HO

LEE

FUK…

…am I late with these photos… Normally, after so much time has passed, I typically wouldn’t even post up photos from an event this late but I just recently remembered I had these in my possession, and well, they are just too good to not post. Hopefully Shota Mori isn’t too angry with me for putting his work on the back burner but I have just been so busy lately. I just simply forgot, honestly. Mori always captures great stuff for me from Japan and it is always a pleasure of mine to host his photos here on The Chronicles. Shota is my guy who I always turn to for photos whenever there is an event in Japan that I can’t personally be at. He’s just an incredibly photographer that continues to get better. I love the creative freedom he has with his photos and how he just shoot whatever catches his eye at the present moment without constantly shooting with the same angles repeatedly. There is always something very fresh and unique about his photos and that is why I enjoy his eye on automotive events so much…

The “Wreckin’ Meet” is one of many events that have spawned in Japan in the last five or so years since the USDM “boom”, if I may call it that, throughout the country. USDM-styling and anything related to it has become incredibly popular over the years and it almost seems as if it is the hot thing right now for all younger enthusiasts to try to emulate. It seems like such a popular style now that I sometimes worry that the newer crop of Japanese car enthusiasts focus only on that, forgetting what made Japanese car culture so great in the first place, which was their own tuning style. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea that we have such a great influence on car culture worldwide in 2017 but it does worry me that tuning style is losing its individuality in different countries. Style has become so mixed together now that it is starting to become rather difficult to define “car culture” in, well, different cultures. It is both a blessing and a curse that we now have so much exposure to automotive media these days. Everyone is influencing everyone else in some form or another, which is wonderful, but the little unique intricacies that come from their respective mother-countries is starting to become lost or at minimum, difficult to identify. What is the true “JDM” and what is the true “USDM”? The purity of each styling method is starting to become very murky. After seeing so many Euros in this photo set by Mori, I wonder if VAG and Euro enthusiasts are wondering the same thing…

I guess one must judge for themselves and decide what is truly Japanese, American, or Euro. Maybe it is all just one big melting pot now, one unified style. Who knows. Somewhere outside those murky waters, I believe there are still some true purists out there who are still keeping tradition alive, but even those seem few and far between now…

In any case, check out this first batch of photos from the incredible Shota Mori. The funniest (or just plain funny, depending on how you want to look at it) part about the Wreckin’ Meet series, which is now heading into its sixth year in 2017, is that it features a “Car Limbo” contest. It is ridiculous. Very, kooky and Japanese, and they seem to love the shit out of it, but Car Limbo is a real thing, man. I’ve included some colorful comedy in there too, as much as I possibly can, to illustrate the joys of driving under things held up by Japanese strippers because driving under things while being very low is always fun for everyone…

Enjoy…

WRECKIN’ MEET VOL. 5

Toyoma Prefecture, Originally hosted in September of 2016

Photos by Shota Mori (@pgm_works on Instagram)

Words by StickyDilJoe

Some of the VWs from Crazy Rabbit car club hanging out at the rest stop before heading over to the Wreckin’ Meet…

Also at the rest stop area was Task Ogihara’s EF Civic and Takuya Miyashita’s Wonder Civic…

Rollin’ up right behind Miyashita’s E-AT was one of the great AE86 Trueno builds from CAR PEACE…

Masaki Morohashi’s PS13 Silvia on custom rebuilt Autostrada Modena wheels…

If you guys have followed this site for a while now, you may remember that at one point, Morohashi actually had the USDM flip-up headlight front-end (or RPS13 180SX front-end technically) conversion. When he redid the car, he decided to convert it back to the more traditional Silvia front…

I never did figure out what model Enkei wheel this was on Ogihara’s EF. The name of it has always eluded me…

Morohashi’s S13 is styled to be very “USDM-ish” but still very Japanese. He purposely has the rarely sought after tan interior to mimic U.S. 240SXs…

One of Shota Mori’s best photos ever, in my opinion, featuring Miyashita’s Civic at an Eneos gas station…

When modified cars are at a gas station, obligatory photos are expected…

Takeshi Yamada’s MK2 Jetta coupe from Crazy Rabbit…

Ogihara and Morohashi cruisin’ to Wreckin’ Meet 2016…

During the drive to the venue, the weather got pretty harsh and it started to rain heavily…

The Wreckin’ Meet hosts both USDM-styled vehicles and traditional air-cooled Euros so you’d expect a mix like these two at the event…

Loved this shot by Mori of this trio of Volkswagens…

Makoto Kikuchi’s Mazda MPV and Teru Ito’s RA3 Odyssey…

Ito’s Odyssey is one of my favorite Honda builds from Japan featuring a complete Mugen aero kit with the rear wing and all, along with Volk Racing TE37 wheels and an H22A swap…

