Formula D Long Beach 2012 Coverage…Part 3…The Conclusion…
Welcome back to the final and concluding portion of our coverage of the Formula D Long Beach 2012 season opener. As you can tell from the shot above, it was an absolute madhouse there and people were standing shoulder to shoulder to try to get a glimpse of their favorite drifter in action. I couldn’t even imagine what those people look like now because I didn’t stay half as long as they did and my skin is already peeling today from being sunburned. It was a great event overall and I really enjoyed the variety that exists throughout. I thought it was meant to cater strictly to hardcore drift enthusiasts but it turns out that there is a vast amount of cars there of all makes and models. Of course with it being a drift event, stance and wheel fitment are heavily emphasized and that’s why you see so many cars with aggressive wheel fitment. The show portion of the event was called the “Slammed Society Showcase” after all and the name alone would deter many none “stanced-out” cars from showing up. I had a good time and I would have stayed longer had it not been for the unexpected heat that day. In any case, here are the rest of the photos from that day. I snapped a couple more around the paddocks where drift cars were being repaired and on display in between rounds and then I closed it out back at the Slammed Society Showcase side… Enjoy…
The Boso Garage S15 drift car had a strong political message represented on its front bumper…you can see from the gashes on the lettering and graphic that this car meet the wall once or twice…
The rasta colors from Ross Petty’s previous livery continue on to this new rendition…
18-inch Work Meister S1R on Falken Azenis tires…
A glimpse of the NOS Energy 370Z drift car which is piloted by Chris Forsberg and rocking a VK56 V8 motor from a Nissan Titan…
APEX Integration’s SC430/Toyota Soarer drift car…
JDM school girl action…only thing missing is the pixelated vag area, haha…
A shot of the Prodrive wheel on Daigo Saito’s Soarer drift car that I had shots of when it was in its naked state at the Formula D Tech Day… I couldn’t get a clear shot of the car since there were so many people hovering around it but I can honestly say that the car looks much better without its current livery….
If you remember the car from the tech day coverage, it didn’t have this flare either with the round cut-outs….
Holly Lee striking a pose over at the Performance Auto & Sound booth…
Fatlace’s R32 sedan drift car on Work XSA….
I’m a huge fan of Jon Sibal’s Dodge Challenger… Love the overall theme to it as well as how it sits on Japanese SSR Professor wheels…
As I was snapping a shot of Jon Sibal’s Challenger, my cousin cruised up with this gigantic Canon L lens and I thought it would be a ridiculous shot if he posed like he was getting a close-up shot of this Rotiform wheel…Haha…in reality, he was really trying to get a shot at that distance, he could probably pick-up the dust particles on the tip of one of those lug nuts….I tried taking a photo of it and that thing is so heavy that it’s hard to get a still shot because I was shaking so much…Perfect I’m sure for getting action shots on the track though but good luck trying to balance that thing…
Karl’s S2000 on CCW Classics…Nice to see some aggressive fitment and a meaty tire…
Leon Casino’s Honda CR-X on Spoon SW388…
DPK David’s EJ1 coupe on Volk TE37s….
My Q45 on custom step-lipped Work Equips…
Another shot of this pristine VW GTI…
Just had to get more shots of this Audi A3 on BBS LM…
Nissan S13 vert on what I believe to be AME Tracers…
S13 coupe from part 1 that was dragging its front bumper around driving static at this height…
This Z33 was looking pretty good on Euroline wheels…wish the height was even front and back though…
Subaru STI on custom step-lipped Work Equips with gunmetal faces…
2GS on very aggressive Work Euroline wheels…the rear was so pushed out that the rear quarter had a huge crack on it….
RHD Datsun/Nissan Bluebird sedan or what you might know more as a Datsun 510…
A Y33 Q45 like mine but without a kit and also sitting on more aggressive custom Work Equips…
Acura TSX on CCW LM20 wheels…
R32 GTR on a classic set of 5Zigen Heidfeld wheels…Haven’t seen a set of original Heidfelds in ages…These are the original 3-piece versions too and not the one-piece from later generations…
The engine bay of the R32 Skyline…
Vortech supercharged Z33 on Meisters…
The original U.S. Junction Produce GS400 owned by John Liwanag….All JP-everything still representing the original Endless Projects crew…
5Axis Scion iQ on Airrunner suspension…
Rare to see a R33 Skyline these days but here is a non-GTR Skyline GTS-T on AME Circular Spec-Rs…
On the other hand, here is an actual GTR, but of the R35 variety from Rotora…
Hoonigan RWB Porsche with Bisi’s 911 lurking behind it…
Sportcar Motion’s time attack monster DC2 Type R….
Kraftwerks supercharged K20 motor underneath the hood of the SCM ITR…
Bisimoto Engineering’s 1004HP 2012 Civic Si coupe on display at the Falken Tire booth…
GReddy’s R35 GTR looking mean….
