Man it felt good to be back in Tokyo in January. After not being able to come the last two winters, for obvious reasons, I just felt like something was missing. Tokyo Auto Salon had become such an important stop on my annual calendar that I felt anxious to come back. Not being at the show threw my whole body clock off, lol. It’s just that old familiar feeling you know? When you have a routine and suddenly it’s broken or shifted, things just aren’t right. After coming back to Japan in late April of 2022, understanding all that was required for me to re-enter Japan, I knew I’d be back even if border restrictions continued to be in-place. This year, I decided to make my trip even longer than in 2022 when I stayed one whole month and a day. I had a couple of events that I had to attend here in Japan so I chose to stay a total of 40 days. Yes, 40 days in Japan. Before, I would fly to Japan for Auto Salon, stay for about 2 weeks, and then head back home because there was a Wekfest event scheduled in earlier February. Early February would usually have me in Hawaii for Wekfest and the NFL Super Bowl. The boys would usually make a fun trip out of it and have a BBQ at the AirBnB we’d stay at. When I found out that Hawaii was a no-go this year, it meant that I could stay longer. If Hawaii were to happen, that would mean that I would go to Japan, go home to California, fly to Hawaii for Wekfest, go home once again, and then fly right back to Japan. I’d make it back to Osaka just in time for the Auto Messe show and stay another week so I could attend Attack Tsukuba on the Tokyo-side. It sounds crazy but I did exactly that for the last two years before the pandemic. With no Hawaii Wekfest event this time, it saved me a lot of travel time and my body clock could stay consistent to one time zone…

For my first time back to Tokyo Auto Salon, I wanted to take a much more streamlined approach to covering this major event. Knowing that it would be jam-packed with people again since the borders were open to everyone, I wanted to focus on doing more video. Covering the event in video form would allow me to show much of the event even with people around. Photos are so much harder because I always want crisp clear shots and I utilize a tripod in the lowlight. Timed photos are quite difficult because people just walk right through my shots. It would take me so much longer to sit and wait until it clears out for one good photo. Video allows me to just roam the show and collect footage of whatever I’m doing as I’m walking. Technology has gotten a lot better now too so shooting video in a lowlight atmosphere isn’t so much of an issue anymore. If anything, I wished that I did have my tripod so I could sit and capture the still video b-roll shots that everyone seems to enjoy now. I think that really would have taken that Vlog episode to a whole new level but I had to sacrifice something for the sake of time. Instead of getting b-roll video, I used the gaps in time when I wasn’t shooting video to get photos with my Canon EOS R5 camera. These photos are more for my own safekeeping than anything. They’re like the builds which were the personal highlights for me. The photos just turned-out so good that I really wanted to find time to post them up so you guys could see them as well. And here we are…

If you were wondering, the show itself felt very much like it did in the past. If you’ve been the SEMA the past two years, it’s very obvious that the show feels different than it did pre-pandemic. It’s just so much smaller and there are less people. Tokyo Auto Salon does not feel that way. It actually just picks up right where it left-off before the shift. I heard from some insiders that the attendance numbers are still far smaller than in the past but you wouldn’t know it being at the show. You still feel like you’ve been stuffed into a can and can’t move around freely when the show is open to the public. Thankfully I was able to get all this content before the doors opened that late afternoon of the first day of TAS. I got to see everything that I went there to see and I didn’t even return on Saturday or Sunday because I knew it was going to be crazy-crowded. If I absolutely needed to I would have braved the crowds and gone back, but I ended-up spending the rest of the weekend doing other stuff in Japan. Enjoy the photos!…

Brand new TRA Kyoto Pandem widebody Nissan 400Z at the Trust/GReddy booth built by Hikaru Taguchi from Moontech…

At first I was a bit skeptical on the design of the new 400Z but honestly, when you make the car wider and lower, it actually looks quite good. This particular one was also sitting on 19-inch Work Meister S1 wheels too and those wheels make any car look better…

The Trust GR86 demo car provided me a first glance at the new Voltex widebody aero kit for the chassis. I had been following the build-up closely of the actual GR86 owned by Nakajima of Voltex but didn’t know that the Trust car would also be getting it…

This GR86 is one of the fastest in Japan as well running an N/A Boxer engine with Nitrous Oxide injection. At a recent test at Tsukuba Circuit, this GR86 actually ran a 57-second lap time which is insanely fast for Tsukuba. Considering it didn’t have any crazy aero either, that’s pretty remarkable…

