Osaka Auto Messe 2017 Coverage… Part 1…

By stickydiljoeFebruary 27, 2017

Osaka Auto Messe has always been an interesting event to me. When I first started diving into Japanese tuning car culture, two events have always stood out to me; Tokyo Auto Salon, which I’ve now been to plenty of times, and the Osaka Auto Messe, a show which I had never attended. TAS has always been the more “important” one, I guess you can say, because of its sure size and impact on the tuning car community in Japan. Osaka Auto Messe is like a smaller, slightly less known, version of TAS. I’ve always wanted to go but I honestly never thought that I would have the opportunity to go. It usually takes place a month after Tokyo Auto Salon so I always chose to go to TAS because I felt like there was just more to see. If both shows had a lot of the same vehicles, it made more sense to go to TAS because you just see more. That and it is Tokyo so I have a reason to go to both Tokyo and Osaka. I like Osaka but a two-week long trip sounds more fun if you go to both regions. TAS just makes sense. A little over a year ago, we started hanging out with Masao Hirano from Mode Parfume and we’ve since become good friends with him and his family. Hirano would fly out to California often with Yasu to do business and to attend car shows out here so we saw him almost regularly. He and Yasu also started working together closely on various automotive projects so we all linked up to work together on future projects and to help bring Mode Parfume, as a brand, to the North American market. People have always been able to get parts from them but they wanted to have a bigger footprint in our country so we wanted to help. Freddie and the guys from Autofashion USA also came onboard and we all kinda worked together to bring more recognition to Mode Parfume…

Masao had planned to set-up a big display for the 2017 Osaka Auto Messe event and was kind enough to invite myself along with Autofashion USA to be a part of it. He wanted it to be the “Mode Parfume USA/Autofashion USA/The Chronicles” booth. For myself, it was an incredible opportunity because I had always wanted to go to the show and now I was actually a part of a display. That’s crazy. It was one of those perfect “two birds with one stone” type of scenarios so I came back from Japan to settle in for two weeks before flying back out to Osaka with Tiffanie to attend the show. Yuta decided to stick around for the entire duration of his trip to Japan so he lived with Yasu for six weeks while also helping him out with Exceed Japan. They hung out and worked together every day and on occasion, they would go over to Mode Parfume to help Masao set-up for the Osaka Auto Messe event. During that time, they were also putting together a JZS161 Aristo V300 which would debut at Osaka Auto Messe. The Aristo would feature a Mode Parfume Phantom GaMu aero kit, Exceed SSD coilover suspension, and SSR Professor SP1 wheels. It would be one of three cars that would be displayed at the Mode Parfume booth. The other being a Z34 Fairlady Z with a debuting Mode Parfume aero kit, and HeyMikeyyyy’s old Integra, now owned by Yasu, which would be going through a mild face-lift with a new front lip…

While Yuta stuck around in Osaka, myself and Tiffanie headed back to the States because we had to also attend the Wekfest Hawaii event. Things worked out quite well as the Wekfest event was held just a week before Osaka Auto Messe. We worked the Wekfest event, hung out in Hawaii for a few days, and then flew straight to Osaka from Honolulu. It all sounds kinda stressful, and it was, but it was also very exciting in that we were able to cram so much traveling into such a short amount of time. The stress is worth it if you can see all the stuff that we see. Below are the photos that I captured during the trip to Osaka. You guys already had an opportunity to see the Vlogs, hopefully, and now you can see the stills…

The photo coverage starts on the morning after we arrived in Osaka…

The morning before the Osaka Auto Messe event began was spent setting up for the show and then stopping by over at Grand Slam Toyonaka, a local Osaka-area alignment shop. The Aristo needed to be aligned and they still had to do little finishing touches like figure out the final ride-height for the vehicle….