Kikuchi’s MPV on the other hand, is probably one of the most unique minivan builds in Japan, featuring a 6-speed manual transmission and a turbocharged 2.3L engine from a Mazda Speed3…

USDM Nissan Quest looking great on Volk Racing TE37 wheels, which once again, prove that TEs look great on anything…

Miyashita’s Wonder Civic lowered on Porsche Fuchs wheels. Odd combo yet it just somehow looks so cool…

Yasuhiro Hashiba’s Toyota Mark II converted to a USDM Cressida slammed on Rotiform wheels is always a popular car here on The Chronicles. I just love the guy’s willingness to make his car look like a Cressida (which pretty much no one here in the U.S. wants) while still retaining the 2JZ-GTE and somehow making the car look great just be slamming the ever-loving shit out of it…

Taking USDM dedication to a whole other level is Masaru Tanaka’s Corolla which has the entire body from a USDM Corolla. Yes, this was once a JDM E110 Corolla which now has all the body panels of a USDM Corolla…

By far one of the best builds to come out of Japan in 2016 was Norifumi Kobayashi’s Accord Wagon from LEVEL ONE Japan, which was once a white Accord then re-imagined to look like a red Acura TSX Wagon on Arcane wheels…

Yuji Yoshida and his Civic coupe from Chiba…

Suzuki and Ikuto’s S2000s…

Some of the guys from Phaze2 Japan. As mentioned, these photos are from late 2016 so a lot has changed since. The Audi you see above has since been totaled and Keisuke Morita’s Scion FR-S is now sold to a new owner…

Still alive and well is Tomoyuki Sasaki’s Ferio…

A couple more of Kobayashi’s Accord Tourer including a photo of the engine bay which has been shaven, smoothed-out, and re-sprayed. The factory K-series engine now has a Skunk2 Pro Series intake manifold…

Clean little Eunos Roadster with a rear wing…

80’s heroes…

The Japanese definitely love their 80s VWs…

Yuuki Takebayashi’s MK1 Golf on BBS wheels with aero covers…

Takeshi Yamada’s MK2 Jetta with the Hella DE Cat Eyes front end…

Passat Wagon from Crazy Rabbit on Porsche wheels…

The man behind the camera that captured all these photos; Mr. Shota Mori…

Two VW enthusiasts from Crazy Rabbit hanging out on and in a Karmann Ghia..

ES1 Civic sedan on Barramundi Design forged wheels…

One more of Norifumi’s Accord, this time with the hood off to showcase the engine bay…

One of the more unique features of the Wreckin’ Meet series is their “Car Limbo” contest where they try to get as low as possible while driving under a pole. Like a normal Limbo contest, but with cars instead of drunk white people…

Hashiba’s Cressida is ready to go…

…The Eunos Roadster was poised to Limbo the fuck out of this contest where the Limbo pole was also oddly held-up by Japanese strippers…yeah, you read that right…

Caution tape was wrapped around the pole for fear of decapitating participants and their passengers…

For once, these young ladies could operate a pole of a different type while outside in the daylight…

Ogihara’s EF had zero issues going through the first phase of the Limbo contest…

This beautiful FC3S RX-7 looked like it was built for Car Limbo. I am kidding of course because no one should ever aspire to build to compete exclusively in Car Limbo…

Tanaka got all his friends together inside of his Corolla for the strenuous competition…

I once cruised through the red light district in Osaka with Ito, I swear to you, but he did not have his Odyssey on him at the time. Neither of us inquired about the services of any prostitutes either. We were just cruising through for research and observational purposes. I am over-explaining now.

I totally forgot that Kikuchi’s MPV was also LHD, which just makes it that much cooler of a build from Japan…

Kikuchi looking over and offering a “Hey, you’re doing a great job working that pole lady” look to one of the Wreckin’ Meet official ladies…

This young lady narrowly avoided being decapitated simply by ducking under the pole as the car passed by, ignoring all classic rules and regulations listed within the Wreckin’ Meet Car Limbo Rule Book…

Hashiba getting plenty of motivational coaching by fellow enthusiasts while one of the ladies decided it was no longer necessary to grasp onto the pole. Proving once again, that it is not always necessary to handle a pole that long while there are other men around watching…

Ogihara decided to just continually drive through the Car Limbo contest just because he’s just lower than like, 80% of the cars there, proving that Task Ogihara was definitely up to the Task…Haha…okay, I’ll stop here for now…

There are like a shit ton of photos left, as it turns out, so I will update you regularly this week. Stay tuned for the epic conclusion to the best and probably the only Car Limbo contest of 2016. You have to come back because you won’t know who is coming back to defend the title at this year’s Wreckin’ Meet, and that is just fucking rude if you don’t care with great photos like this…

Thanks for looking, BRB!…