Crewch Nissan 400Z drag car on Weld Racing wheels with a huge drag wing and front lip custom-fabricated out of aluminum…

Kei Miura has stepped into the old school American muscle genre now and developed aero parts for both the classic 1970 Camaro and, as seen above, a 1968 Pontiac Firebird. Love his take on this particular chassis as it has a Japanese flair (or flare, pun intended) to it but still has that Americana to it…

Since I am a GR86 owner I like to see what tuning shops are doing to their ZN6/ZN8 platforms, specifically in the engine bay. so I stopped to check-out this BRZ from Kurumadoh Custom Factory…

I find it quite a task to make the engine bays on these cars look good. Some try to clean them up as much as possible to simplify the overall aesthetic and then you have the ones like the Kurumadoh BRZ that just have a GReddy turbo kit with other performance upgrades…

Since I have a particular fascination with the ZN8 GR86/BRZ, one of the builds that I really wanted to see in-person was the one from Original Runduce. It’s the first to sport the brand new Varis Arising-2 widebody aero as it sat center-stage in their booth display…

Originally I wasn’t really sold on the shade of blue on the Runduce GR86 but after seeing it up-close, the color is just stunning…

Varis always has one of the best-looking and most well-lit displays every year. It’s never difficult to take a photo or capture video there because the entire display is so well thought out…

This kit is one of my favorites and right up there with the Voltex kit. I just would ultimately choose the Voltex one because I’d worry so much about destroying this kit just driving around on the street. It’s such an elaborate kit with so many different pieces that I’d worry about screwing it up or having to repair it. With the Voltex kit I’d just keep the front end I have now and run the over fenders…

Varis also debuted their new Arising-1 aero kit for the Nissan 400Z. With the Arising-1 coming out that usually means there will eventually be an Arising-2 widebody which is the kit I’d be interested in seeing for this platform. As mentioned in the beginning of this post, I actually quite like these when they are widened so it’s exciting to see what Varis does with it…

The most tame of the debuts for Varis this year was the FL5 Civic Type R which only saw a new front lip, carbon fiber hood, and rear carbon fiber wing. Looking at the product list online, it shows that side skirts are currently in development as well as front and rear fender trim. Not sure how aggressive the trim will be but it should help give the new Type R a bit more girth all-around, which would help…

A surprise debut for this year’s TAS was this green Mitsubishi Evolution Wagon, wearing a complete Varis-produced Solid & Joker kit which consists of the front bumper, front over fenders, front carbon splitter, side skirts, rear diffuser, and rear over fenders…

RE Amemiya debuted the new Voteras x Ito Shokai Unit-1 RX-7 in bright gold with a new aero kit that makes the FD 2-meters (6.5 feet) wide…

Under the RE Amemiya produced vented hood is a naturally-aspirated 20B rotary engine capable of making 300hp…

The Nissan brand display featured the #23 Motul Autech 400Z GT500 race car…

Over at the Bridgestone display, I was greeted by the 2007 Super GT GT500 Championship winning Autobacs Honda NSX…

So awesome that they decided to commemorate the occasion by changing the graphic on the hood to reflect their championship run…

The #12 Calsonic Impul Nissan Z GT500 race car which competed in the Super GT series all of 2022…

News traveled quickly just a few hours into the 2023 Tokyo Auto Salon of the debuting Mugen Civic Type R Concept…

At first glance I was quite pleased because I had been waiting to see the new FL5 Type R with an aggressive front lip. I liked the way it wrapped into the factory lines of the Type R…

What I did not expect or enjoy was seeing how bulky the whole kit was. It’s just…huge. The carbon fiber sides are too bulky, the rear diffuser and lip are as well…

The only thing I did like about it was the Mugen carbon fiber rear wing. Don’t get me wrong, the whole car was executed properly in a very Mugen-esque way but some of the design elements left much to be desired…

What might have been the biggest news-worthy story for Honda was the unveiling of the HRC Civic Type R-GT Concept…

While Honda has been competing in the Super GT race series for the last few years with a NSX-GT in the GT500 Class, it was revealed that 2024 will see a change to this Civic Type R-GT….

