed the second one the most…
Sam Ip’s new black 8th gen. Civic build, which replaces the white one that he totalled awhile back…The container of parts from Japan he was waiting on didn’t make it to the states in time, but he promises that there are all kinds of new J’s Racing parts in there for his car…Looks promising so far and very different from his previous Spoon Sports theme…
Arn Reyes’s Integra with the Hershey front bumper….
Charles from 1-Up’s widebody S2000…
A bagged and kitted Prius that I saw while walking towards the front gate…
Mike Schietroma’s Civic with BYS front bumper…loving the red Vision seats…
Closing it out with a trio of history-making EGs….if these three cars could talk, man, the stories that they could tell….
That’s all for today, thanks for looking…Oh and sorry that some of the tones are off on some of the photos compared to the others. I edited them at different times and they are from different times of the day but I actually went and organized the photos for once to make sure they were in order of what I was talking about and this happens…yikes…
Nisei Showoff 2011 Coverage…Part 1…An Introduction…
“Honor the past…Appreciate the present…Build for the future…”
GENERATIONS
presented to you by The Chronicles…
I wanted to start off the coverage with a formal explanation of the line-up that I put together at Nisei Showoff 2011. I’ve been looking around online and some people were wondering what the whole “Generations” sticker was about that they saw on some cars there and if you follow the site regularly, then you already know why. For those that don’t and are just here to see the coverage now, allow me to explain. Ken Myoshi hit me up a couple weeks ago wanting to know if I had any ideas to throw at him for our collaboration that we were doing. I try to work with Ken and Showoff a lot because I appreciate what Ken Myoshi has done throughout the years for the entire import automotive community. It was the original import car show back in the early 90′s, long before Hot Import Nights, any of that NOPI garbage, Import Fest, Wekfest, Spocom, etc. It will always be THE original import car show event. I always make it a point to work with Ken because it’s an honor for me to do so. I’ve always been a heavy supporter of his Showoff events in the past and attended them whenever I could (and that was often). Having The Chronicles collaborate with Ken is something that I never imagined I would be able to do. No matter what I want to call it, this is a blog about Hondas. Simple as that. I didn’t think working with Showoff was possible because this site is not very significant in the broader scheme of the import automotive community. It was cool of Ken to ask because for whatever reason, he values my opinion and thinks that I can help him push his show. Last year, I collaborated with him with the “Top Ten Showoff” where I brought out a couple of Hondas that I throught were really nice and it worked out well. I had a booth, I sold some things, and the show overall was a success. Ken liked what I did and he asked me to help him out again this year…
For this year’s Nisei event, I had a very short amount of time to put something together because I’ve been busy taking care of other things, and just hadn’t had much time to contact Ken about what we should do. When I contacted Ken, we threw some ideas out at each other but nothing was really set in stone. I told him I’d reconnect with him on AOL Instant Messenger the very next day at around the same time, which was early in the a.m. around 1:30. The next day came and went and we didn’t get a chance to talk. This was a week before the event was set to take place…and I had nothing. Whenever I drive to May’s place to go spend time with her, I always spend those 35-40 minutes on the highway brainstorming ideas for the site. Some of my best ideas have come from those drives, many of them which I forget by the time I get home. On one of the night’s driving to her place, I came up with an idea….an idea to bring some of the best builds of year’s past (that were still around of course) and display them with some of what I feel are the best builds of our current generation with a couple of other cars that had yet to make a public appearance, which I would deem “The builds of the future”. Showoff is so enriched in history that it just made sense…I would call it “GENERATIONS”…it had a nice ring to it, so I went with it. I parked my 4Runner in my carport, ran up to my apartment, hopped on my computer and shot Tony from ItsJDMYo an email. I had somehow lost my contact info for Ken so I had no way of contacting him, and he wasn’t online at that moment, so I asked Tony to forward my idea to him. I was pretty excited by the idea but it almost seemed impossible to put together in less than a week’s time but if Ken liked the idea, I would push forward and do whatever it took to make it happen. Ken emailed me later that next day and told me that he felt that it was a great idea…and then it came time to execute…
The Chronicles and GENERATIONS represented on Big Mike’s Prelude passenger window…
What car was still around I thought, that people would appreciate seeing, that hadn’t been out at a car show like Showoff in a couple years…the first car that sprang to mind, within moments of thinking was Parnell’s 1993 Acura Integra. It was a beautiful build, timeless in every way, with all the right parts to make to relevant no matter what era it stood in. I didn’t know Parnell that well, we had met in passing, and I ran into him another time during a dinner with May and some friends at Fogo de Chau, and I almost didn’t recognize him. We became friends on Facebook after that, so my only means of contacting him was through a social media source. I am very good friends with Ejay though, who also had a DA like Parnell, so I knew I could always talk to Ejay if I had to. Ejay and Parnell are like brothers, if I had to have someone convince him to do it, Ejay was my man to do it. I hit Parnell up on Facebook and he quickly responded without hesitation that he was all for it. So the first guy was locked down….
