If you were to tell me six years ago that The Chronicles would have the type of following it does today, I’d honestly laugh at you. This all literally started from nothing. It was an idea, and not a very well thought-out one at that. I just wanted to create something that people could relate to without having to look through pages and pages of bullshit to find something that they were interested in. And behind that idea was a guy that didn’t have any idea how to use a camera, who didn’t have much direction, and was just handed the ability to tell a good story. I remember going to college and one of my professors had mentioned that maybe I shouldn’t be a writer because I didn’t have much of a passion for it, and I sort of just gave up on the class and failed it. That’s how bad it was. Now, in 2014, six years from the day in which I went and registered the domain name “Stickydiljoe.com”, I still can’t fathom how far things have come. I have people coming from all over just to be a part of my anniversary event and I couldn’t be more humbled by the support that everyone has shown me….

There was never a “Year One” event or 1-year anniversary meet. Why? Well because no one really gave a shit about the site in the beginning. It was just….there. I figured I’d do it a year and see if I liked it, and if for whatever reason the site made it to its second year, then I’d have a little get together to celebrate not failing, haha. My success comes from the support of others. Call it being at the right place at the right time, or whatever, but I’ve been placed in a very fortunate environment out here on the West Coast where I can constantly provide you with new updates on the car community. Things are thriving out here more than ever. With the growth of the site came opportunities to travel and now I get to go all over the world to experience car culture throughout. The truth is, there were only really two things that really inspired me to work harder than I ever have in the last few years; one of them is my ex-girlfriend, May, who made me realize what was important and how to hustle, and the other, is The Chronicles. This site gave me direction. It made me work harder every day and gave me the outlet to show my creativity as well as the ability to speak my mind, unfiltered, and with little regret. In the same time that I’ve been running this site, I was also working freelance jobs for Super Street, Honda Tuning, and Import Tuner magazines. Working for those books was what I thought was my real job. Those checks gave me the ability to be able to live the life I live while still being able to travel and run this site. Two of those magazines are long gone now, and The Chronicles is still here. My side job, whether I like it or not, became my main job. It became a brand that I was proud of. It became a brand that others represented on my behalf and I am greatly indebted to my supporters. How much longer will it last? I don’t know. What I can promise is that I will continue to produce as long as I can until I no longer have the resources to do so. Whether that be six months, 12 months, 10 years, I don’t know. Things have been tough this year, incredibly tough, but I am happy that you are here reading this. This is my story and it has been for the last six years. I thank you for being a witness to it….

As we get older, our priorities change. Many of us are getting married, starting families, and car stuff just isn’t that important anymore. Time is precious and time is fleeting. I know that your quality time can be spent elsewhere devoted to more important things, but I’m glad that those individuals who showed up to Year.SIX chose to spend their time with me to celebrate. Like the site, this event was never meant to be anything out of the ordinary. From the moment I decided to start doing it in year two until the very moment I type these last words, I still do not care for it to be “big”. It was never meant to make money or to gain popularity. If only four people showed up to celebrate and they truly cared about what I did, that was enough for me. Those individuals would mean more to me than the thousands that would have come just to be at a car meet that everyone else was at. I think that is why my annual anniversary event is something that real enthusiasts enjoy; not only is it big on car quality, more importantly, it is big on the quality of people. You bring your car if you want and hang out with like-minded car folks who read The Chronicles like you do. If you don’t know what we’re about, don’t come. There are plenty of other events for you to show up to. This is a private party…

 

Last year was great but to be honest, it got a little too cramped for me. I ended up trying to please everyone and trying to squeeze as many cars into the front area of the Eibach Facility as possible and it was just too crowded. If you decide to make the trek to Corona, CA, I don’t want another car blocking you. That’s kinda what happened last year. It was an incredible event that I was really happy with, but I wanted to give everyone some space to breathe this time around. If it meant fewer cars up front, that’d be fine. It’s not a car show or popularity contest so it didn’t matter how many cars were crammed up front. I decided to cut the car count down by 20 cars and I think things went a lot smoother this year. Another cool thing that I wanted to introduce this year was a special showcase up front in the middle of the VIP area of the show. Here we would display some of the best DC Integra chassis builds of 2014. I thought it would be cool to bring something new into the mix and I think it worked out great. People seemed to really enjoy the builds and many others were able to finally see some of these great cars in person. The details are what make these builds excel so I made sure to give each car plenty of space so that everyone could see these Integras from all angles….