Thus far the Type R-GT is still very much in concept form, with the car being nothing more than just a fiberglass composite shell with wheels/tires but it looks like a fantastic start. More interesting is that Nissan will be running a 400Z, Toyota will continue using the Supra, but Honda moves onto the Civic possibly meaning that they’re looking at the Type R as their new flagship…

This year was definitely the year of the 400Z for Tokyo Auto Salon. There seemed to be one in every booth. Kuhl Racing never disappoints with their arsenal of cars so of course they also got in on building their own iteration of the Z…

Liberty Walk went crazy and debuted a new LB★Silhouette Works Complete Widebody Kit for the FD3S RX-7. This slant-nose style kit can be yours for a cool $24,959 USD and I am not kidding. That’s literally what their storefront site says it costs. Coke Zero livery not included…

I’m not sure which tuning shop or company created this Corvette since the sign looked like it had been removed from the holder, but I was super impressed with this full carbon fiber-bodied C6 Corvette. It looked like something right out of Tokyo Xtreme Racer where it could have been a boss car or something…

What’s even more impressive is that all I had to do was zoom in on my own photo to see that this was built by Kodama Fiber Works. There’s no other information on the shop or car, I even tried Googling the company name and got nothing. Also cool is that it’s on Japanese Work Wheels…

Very unconventional C10 Hakosuka Skyline build here on air suspension tucking RS Watanabe wheels with a carbon fiber hood and carbon doors!…

Towards the late afternoon I was finally able to see the new Voltex widebody kit for the Toyota GR86. Over the past two months or so, I had been following Akihiro Nakajima, almost religiously, waiting for updates on the progress of this kit…

Nakajima himself actually mentioned that he was planning on making a widebody kit for the GR86 back in May of last year when I visited Japan. Knowing that Voltex basically can’t miss when it comes to designing cool shit, I had a lot of faith that they could go wider and still look great doing it…

The widened front fenders still line-up with the factory side skirts perfectly and it is tucking an 18×11 Volk TE37!…

One of the things that I remember Nakajima mentioning was that he loved the factory bodylines on the GR86 so much that he wanted to make sure to not do anything that would alter them. He told a story of how he was already working in industry back in the ’90s when he had to design stuff for the R32 Skyline chassis. Nakajima said that he had such a hard time coming up with something because the factory lines were already so good to begin with. In his eyes, the GR86 is also like that…

Nakajima providing more insight on some of the styling cues of this car to Yasu…

You wanna know the most interesting thing about this car? This GR86 is actually Nakajima from Voltex’s personal daily driver. He uses it to drop his kids off to school, drive to work, everything. The kicker is that this is actually an automatic transmission GR86!…

HKS was celebrating their 50th anniversary so it brought out some of their old demo cars from their private collection. I had the pleasure of seeing this HKS A70 Supra drag car back when I got to visit HKS…

Though they had some classic HKS builds on display, much of their larger booth this year was dedicated to their latest creations like the HKS RZ450 Concept. Under the new HKS graphics is a RZ34 400Z with their new widebody kit…

This widebody kit moves with much more subtlety than their GR86 and A90 Supra aero. No crazy wing either, just a very streamlined look with a set of concaved-face Yokohama Advan GT wheels…

The rear is still the best part of the 400Z in my opinion, improved even more with the RZ450 kit…

Over in the Yokohama Advan wheels display was this Varis Arising-1 GR86 from Original Runduce on Advan RZ-DF2 wheels…

Not too far away from the Runduce GR86 was this black A90 Toyota Supra…

This Supra was chose to showcase the new Advan Oni 2 3-spoke wheel. I was a huge fan of the original Oni wheel but undecided on how I feel about these new ones, especially in this sizing…

It doesn’t look terrible but it also looks a bit too quirky. Yokohama wheels did a great job of picking the right car to show this wheel though. It flowed just right…

One more shot of the Liberty Walk Silhouette Works widebody Mazda RX-7. Again, all you need to do is fork out $25K for this bad boy and that’s not even accounting for installation and paint….

Kato from Liberty Walk always tries to top himself every year with something bigger and crazier so 2023 marked the first-ever Liberty Walk LB Works widebody Ferrari F40. Yes, this man cut-up a perfectly good Ferrari F40 and then put a “#slammed” decal on the car. He also had custom Liberty Walk center-lock wheels made for this build…

I’ll be the first to admit that I think it looks pretty sick, to be honest. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea but the level of ‘fuck it’ is strong with this build. The question now is; how does Kato top this next year? What is he going to do to outshine a widebody Ferrari F40? I guess we shall wait and see. On that note, it’s time for bed here in Japan. Goodnight and I hope you enjoyed these photos! Thanks for looking!!….