Team Kosoku past and present…Parnell’s Mugen DA and Ejay’s DA…
The second guy I knew who might be down, was Kane Chan. He shows with all the other old school car crews at Showoff practically every year, so if I could piggyback off that, the whole “GENERATIONS” theme would make even more sense. Kane wasn’t sure what everyone in his crew wanted to do, so he said he would let me know after they had a meeting…so Kane was a “maybe”. I needed some help brainstorming ideas of who and what car to bring out, so I headed down to the Rywire facilities to meet up with Ryan, DPK David, and Big Mike. There we tossed around some names of who to ask…Mike G. was one of them, and a couple other names popped up, but we had no idea if those guys were even into cars anymore. Right next door to Ryan’s shop, if you didn’t know…was L*CON. Inside L*CON’s building was a smaller business, called Ballade Sports and was operated by Alex Doan, who has that full Spoon-themed black S2000 and a guy who has been a part of the Honda community for years, a guy we know as “Skinhead Mike”. Mike is the proprietor of Jon Tanji’s Civic hatchback. Jon passed away a couple years ago, and Mike has had his EG ever since. He occasionally takes it to work with him, and it has remained in its exact state since Jon had it…it was the perfect choice to bring to Nisei. We could honor not only the history with Jon’s Civic but also honor Jon Tanji, who many people these days don’t know of and to showcase his work. Big Mike talked to Skinhead, I talked to him for a bit, and while Mike was all for it and loved the idea, he had a personal matter to deal with and that was all I needed to hear. I’m not gonna make anyone do anything car-related if they have more pressing matters to attend to. When I first made the announcement regarding the appearance of Jon’s Civic, I kind of pulled the trigger on it too early by stating it would be there and that was my error. It should not reflect on Skinhead Mike or anyone else. I would have loved to have seen the car there, but it’s more important to me that he takes care of whatever he had to in his personal life. For those of you who expected the car to be there, I apologize, it was my mistake in jumping the gun and no one elses…
With little time left to get more of the Hondas from year’s past together, I hit up Matt from ICB Motorsport to see if he was coming out from Arizona for Nisei, and all of a sudden, everything fell into place. Literally out of nowhere, Matt single-handedly saved my vision…and he has no idea that he did…haha. Matt was bringing out 5 cars… one of them being perfect for the section, because it stood the test of time and has remained in perfect condition…no, it’s not the car that you’re thinking of if you’ve already seen other pics. It wasn’t the famous “blue EG”. It was Jorge Hernandez’s gold Civic hatchback. You don’t hear from him because he’s a man of few words, but his build is one that you will always remember. The other cars that were coming out with him were perfect for the “present” section of GENERATIONS. Mike had a very nice Spoon-themed EM1 build, and another guy, Jeff Campbell, had a blue DC2 that made a strong presence at Eibach this year. RC Chacon was set to debut his new 4-door EG Civic build, that no one had seen yet, and while it wasn’t finished, it was perfectly suited for the “future” section alongside Loi Song’s debuting red EG build. The fifth and final car, was either going to be Matt’s CRX Pro.2 on MF10Ls…or a build that he’s had in his collection for years now (since 2006), a blue EG that once belonged to famed-Honda head, Chad Castelo. Chad for whatever reason, has taken it upon himself to speak ill of me and my work to others who we have as mutual friends so it was interesting that Matt offered to bring it out to Nisei. Matt had no idea about this of course but I made it a point to ask him to bring out Chad’s car to display at Nisei. Chad has never spoken to me in person, nor does he even know me personally, but he’s taken it upon himself to say some unpleasant things about The Chronicles and the people associated with the site. I have always loved his cars. In fact, his 4-door EF build back in his Team Ziggy days was one of the builds that made me fall in love with Hondas to begin with. His EG was a landmark build as well and one of the reasons why I really wanted it there was because Jon Tanji was the main contributor in that build. When it came to custom engine bays and tucks, and what not, Chad’s Civic was one of those builds that you will always remember if you have been in this community for the last decade-plus. I have nothing bad to say about Chad and I’ve been nothing but respectful of his work throughout the years, that’s why I wanted his old car to be there at Nisei. It was a perfect fit, albeit an ironic one, for GENERATIONS. Matt told me that it was iffy getting Chad’s old car out there because it had been sitting in storage so long but I made it a point to make sure that it made the trip out….