In the late hours of the evening prior to the Year.SIX event, things got a little wild with the weather. It started to rain hard and it hasn’t rained here in months. California is experiencing a drought right now where we couldn’t get rain if we begged or danced for it, but of course, it decided to rain the night before the event. I checked the weather every hour to see what the forecast would be like on Saturday but it was just too random to tell. At some points it would be sunny, and other times of the day it would rain. I had worked too hard putting this whole thing together so we had to move forward rain or shine. Corona isn’t known to experience a whole lot of rain so I was sure it would be fine. I think it rained for only a short period of time that day, so things went smoothly in the end. If anything, the rain helped because it kept the day nice and cool. On top of that, the rain clouds helped to produce some pretty great photos. It added some drama to an otherwise drama-free day. Again, thank you all for the support throughout the years and thank you to those who came out on November 1st for Year.SIX. I know I have a solid group of people supporting me when not one person asked about the rain or if the event would be cancelled. They just got in their cars and drove….and that’s pretty fucking awesome. I applaud and salute you all. I am a better man because of your support through the years…

Oh one more thing, for the first time in a couple years, I’ve allowed access for you guys to see these photos in their larger formats. I use to do this all the time but people started to pilfer and take my photos to promote their own shit. I got tired of it because people were altering and cropping my watermarks out. Please don’t do that. I worked hard on these so please give credit where it is due. Click the photos for their larger sizes. Save and keep for yourselves but please don’t distribute as your own, thanks….

Making its first public appearance since it was ceremoniously introduced to the world via social media was Yogi’s custom widebody Lexus GS build. I had the great pleasure of watching this thing come together in its final stages a couple weeks prior to my event and all I can really say is that I’m really happy for my friend Yogi. He’s had some bad luck in the past building other cars so it is great to see this car in its newly completed state. Buddha Concept Designs did an exceptional job with all the custom sheet metal widebody work and paint. The front fenders and rear quarters are all metal and the Vertex front bumper was also extended a couple inches to bring the car lower to the ground. Everything just seems to work really well in unison with this car and I love the final result. It’s a hybrid amalgamation of both VIP and aggressive styling. Yogi was on his way up to SEMA to display his car for the first time in Vegas but was kind enough to bring the car down to Year.SIX for a couple hours….

Leaping out of its time capsule was my good friend Tony’s Sorcery widebody NSX. He’s focused on other things at the moment and hasn’t had a whole lot of motivation to redo his NSX, but I can always rely on him to surprise me every year by bringing his car out to my event. Crazy to think how after all these years, this NSX still remains very relevant in the current scheme of things. The community seems to be crazy about widebody everything nowadays and this NSX has been wearing widened Sorcery armor since 2008ish….

Hubert Barnum decided to finally get some new wheels for his JZA80 Supra Turbo. Can’t wait to see what other plans he has for this thing…

Also heading straight to the 2014 SEMA Show after Year.SIX was Noel Barnum and his Varis Arising FR-S. He recently ditched the Rocket Bunny rear wing for a more streamlined Leg Sport Clubman Ducktail spoiler and color-matched his Varis carbon hood. He was supposed to be rolling on brand new SSR Professor TF1 wheels but was asked to save them for an official debut at the SEMA Show. I’m sure you guys have seen photos of it on the new rollers by now but I’ll have updated pics when we get into the SEMA photos….

Phaze2 Mizzark’s E60 M5 is due for a major overhaul next year but until then, it looks just fine planted on Superstar Ordens….

I haven’t driven my Q45 much lately because of a bad power steering pump, but I had to have it at my own anniversary event so I dumped some fluid in it and let it drip all the way to Corona, CA for Year.SIX. I recently added the side stripe to the car and I think it really gives my Q a different look. It’s like adding a star to the top of a Christmas tree. I guess you can say that it was the “finishing touch”. I sometimes feel like my car still looks very much like it did before I installed my Aimgain aero kit so I’m finding other ways to continue its evolution…

DPK David’s daily LS430 on 20-inch Ordens. He brought both this car out as well as his Civic coupe for Year.SIX….

James from Floss Design brought out his newly-acquired Porsche 964 on custom BBS wheels….

Yogi putting his massive carbon GT wing to use. His GS is a perfect union of both his love of cars and food…

Making its way down from San Jose was Ferd Natividad’s Super Street-featured, Wekfest award-winning, K-swapped RHD Integra, better known to the world as ATS*Kranky. It was great to see this car down in Socal finally and an honor to host it in one of its rare public appearances in 2014. This is by far one of my favorites in 2014 and I love the additions he made to it this year. The Chargespeed sideskirts really complete the car as well as the First Molding hood that you can’t obviously see in the pictures….

If there was one Honda/Acura build that completely dominated the North American car show scene in 2014, it would have to be Jay Calderon’s RCG-built Mugen Integra. This car was EVERYWHERE. It finally got the recognition it truly deserved this year winning multiple awards at various events and now holds the title as one of only two cars to ever win consecutive “Best of Show” awards at Wekfest events in different cities. The guys from RCG KILLED IT this year…

Year.SIX marked the official debut of ATS*Rosie, owned and built by Phil Sison of ATS Garage. He told me earlier this year that he was going to have this car completed specifically for my event and I honestly didn’t think he would be able to pull it off but sure enough, it all came together. This is a very important car to Phil as he’s had it since he was in high school. For years now, the car had been sitting in his garage and slowly getting pieced together. When I mean slowly I mean like, slower than fucking molasses, haha. Excuse me if I didn’t have a lot of faith early on but shit got real, really quick when they started posting up photos of the cars progress. Awesome to have it at Year.SIX and I can’t thank Phil enough for completing the car just for it. Normally you don’t imagine Phil having a car because he’s always the guy joking around with the other ATS guys and bullshittin’ but he does have a car, and a pretty badass one at that. Hopefully you guys were there to witness its introduction to the world….