This front angle gives you a look at the Mode Parfume GaMu front bumper and the 19-inch SSR Professor SP1 wheels. Through the openings of the front bumper you can see bits of the front-mount intercooler. If you didn’t know, the JZS161 Aristo V300 came with a factory 2JZ-GTE engine in Japan unlike the U.S.-equivalent, which received both an N/A 2JZ-GE and 4.0L 1UZ-FE…

Tiffanie, Yuta, and Yasu getting a looking at the Aristo after the front windshield decals were applied…

Tiffanie Marie hanging out in front of a Ferrari 458 Italia which belonged to a customer who came in to get his tires rotated…

The Mode Parfume exhaust tips mounted on to compliment the lines of the rear GaMu bumper…

Some rolling shots of Yasu’s Aristo on our way to Intex Osaka to set-up for the Osaka Auto Messe event…

When we rolled-up, I spotted Ichiraku Toshiya’s custom RWB Ferrari 348 with the new ‘Supreme’ livery applied…

The brand new Mode Parfume aero kit installed on a Z34 Fairlady convertible which was parked at the Mode Parfume/Autofashion USA/The Chronicles booth…

Yuta taking a rest on the rolled-up red carpet which hadn’t been laid out yet on the showroom floors…

If you’re wondering why the carpet is there, it is applied to the booths before the show begins so the cars can drive over the display area without getting tire tracks and footprints on the carpet. Once the show set-up is finalized, the plastic is ripped out…

Yasu installing some mesh pieces on his Mode Parfume front bumper…

Yasu had been working closely with Masao Hirano from Mode Parfume to create a new front lip for the USDM 98-01 Integra front ends. He purchased a brand new front bumper from the Honda dealership and in a few months the lip was created. They decided it would be best to display on Mikey’s old Integra, which is now owned by Yasu, and it made it’s first appearance with the new facelift and lip at Osaka Auto Messe 2017. I gotta say, it was a little weird to see the Integra with the newer front end on it after seeing it for so many years with the 94-97 front…

I found myself going back to look at Toshiya’s 348 quite often as I am quite infatuated with the idea of Nakai from RWB creating this one-off widebody kit for it. I don’t know how many of you know the story on this car but it was actually once Nakai from RWB’s own personal Ferrari. He made this widebody kit for it and then recently gave it to his good friend Ichiraku Toshiya as a gift…

A better look at the new Mode Parfume kit for the Z34 chassis. You should be seeing one stateside in a couple months…

Akira Oda’s Volkswagen Golf GTI was easily one of the best VW builds I have ever seen. While simple on the outside, there is quite an extensive list of modifications on this GTI. The interior was insane as it not only had a roll bar that was wrapped in the same leather as the rest of the interior pieces, but the dashboard was a retrofit from a Mini Cooper…

Vlene’s new aero kit for the R35 chassis…

The Aristo all cleaned-up and ready for showtime. Kato Automobile did such a great job with the black paint re-spray that it looked like a mirror with its high polish…

Under the rear bonnet of the 348 reveals a custom set of individual throttle bodies mounted to the factory 3.4L V8 engine…

The Mode Parfume Z34 Fairlady was complimented perfectly with a set of SSR Executor wheels. It also had a new exhaust system made specifically for this rear bumper by Tanabe…

Pandem VW GTI on display at the Smart Lighting Innovator HID booth…

Good to see this Varis Kamikaze-86 again after seeing it displayed at Tokyo Auto Salon 2017. This is the same 86 that features a JGTC-spec 800HP Toyota 3S-G engine swap…

G-Answer S210 Crown Athlete democar on new Leon Hardiritt Stein Zenith wheels…

S200 Crown with G-Answer aero kit and new Leon Hardiritt Welle wheels…

G-Answer Baccarat Lexus LS also on Leon Hardiritt Stein Zenith…

The Mode Parfume crew at Osaka Auto Messe taking a break in the back room and sharing some laughs…

Blue-on-blue Liberty Walk Lamborghini Aventador…

AP Garage brought out this cool E30 BMW convertible build featuring a newer S54 M3 engine swap…

A look up top at the cut hood and the nicely executed engine bay and swap…

Also cool to see that this E30 had the rare Taifun square headlight and grille set-up…

Vlene x IDEAL FT86 on Work Meister L1…

The Mode Parfume booth was looking pretty great. Still stoked to be a part of the entire process and to have my site name posted prominently on the walls of the display…

Tiffanie and the Raw Heart Integra, both imports from California…

Creepy dudes from all over Osaka came out of their respective caves to haunt the girls working the Auto Messe event. Glad to see Tiffanie was poised and handled the spotlight quite well…

Directly across from our booth was the Work Wheels booth so I decided to walk over there to snap some photos of their wheels. Above is the Work Meister M1 wheel which I will soon be rocking for the 2017 season…