The cars for the “present” section, were by far the easiest to get together. The Hondas from DPK, ATS Garage, along with Ejay’s DA, Salem’s TSX, and Big Mike’s Prelude, were perfect. They are at the top of their game and the builds are a great representation of the top builds today. I later got a call from Kane to inform me that his Civic coupe would indeed be parked with us and that rounded out the 22-car line-up perfectly. All that came together in just a couple days time, and when Ken saw the line-up at Nisei that Saturday morning, even he was impressed by what was accomplished in that short time…
GENERATIONS “Present” line-up….starting with DPK David, ATS Garage’s Ryan Der, Chris Sakai, Anh Truong, and Angel Ramos’ S2000 in the distance…
Now on to what I think was one of the most talked about topics that day at Nisei Showoff 2011…the foot traffic and overall attendance. It wasn’t busy by any means that day, and it didn’t have to be. I heard so many people complaining about how no one showed up and how there was barely anyone there at the show. There didn’t have to be an overwhelming crowd. When there are too many people, people complain. When there aren’t that many people,….people complain. You have to remember that Nisei Showoff hasn’t been that crazy busy in the last couple years because that’s not what it’s about. If you want it to be crazy busy, go to one of the newer shows like Spocom or something, where there are bitches flocking around everywhere and there is loud music and go-go dancers. That’s not what this show is about. Nisei Showoff has always been about tradition. Ken Myoshi isn’t stupid. He doesn’t do this show to make money. The Showoff franchise hasn’t been a cash-cow in years and Nisei Showoff is one of his last remaining events. Ken continues to do Nisei Showoff because it’s an important part of our automotive community’s history. Showoff is what started it all in the beginning and it’s one of the last remains of our rich past. Honestly, you could have 4 people show up at Nisei Showoff, and I wouldn’t give a shit. Why? Because I know those 4 people that walked into the show will have come for the cars and for the history. What other event can you go to where you will see cars from the old school crews like Bosozoku and Street Image Performance parked alongside the current generation of crews like DPK and ATS Garage? Only at Nisei Showoff. People who only complained about the foot traffic fail to see the significance of Nisei Showoff. You should come to appreciate the cars and the people from your community, and not whether or not someone is invading your personal space because there’s no where to walk. You know what I mean? Who cares if there wasn’t that much foot traffic? Are you selling something? Do you have money invested in this event? If your answer is no, then why worry about it? You should appreciate Nisei Showoff because Showoff is still around. The people you looked up to who were building the cars that you wanted to build went to Showoff events, and hopefully, one day, when your kids are into cars and building cars like the ones they watched you build, can say that they went to a Showoff event. You are a part of a bigger picture and if you think that Nisei Showoff was a failure because attendance was low, you’re not only selling the event short, you’re also selling yourself short. Appreciate what is around you. When you go to this show, take a step back and look at everything. There are people from the past uniting with the current crop of enthusiasts to share each other’s work. You shouldn’t have to worry about attendance because the guys that are there to see the cars at Nisei Showoff, are already there with their cars and they are parked right next to you…
Just a small glimpse at the GENERATIONS line-up…
People always joke around saying “oh I thought last year’s Nisei was the last one”, “every year is the last one”…that’s because it possibly could be. Ken continues to put this event on because the lot that it is held at every year is still available for him to use…one day it won’t be. The lot is owned privately and at any point in time, it will be torn down and there will be property built over it. Every year Ken calls to ask if the lot is available, and if it is, he will put the show on. It isn’t because he’s using the fact that it’s going to be the last show as a selling point for you to come. Next year, it may very well go into development. And someday, you may drive by that exact area and tell your kids or whomever, that it was the spot where one of the best import automotive shows was held all time and you miss the fact that there’s no more Nisei Showoff…
