Miss Import Showoff 1999, Alley Baggett…Damn, remember that name? Haha. Yeah, back when she still had her first “set”….So I finally got around to scanning some pics from the album. It is an incredible pain in the ass to scan all these on a Mac g4 and then transferring them over to my PC where I can finally separate and edit them. Anyways, this was probably the first Import Showoff I went to back then. I was on the first half of my senior year in highschool and I remember going with my homie til this day, Jose. This was back when it was held at the Del Mar Fairgrounds in SD. Back before people started acting stupid and causing the trouble which eventually got these events shut down at Del Mar. What a shame because these were some of the best shows in all of the country then….

…Here’s the couple from Powerban that used to show at all the events. Considering the time, it was pretty cool to have a pink and baby blue car as a his/her tandem. Seeing that Epic Motorsports sticker brings back such memories. I remember hanging out there alot back then when it was over in the Convoy/Clairemont Mesa area and even when they moved down to University. Paul was a cool guy and I remember Jimmy who worked there had a bb6 Prelude that was sponsored by Greddy. That was a pretty big deal back in the day considering alot of stuff wasn’t readily available as it is now. Cool guys who were always helpful and always hooked it up with good prices back then….Damn look at those white interiors, haha….

…I’m sure everyone remembers RJ DeVera’s mom’s Honda Odyssey. This was back when ArtnMotion was at the top and they had all kinds of crazy cars. They had full displays and posters of their own cars and shit. I remember seeing this van on TV too, they interview Mama DeVera and showed her racing the van on the strip too. I’m not exactly sure what program it was but it was on TLC or discovery channel or something…

…Mark from Team Techna’s Honda Prelude. Man this thing was wild. I didn’t know shit about cars back then and even when I first looked at it, I was like: “damn, that’s too much”. This car eventually went on to be yellow before it was sold. Also had better fitting wheels later on too. All that crazy bodywork made perfect sense back then, everyone swarmed this car like it was the hottest thing they had ever seen…

…Can anyone still name all three of these chicks? I think that’s Rowena Galam, Lisa Pham in the middle, and the third one’s name escapes me. Speedoptions.com was huge back then. Remember when everyone had their banner on their windshields? Weren’t they supposed to give you like $100 or some junk if you were photographed with the banner on your car or something? Or was that all some stupid rumor? Oh well I don’t think I ever got anything but then I don’t remember having a banner either…

…Damn, you will not believe how many years I spent trying to figure out what the fuck this car was…haha…I didn’t know anything back then and the front end just threw me off. I thought it was a RHD Accord but it wasn’t and I thought it looked like a Prelude but the front was so different. Turns out it was a JDM Prelude INX and they were offered only in Japan. Anyone remember Monsterflow filters? Man, they were at every event all the time with their sponge filters and they would always used dry-ice or something to demostrate how that shit made your car faster if you put dry-ice in that center indented part of the filter. So lame. Also notice the Racing Hart C5’s. Real C5’s. Not Katana Concept 5’s or whatever the fuck. Say what you will about cars back then, and all the gaudy bodykits with ridiculous styling cues and what not, but one thing holds true: People had their rim game DOWN. They didn’t have all that knock-off fake shit back then. Even the most horribly modded cars had legit Japanese wheels on.  Don’t believe me? Just look up at the previous pics. TE37’s, Racing Harts (NOT RH EVO’s. Those are NOT REAL Racing Harts BTW), Work wheels, etc. People use to spend good money on wheels, no matter what they did to their cars. It was a statement of sorts back then, if you had quality shit, it meant that you knew what you were doing and you knew about quality parts were…

…Most of you probably wouldn’t recognize this car unless you lived in San Diego. I used to see this thing all the time. All the bodywork and paint was done by Gold Crest Autobody off of University Ave. across the street from the old K-Mart. Gold Crest was huge back in the day cuz they did all crazy bodywork for teams like the 935 Wiked Draggers. I had my cars painted their back then too and I got to know the owner, Ebon Johnson, pretty well too. When he would take forever to paint my car and finish it he used to drive me to work in his chameleon colored Toyota Sequoia. Cool guy….too bad that place is gone now or run by someone that he hired to take his place. Yes I know that he was running an escort service on the side out of the bodyshop. Shit I didn’t care, they did great work back then….and he even paid me to bring him other cars to paint and what not….

…Speaking of my cars, I spotted this Accord coupe while I was looking through my album. My car didn’t look anything like this of course, but the color definitely reminded me my old ride. Damn, Team Hybrid sure had some different cars back then. Hybrid was all about Honda’s back then. Now they’re all Euro and high-end cars and all the old members are probably long gone. I like their old web address too…http://fly.to/teamhybrid….haha. They had the means to get all kinds of crazy shit done to their cars but they couldn’t all collectively get together and put like $20 together to get a real domain name….

…Techna was all about Hondas back then too. Look at this coupe with Accord headlights. Honestly doesn’t look that bad. He’s also rocking that DTM style spoiler that was popular back then. Shit got so big people starting putting them on backwards and other people didn’t even notice. Then they started rockin it backwards cuz they thought that’s how it went. Kinda like the VeilSide double spoilers when people started taking the top piece off and it just looked liked a retarded whale-tail….

…I shall leave you with this…..What is it? I am not completely sure. I believe it was at one time or another an EF Civic sedan. But I could be wrong. Whatever it was, will never compare to the awesomeness that it became. Just look at the wheels…Tenzo Shu4’s…I think it was foreshadowing. It was a warning sign of the rice to come in the future. Better yet maybe it was from the future, from 2010. And it traveled back in time to warn us of the impending rice to come. But we didn’t listen…..

More next time….