I love the details in his engine bay and how even the most minor things help to set it apart from other bays. The color accents with the plumbing are an interesting contrast to the clean red bay and I dig how the accessories are routed. The engine breather is plumbed out from one side and directed into an oil catch mounted by the firewall. The fuel system is also done neatly in that the regulator is mounted to the top side of the motor. The AT Power individual throttle bodies are also pretty uncommon and add a different take on your conventional K-swapped bay….

Making its way home right in the nick of time was Phaze2 Mikeyyyy’s Integra. You’ll notice that things have changed once again in the engine bay and the car is no longer turbocharged. While the bay was nice, it just wasn’t clean enough for Mikey so he decided to redo the entire bay, ditching the boost set-up for a cleaner, naturally-aspirated ITB set-up. RCG volunteered to help complete the work so the car was sent all the way to Arizona for RC’s handiwork. It took a couple weeks but they were finally able to get the car back together in the early hours of Year.SIX. Mikey then trailered the car back from Arizona straight to Year.SIX!!!….

There were some minor things that RC didn’t like about the engine bay, including the location of the Rywire Mil-spec engine harness, so he decided to just redo the entire bay. They dropped the motor, shaved the firewall more, welded-up the old hole where the harness plug ran, and then resprayed the entire engine bay. The TWM individual throttle bodies were then taken apart and chromed/polished to match the other chrome bits on the motor. Even the minor stuff like the black engine mounts that Mikey bought new a few months back were replaced with chromed mounts for continuity….

Ryan Hoegner’s Eibach Springs-sponsored K20 Integra Type R was all cleaned-up for Year.SIX. If you guys remember, the car threw a rod during FF Battle 6 last month. They haven’t fixed it just yet, but they did find the time to wipe down all the motor oil that was sprayed everywhere and the car looks as good as new. The motor should be coming out very soon for repairs and will be back on the road by 2015….

DPK David’s K-swapped EJ1 coupe looking great on bronze Mugen MF10 wheels. I think this might be one of my favorite set-ups for this car. The bronze on green just looks great together….

Another angle. Before Year.SIX, he also decided to install a new subframe and swapped out his dated coilovers for brand new Tactical Art dampers…..

DPK Jared’s Mugen SS S2000 looked stunning as always with a freshly painted engine bay and bronze Mugen MF10. He just recently acquired a Mugen SS rear bumper as well so it should finally be completed in 2015….

Roy’s Mugen Ferio-styled Civic sedan on custom Mugen NR10 wheels…

Here’s another shot. About as close as you can get to a legit Ferio other than the left-hand drive. Wheel/tire combo is also on point….

DPK Deerail’s supercharged K-series Mugen EM1 coupe on 17-inch Diamond Black Volk Racing TE37…

Nathan aka Yao’s Integra Type R sitting on front staggered Volk TE37 wheels….

DPK Chuy’s Spoon Sports-themed legit RHD JDM Integra Type R equipped with TWM individual throttle bodies….

Always been a huge fan of this Jackson supercharged K20 Civic hatchback from Arizona. The shell itself has quite a bit of history and I’m happy to see that the current owner is taking care of the car and making it as clean as it has ever been….

By far the biggest surprise of Year.SIX, other than the debut of ATS*Rosie, was Matt Bouchard’s EF Civic build. For those that don’t know, Matt is the man behind M’s JDM Motors, a local Japanese importing shop here in LA. He’s been collecting parts for years for his EF build and the car has just been slowly coming together throughout the year. I had no idea the car was even this far along so it was awesome to see it show up to Year.SIX running and looking just amazing….

The engine bay is spectacular and has parts that you rarely see these days. The B-series motor is power by a Motec engine management system and the distributor has been eliminated in favor of a T1 trigger unit. It also features individual throttle bodies and a rare, high-quality Tabata full size radiator from Japan. I forgot what header he has but it is just one of many gems that Matt has collected over time. I still remember the day when I went to go pick up some parts from him and his Chargespeed lip was just sitting on the floor next to his desk….

It’s build like this that really make what I do worthwhile. I just love being surprised by great builds and being able to study the little details that people put into their cars. In a world when social media reigns and we get build threads and constant photos of a car coming together, it is refreshing to see a car like Matt’s just come literally out of nowhere. Proof that you don’t always need the internet to build up and make a car interesting. Hard work, dedication, and creativity kills hype any day of the week. That and having a good eye for rare parts doesn’t hurt either. Nice job sir….

Well, that’s the end of Part 1. I actually had time to do a lot of coverage this time around so there are still many good photos to come. Thanks for looking and reading through all my rambling. Make sure to check back for updates!….