It’s sad to hear that I see some people on other sites complaining about media passes and how they weren’t “taken care of” properly. It’s that ridiculous sense of entitlement that exists these days that make kids think that the people at Showoff should roll out the red carpet for them. The Showoff events have made their mark in our industry. It doesn’t need some kid’s photos to make or break it. If you really appreciate what you do as a journalist, enthusiast, car head, or blogger, pay the $10 that it costs at the gate and walk your ass inside and take your photos. I walk into every event I go to not thinking about what I can do for the event. I cover events because it has helped me build my site and reputation into what it is today. That’s why my coverage is always very comprehensive, very detailed. I have total confidence in saying that nobody does event coverage better than I do because I don’t feel entitled to anything. Nobody owes me shit. I cover cars, and especially the people because I want people to be able to look back and remember the great times they had doing what they love. If you’re getting upset because you didn’t get a free pass, or didn’t get inside the event at a certain point in time because you think that event organizer needs to have you there, your site sucks and what you’re doing fucking sucks. There are thousands of people taking photos at events and covering what’s going on who don’t complain and just do it because they love it…
It’s a lot to read, but I hope you got through all of it…now we can move forward with the photos…
There was quite a bit of traffic on the way to downtown L.A. the morning of Nisei Showoff, so I got there a little later than expected. I don’t have very many photos early in the day because I was busy setting up the booth, as well as parking all the cars in our line-up the way I wanted them to be parked. The first part of the coverage today will cover my booth and the cars around it. My reasoning behind that is because I think what I put together at Nisei Showoff is important and you should see it and also because I stayed at my booth the majority of the early hours of the show….
A quick glimpse at the line-up… Ryan from Rywire was supposed to bring out his CR-X, but for the second straight year, his EF had what we call “The Nisei Curse”, and didn’t make it to the event…so he brought out his back-up, his white NSX on white Regamasters….not a bad back-up if you ask me…
While Ryan’s NSX was the book-end to the left side of The Chronicles booth, Big Mike’s Prelude served as the end on the right…
Our line-up was so big that day that we ended up taking up that whole side of the show. It was a lucky coincidence that my boy Billy’s IS300 ended up parking next to The Chronicles. Sportcar Motion’s red EG made it’s first official public appearance at Nisei Showoff and it was at the start of our 22-car line-up…
Northwest internet celebrity and retired Hmong gangster Yee Vang made the trip out from Washington to show his support at Nisei Showoff. Here he is with Big Mike in a rare photo of them together…
Jeff Campbell’s DC2 and Mike Schietroma’s EM1, both blue, both on Rega EVOs…
Ejay and Parnell’s DA Integras…They both dropped off their cars and quickly left to attend to family matters…
May usually brings out treats like cookies and what not for The Chronicles booth but she brought all kinds of fruits and juices to make drinks for everyone…
The ice cold fruit drinks were perfect being that the day ended-up hotter than anyone had imagined. The photo here is obscured because I took it through the mesh netting from our canopy…
Norman from AS1 probably saying something dirty to Fred Chapman from ATS…
DPK David and Ryan Der made sure to represent their sponsor, Falken Tire….
The two S2000s from our GENERATIONS line-up…
WheelFlip.com model Tina posing for a photo…
Danny from PlusOne was one of the guys that I should have asked to be a part of our line-up. I thought he would be with his crew so I didn’t even think to ask. It all worked out though because he ended up parked directly across from us…
Danny’s custom PlusOne Mugen MF10s sitting over his custom purple Spoon Sports calipers…
Chris Sakai showed up to Nisei Showoff with a set of Mag Blue TE37s and a couple of new touches under the hood…
Anh was on vacation so Fred Chapman brought his ITR out to Nisei…
Loved this slammed Radio Flyer that a loyal Chronicles reader brought by the booth…
Also across from The Chronicles booth was the WheelFlip.com booth… Alex had 3 different sets of M7s on display…
Nisei Showoff 2011 also marked the debut of the new Hershey brand DC2R bumper, seen here on Arn Reyes’ Integra… I’ve been following the build-up of this bumper since Alex Zhao started work on it and I have to admit that while I was sketchy about it in the beginning, it looks much better in person…
My only criticism is my disliking of the L.E.D. turn signals. Being that the original design is based off the GR-chassis Subaru STI, I felt that he should have left the OEM foglights intact…Still a novel idea either way though, and it’s definitely different…
DPK Jared and Big Mike spending a moment in the shade and having a drink…
Anh’s ITR proved to be one of the most looked-at builds in our line-up…
Arn not only debuted the Hershey bumper on his Integra, he also brought out his baby boy for the first time for everyone to see…Meet Anthony Reyes…
Little Anthony didn’t really appreciate the idea of someone picking him up…
Murdock and Sam Ip hanging out…Sam was a part of The Chronicles Nisei line-up last year. He had the white 8th gen. Civic SI sedan that he ended up wrecking later on in the year and now he’s building a black, all J’s Racing-themed, sedan…
My cousin Tim aka Timscribbles came out to Nisei to check out the rides…He’s a younger guy in our community but he’s a lover of all kinds of different automobiles and his blog shows all his adventures…
A couple of shots of Angel Ramos’ S2000….