That pretty much wraps it up. I would have taken more photos but I was just over being there the entire day. We noticed that they were letting the car show participants leave if they wished so we decided to head out. We had all been there since 7am and around 4:45pm, I just wanted to go home and shower because I was so burnt-out…. Thanks for looking….
Formula D Long Beach 2012 Coverage…Part 1…
I originally planned to attend this event because there just haven’t been very many other automotive events going on down in Socal and I needed some content for the site. After working on some stories for various magazines the last couple weeks and just lounging on the weekends, Formula D was the perfect event to go out to get reacquainted with the latest happenings within our community. We had gone down to Irvine, CA to check out the Formula D tech day and I was intrigued by some of the new drift cars that were debuting this year. I haven’t been heavily following the drifting scene since the days when the Japanese D1 Grand Prix was huge here in the states so I will be the first one to admit that I am unfamiliar with the state of things today. Anything I see in regards to drifting is either something I am working on for that magazines I work for or stuff I see online. I’ve been trying to get down to the Long Beach Formula D openers for the past two years now but things came up and for whatever reason, I just wasn’t able to make it. This year, I was committed to going, the only problem…was getting passes into the venue. I’m not going to lie to you, I don’t have very high expectations or want anything handed to me without hard work, but after being apart of this great industry for so many years now, I am not down to just stand in line all day and pay full price to get into an event. You can take that any way you want to, but other guys that have been in this industry for any length of time will tell you the same thing. I did it as a youngster and went through everything already and I would rather just not have to deal with waiting in lines anymore and just going into places with either a media pass or register to bring my car in. The only problem was that I hit up Source Interlink (The company I freelance for if you are new to the site) too late and Formula D wasn’t offering any media passes anymore. The downside to that was that I wouldn’t have the cool neon green vest and be able to go into the media area to get super close-up shots of the drifting. So…if you are here to see amazing action shots of car going sideways, I apologize, because you won’t see any of that here. I covered the cars in the paddock area and mostly in the Slammed Society Showcase, which was the car show portion of Formula D. It would have been great to get some action shots but from the areas where I was standing, it was all fencing and all kinds of other random objects in the way…
So anyways, the days leading up to the event, I had to figure out some way to get into the show. I was going to just eat it and purchase a ticket online, but good lord, that shit is like $37 dollars now for a single day. You add that with the 8-10 bucks parking, man, that’s almost $50 to attend Formula D! And I don’t even watch the drifting so it doesn’t make much sense to spend that kind of change. There was an option to register the car for the show, but my car has been sitting so long that it’s just filthy. Registration for the car show was $45 bucks, but then you get to go in early and you also get a prime parking spot…it just makes sense to be in the show… I hit up my buddy Yogi from Fatlace and he said that if we could get a couple more cars together, he’d give us a discount on the spots. I of course lagged on it and couldn’t get a solid group together. DPK David was down to show just to make his sponsor, Falken Tire, happy but it seemed everyone else’s cars just weren’t ready. I was at Rywire probably on Wednesday or something and J.P. from DPK mentioned that he was going to show his Civic, but with a shop called FX Auto Design. J.P. said he didn’t really have to show and was willing to give up his spot to either David or I. We called up our friend Teddy who works over at FX Auto Design and he notified us that he had some extra spots that we could have as well. We just told him that we were going to bring DPK David’s coupe down along with my car and he confirmed with us that we could be a part of the show. David and I prepped our cars on that Friday and set off for Long Beach in the morning…
So a huge thank you goes out to Teddy and the guys over at FX Auto Design, without them, we probably wouldn’t have even gone to Formula D Long Beach. Now, onto the coverage…
Since David recently moved into another place, he’s no longer that close to where I stay at. It didn’t make sense to meet up and cruise down to Long Beach since we were going in opposite directions, so we decided to just meet up down in Long Beach. Black Pie aka Low Fat Pie and PG+K Jay already live in Long Beach so they carpooled together to meet up with us as well, since we were allowed to bring a passenger with us into the show. I woke up around 5:30am, got ready, and cruised down to LBC. David was already there along with Pie and Jay so we chatted for a couple minutes before driving over to the roll-in area…The event itself takes place on the streets of Long Beach so it was pretty cool to be able to drive through a small portion of the “track” before parking at our designated spots inside the show, which was held inside an adjacent parking lot…
A look at the stands when we arrived. This section would later be filled with attendees who were there to watch the action…
DPK David’s coupe and my Q45 on the track while we waited for everyone else to show up…You can spot Jay in the background probably posting a photo on Instagram…
Our friend Norman from AS1 on his cell phone checking where all the laggers were….