Lowfat Pie with ekfour Tony Huynh’s daughter…Tony and family came back to Cali along with Steve Kwan (dagreenek) to hang and check out Nisei Showoff…
Tony from ItsJDMYo!!! rocking his old school 13Devils pit crew shirt…Tony and I used to be from that crew back in the day and I even had the banner on my car when my car was featured in Honda Tuning back in 2006…
I still miss Ryan Der’s kit on his EK but it’s looking slightly better with the black TEs back on it…
Again, Nisei was the debut of Sportcar Motion’s 330whp K24-powered Civic hatchback…this thing is a fucking beast…
RC Chacon also debuted his new 4-door EG sedan at Nisei, alongside Sportcar Motion’s red EG…You should remember RC from his previous build, which was the white hatchback with no hood, bright orange valve cover, and dump tubes exiting through the (non-existent) hood…The 4-door wasn’t anywhere near completion yet so he decided not to compete at Nisei, but it was cool to have the car out there nonetheless…
That’s all for today…gonna close it out today with another shot of Angel’s S2K….stay tuned for much more. I’ve actually gone through the majority of the photos already and we are looking at a 6-part series of Nisei 2011 Coverage. Make sure to come back tomorrow for part 2 and tell everyone out there that they will get the best, most comprehensive Nisei coverage only here on The Chronicles….
Spocom 2011 Coverage…Part 2…Finally…
*Probably NSFW… =P
If you guys are here looking for Nisei Showoff 2011 coverage, then you’re in luck…because I haven’t finished going through the photos yet and you won’t see any Nisei coverage today. In the mean time though, you can check out the rest of my coverage from the 2011 Spocom show at the Anaheim Convention Center that happened last week. Why are you only seeing part 2 now? Because I was organizing my booth and the set-up for “GENERATIONS”. Hopefully everyone enjoyed the line-up that I brought out. I’ll speak more about it when we actually get to the Nisei coverage tomorrow but today, you can get to see some sub-par shots from Spocom and random butts and tits and things. It was a cool event, but I’d be lying if I told you that I was looking forward more to this event then the upcoming Emotion show. Some of the photos below aren’t really safe for work, unless you work at a supermarket in which case, go to the lotion aisle, select your weapon of choice and assault yourself in the break area with these pics. Back tomorrow with part 1 of the epic Nisei 2011 coverage….For now, this should keep you occupado...I speak Spanish too… “Donde esta la biblioteca?” …..”Stickydiljoe.com tienes fotos de tetas y culos guay!!” See? Si? Fucking. Multi. Cultural.
I didn’t really stay at Spocom too long, I explained why in the first portion of this coverage so I won’t really bother repeating it. I’m sure you guys are here just to see photos anyways. Nothing much to say about Spocom, it was coo…
JGTC-styled widebody Z33 350Z…. This car has been around for a minute now and has gone through many different transformations throughout the years…Definitely not for everybody but the amount of hard work involved in putting it together should never be questioned…
STI and Evo X from High End/Auto Concept Elite…
My good friend Billy Shea’s IS300…this dude is like a brother to me and I’ve known him for years. Amazing to see what this car has become throughout the years and how it transformed from a much more tame, graphite grey pearl Chargespeed-kitted IS to this full blown HKS themed monster…
I believe this STI owner is from Washington or somewhere in the Northwest. This car is at every major import event in the west….
S2000 from Royal Origin…I know this because I have the rare ability to see that giant flag right behind it…
You know you’re a car guy when you look at this photo and the first thing you spot are those hideous wheels on that NSX…what are those? Primax wheels?…yuck…
Big Mike of course….so sad to see those black CE28s go…
White S2 on some white BBS LMs…
The photos below have been taken from the backside to protect the identities of those involved…
Look at dude’s hand moving south…haha
One of Tony from ItsJDMYo!!!’s new models…
S2000 from Team Ar-Kan that ended up winning the Best Honda award at Spocom…
Flame work on this Mustang was impressive…
Voltex-kitted Evo from Ar-Kan…
Linda from Team Praxis owns this Matrix that’s always a heavy hitter in the Toyota class at any import event…
Bimmer I’ll never own…
Always love seeing this Varis-equipped Evo X. I was just happy to finally get a good shot of it. At other events I’ve been to like Wekfest, this car is usually parked pretty tight with other cars and it’s hard to get a whole profile shot of it…
Nice color combo on this IS-F….Some day I’ll own an IS-F. At the amount of money I’m making now, it’s projected that I will own this car right around the year 2064…haha…
This was pleasant…
First spotted this khaki-colored 350Z at Wekfest Norcal…really simple aero on VIP modular wheels…
Seibon’s demo CR-Z with their custom front bumper…
Really liked the subtlety of the rear fender flare on this 370Z. Goes with the lines of the car perfectly and looks practically stock…
Our buddy Rom DJing on the 5Axis-built Scion…
Jon Jon’s IS…
The rest of non-car photos so be prepared to…
Corissa Furr…
…and of course, my favorite photo from Spocom 2011…
That’s all for the Spocom coverage. Happy I could finally get the update out finally…back tomorrow with part 1 of the Nisei Showoff 2011 coverage…
Thanks for looking…
Super Street FF Battle 3 Coverage…Part 3…
Track photos? We talkin’ about track photos? At a track EVENT?…Of course I don’t have track shots. It only makes sense that at FF Battle 3, an event held at Autoclub Speedway, that I wouldn’t have bothered to take any photos of the actual Hondas on the track. I really wanted to but time just didn’t permit it. When I initially got to Fontana at around 11am, the first practice sessions had ended and everyone was already working on their cars so none of them were on the track anymore. Then DPK David, Big Mike, and I headed out too lunch a couple hours later in hopes that we would be back for the first official recorded runs. Lunch ran a little long but we had got back right when it started so I grabbed my camera and headed to the stands to watch. Apparently, unlike years past, not all the gates to the stands were open and the two that we went to were locked up so we couldn’t even get to the stands to watch. Everyone had gone all the way around to the other end where the lone gate was open and if we were to make our way over there, we would miss it all completely. So I just decided to stand at the most elevated part of the staircase leading to the gate and watch from there. If I were to take any pictures, the cars would look like ants so it was pretty pointless…
Never fear though, because Loi Song from Sportcar Motion took some track photos and he told me last night that he would send them over to me so that I could post up here on The Chronicles. Once I get those, I will toss those up. In the mean time, continue to enjoy the pics from the pits as well as other vehicles that I spotted while walking around the “meet” portion of FF Battle 3. When we last left off, I was busy taking shots left and right of everything that I found interesting. Like the previous two installments, there are many detail shots included and not just exterior shots of the cars. And as always, the people that were involved with the entire event…enjoy…
Gilbert Corona’s EF ran into some minor problems after the first practice session…When I say “minor” I mean that he threw a rod and it went through his engine block…Nothing serious, right? Haha…it made for some interesting photos though when it looked like it was doing a rear wheel drive burnout on the oval of the Speedway. I talked to Gilbert about it while he was showing me shards of his block that were scattered throughout his engine bay. I told him to cheer up because it gave him instant street cred points and he told me to get the fuck out of his face…haha…okay he didn’t, but he was pretty bummed about blowing another motor…
Saw this clean hatchback roll up so I took a quick shot of it. Really simple, nothing too wild, and sitting on what looks like Blitz BRWs…
Morgan’s CTR with newly mounted “duc tapes”, at least that’s what Loi calls it…Why? Because Duc Tapes…
Lee Randle’s Integra Type R on Enkei ES Tarmac wheels…one thing that I’ve noticed about the FFSquad guys is that they love this particular wheel…
Was messing around with the camera and thought this was a pretty cool shot…owner and car both in the same shot…Probably would have been better if you could see the entire car but you get the point…
Phaze2 Salem’s J’s Racing front tow hook…
Jonathan Wong from Super Street chatting with FFSquad’s Jason Katman…Mr. Wong’s wife beater was a little transparent so I’ve taken the liberty of making this photo safe for work…
ATS FCB aka Fred Chapman and his son made the trek down from Norcal with a couple other ATS Garage members to show support to fellow ATS member, Ryan Der….