Jackson Wong from DTM Autobody and his S2000 arrived shortly after us at the venue…you probably remember this car more in a bright green but he recently had the car wrapped…
A shot of his Enkei PF01 wheels and AP Racing brakes…
I was just sitting in the car waiting so I snapped some more photos of the S2000…
Notice the cage…
A shot of DPK David in his coupe…
Karl’s S2000 on CCW Classics…He used to have the Laguna Seca Blue EM2 Civic coupe but got rid of it and this is his new project car…
Random interior shot of David’s coupe…
We got tired after waiting for awhile and our cars were starting to get in the way of other cars trying to get through so we just pulled inside…
Most of the cars were already set-up inside the Slammed Society Showcase section since most arrived the night before…
David’s recently acquired set of front-staggered Volk TE37s…
The guys looking on as show workers re-arranged some cars to fit us…
My Y33 Q45 at its regular driving height…Some guy came up to my car and was like “Oh damn, that’s sick! Is the car static?”…I was replied with a “Nah, sorry man..” haha…I understand how cool it is to be able to drive everywhere with just coilovers and be slammed but I’ve been there and done that. I’ll gladly settle for bags to avoid breaking my shit…
Falken was well-represented at this event, whether their tires were on display vehicles or competing drift vehicles…
It wouldn’t be a “Slammed Showcase” without it’s share of slammed cars…Not sure how this AE86 goes about making turns but props for attempting it…
This Audi A3 was definitely one of my favorite cars at the event…I think all of us were admiring this thing…just beautiful…
Mint set of Work Meister CR01 wheels on a 4-door Civic…Not sure who the owner was but he/she was rocking one of my old school Chronicles decals…crazy to see people still have those. The chrome was bubbling and everything, haha…
This S13 coupe was owned/driven by a female enthusiast and she apparently doesn’t give a shit about her front bumper because that shit was dragging everywhere when she was asked to move her car… pretty wild stuff…
These LMs looked perfect on the A3…
Formula D driver Mike Phillips didn’t get a chance to run on Saturday because he wrecked his S13 hatchback the day before during practice runs…Guile came and finished the job afterwards…
The damage is pretty significant compared to the video of the actual crash on Youtube…I’ll attached it below…Thanks to whoever uploaded it…
Milt from Low ‘N Slow wiping his Z down…
This guy was busy touching up the color on his Falken logo…
James Oliver’s BB6 Prelude…
After parking our cars and hanging out for a bit in the Slammed Society Showcase area, we decided to check out what was going on in the other side, which was the vendors area….
The first car that caught my eye was this FD3S RX-7 on an aggressive set of bronze Volk TE37s…
The Gates 311RS on display at the Nitto Tires booth…
Vaughn Gitten Jr’s Ford Mustang drift car rocking a new graphical livery….
Note the cut out rear bumper and trunk…
Gitten Jr. himself…I’m pretty sure he was picking his nose while I took this shot but we’ll just pretend that he’s putting a tooth pick in his mouth or something…
A personal favorite shot of mine from that day…Someone is bound to ask about the wheels so I might as well mention that they are Dai Yoshihara’s new signature line of wheels that are being released this year…
While we were hanging out in the Falken Tire section, I spotted Brad Lim from Falken trying to inhale this banana…
The 2013 Mustang you see in this photo is piloted by Justin Pawlak. He ended up winning the whole thing at FD Long Beach and since I don’t have photos of that, here’s a video of it in action…
Darren McNamara’s 790hp V8-powered Saturn Sky being unloaded off the Falken trailer….
Pretty interesting to see that his Sky was right hand drive…
…I asked some of the guys at Falken why and they said that he prefers to drive on the right-side and his car was built to suit his preferences…
Another shot of the Gates 311RS…This Ryan Gates-built Evo sports AMS engine upgrades and JRZ suspension, along with 18×10.5 Volk CE28s. 11 of these will be made and sold fully-warranted by Gates…
Another shot of Daijiro Yoshihara’s S13 coupe….Love the massive hood for the 6.7L LSx V8 motor…
One interesting aspect about this event was the amount of variety. There were all types of cars and not just limited to strictly drift vehicles or vehicles based on that style…here’s the Hoonigan RWB Porsche on display….
Even the Sportcar Motion ITR was on display, representing Global Time Attack…
Orange widebody Evo8 on display at the APR Performance booth…
Bisimotowerks twin-turbo Porsche 911….
One of two massive Turbonetics turbines sticking out of the rear of the Bisimotowerk’s 911…
The chassis of this 911 is from the 70s-era of production Porsches but the motor is from a 2000′s 997 Porsche 911…
Absolutely loved this Volkswagon GTI on classic BBS mesh wheels….
DPK David and my Q45….
Brian Arias’ EK on BBR Comps that I posted up photos of last week here on The Chronicles…
Teddy Timoteo’s EK with Sprint Hart CP-Rs, ARC Magic rear wing, and First Molding front lip…
Mark Sutakajana and Jay from PGK chatting…
Gonna close it out here for today…back tomorrow with more coverage from Formula D Long Beach and the Slammed Society Showcase….
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…
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…