Ryan taking his passenger Bride seat out for some weight reduction…
Our buddy Mauricio drinking hot ass soup out of his gigantic thermos in 93 degree weather…
Henry Ng drove all the way down from Canada to participate in FF Battle 3 and his sideskirt probably regrets it…props to him for making that crazy trip…
This one is for the midwest/east coast guys…Rywire prepared for FF Battle 3 with a gourmet meal from the best restaurant in the world…..JACK IN THE BOX!…
Loi Song, Sean K. from Super Street, and Robert Green from Blueprint Racing…
Sergio’s H22-powered Civic…I wish I would have taken a photo of his bay because he actually has a Papa John’s pizza box blocking the opening next to his radiator to help direct airflow straight to it…pretty interesting idea…
Katman’s daily Accord…
Big Mike showed up an hour or so after we got there to check out the event…
Ryan Der sitting in his EK…
I guess he had some minor kinks with his AEM EMS that needed to be adjusted before he made his official run…so he called up Bisi…
…and the Bisimoto Roadside Assistance Mercedes G-wagon arrived…
Bisi Ezerioha making some fine-tuned adjustments to Ryan Der’s tune…
Salem’s TSX surprised everyone by doing very well at FF Battle 3…I’m proud of this guy for getting his car together and actually competing. When he called me the Thursday night leading up to the dyno sessions, his transmission was still in pieces so it was great to see that he made it and how well the car ran…
For those of you who have known me for any length of time, you know that I drive a 4Runner everyday…mine looks nothing like this one…haha. I can always appreciate a nice, clean 4Runner. With the one I’m driving getting older by the day and with the mileage nearing the 280K mark, I’m thinking about getting another one, same body style, but in much better shape. Throw a TRD supercharger on the 3.4L V6 along with some TE37s and call it a day…
After that the three of us headed out for lunch down the street at Farmer Boys. I didn’t take any photos there because I was hungry as fuck, so we will just move on. As I stated in the beginning of this post, we had a bit of a debacle trying to make our way to the stands so we just watched from afar…the next couple shots are when the competitors had finished and were coming back to the pit area…
Oscar Jackon Jr. rolling back to the pit area in Morgan Jade’s CTR…
The TSX back from it’s run…
This 4-door DB didn’t compete, but it did look good on the 949 Racing wheels…
There was a NASA event going on that day as well so there were all kinds of crazy cars littered throughout the track…this Mustang was parked in our lot so that was a little odd, but it looked pretty sick…
Tom-Attak in the most exciting shot of this post…
Sportcar Motion rocking the Skunk2 tent…
Transponder zip-tied to Salem’s tow hook to record lap times…
6 dudes watching Ryan check the air on his tires…Pictured are the Supertwinz, ATS Ron, Charlie from Top Setup, Matt from ICB, and Big Mike…Ryan is self explanatory…
Gary taking the TSX for a drive to make sure that the fix he made on the transmission cable was holding up…
A couple shots of Raul’s EG4 Civic…
Great build…weird how he didn’t have the 949 wheels on there…probably didn’t want to dismount the tires he already had on there…
+30 street cred points for having dirty TE37s…
Mike Chang from Evasive didn’t compete this year but he did bring his Civic Si out to show support…
Hugh Le’s NSX was easily one of the best looking Hondas at FF Battle 3…
The Tom-Attak family…
For those of you who stumbled onto this site looking for Christine Mendoza nip-slips, this is the site you’re currently at and no I don’t have any new pics…
DPK David talking to our buddy Jimmy Harris from San Diego…
OldManJames’ S2000…
One more Tom…
Salem knows that I’ve never been a real big fan of his black Desmond Promedas on his TSX but at this new lower ride height, it actually looks much better…
The Raceline USA Civic coupe was another car that ended up breaking on the initial practice run…It had transmission problems so Elton just decided to shut it down and not risk any further damage…
Rywire Rex…
Gonna close it out today with this shot of Nick and Ryan’s cars….Hopefully Loi gets those track photos to me and then I can throw them up for you guys. Other than that, Spocom is this weekend and I’ll be attending to see what the new Spocom is all about. I figured that I should go because they stole a photo of Amy Fay that I shot and used it on their Spocom tickets/flyers without asking me so I might as well go anyway. Maybe when they ask me for my ticket I’ll bring it up, haha…anyways, that’s all for today, thanks for looking…
