Written by Now that the site is fully functional again, I can finally go back and put up content from most of 2026 for archival purposes. Most of the content went up on socials but there are so many more photos that I didn’t use just based on content limitations on the various platforms. This was such an important moment in time for both Yasu and myself that it would be doing a huge injustice to our shared history if I didn’t host it here on The Chronicles. Putting these two Civics together was a landmark moment for us and it deserves to be archived and seen here…
From December 29, 2025:
With the days quickly winding down until our first-ever pop-up space in Tokyo, I figure it would be a good time now to shed some light on what is happening over at Exceed…
During my last trip back in October, Yasu and I went scouting for a couple of locations with the idea of doing a pop-up space during Tokyo Auto Salon. It would be a very minimal gallery space dedicated to two brand new Civic builds, one which I’ll introduce you to today. It’s been 10 years since Exceed started so we really wanted to challenge ourselves and do something major. We found a great art gallery space in the beautiful city of Meguro that would host the new builds. Yasu gave me the freedom to style the two cars and I thought it would be fun to have both cars match, though the two would serve different purposes. Yasu’s EK is the new race car that replaces the Mintia EK that is stateside now, and my EG6 would be the street car that I’ve had planned even before my EK9 came to be…
I wanted to get out of our comfort zones and do a color people wouldn’t expect—I wanted both cars to be matching yellows. I would never paint an EK in Carnival Yellow, nor would I ever paint an EG Phoenix (Sunlight) Yellow, so I opted for something slightly odd, not often seen, and not of Honda origin…
I’ll tell you what it is, if you can’t figure it out, when I tell you about the EK later. Today, we will dive a bit into the EG. OEM parts are beginning to get harder and harder to come by now, so this is the last of the ‘restomod’ EGs that will likely emerge from Exceed ever again. It will share a lot of similar details to my EK9, just very yellow, with a slightly over-bored B16B from Tatsumi Eng hosting a full catalog of components from TODA Racing, including their legendary ITBs. Like my CTR, the car started as a bare shell which will be carefully pieced together from the ground-up. If you enjoyed the EK9 build before, I think you may like this one too…
I’m heading back to Japan even earlier this time to finalize and execute all the things we’ve been planning for our activation. As the days get closer I’ll be able to share more with you. If you are in Japan during TAS weekend, come hang out with us… 😊
From December 31, 2025:
The Mintia livery was probably one of the most fun things that I had the opportunity to create but this new Yasu EK would be a more focused effort for 2026. I wanted to come up with something new, that wasn’t a flip of anything known, and something that would stamp this project as the new flagship look for Exceed…
First thing was coming up with the color. Like I said previously, I wanted both cars to not only match in color but also have their own look since they both serve different purposes. The yellow was a very specific color I’ve wanted to do for a long time, a color you’d never think we’d touch, and that is BMW 337, aka Dakar Yellow II. 337 specifically over the original because it has more yellow to it, though it’s still muted compared to Honda yellows. I think it gives both cars a very unique hue though it made coming up with a livery harder. I really wanted to do a something inspired by the old Camel race liveries because I like a palette consisting of a yellow with a dark contrasting blue. The third color would be a complimentary tone so I chose white. Silver and grey would be an additional color but it would be used only for mechanical pieces so you won’t see it on the exterior. The idea is to host colors that pair well and to keep it consistent…
The Civic itself is an evolved version of the previous Mintia EK. It will use a built B18C from Tatsumi Eng/Charge and will carry much less weight. The rear floor has been cut, there’s a custom mounting section for a fuel cell, most of the glass will be polycarbonate, and the doors, roof, hood, and hatch will be carbon fiber but painted. The cage is a traditional Mugen one and the car will of course carry very traditional Kansai styling…
I’m actually headed back to Japan now to oversee the completion of both cars as we near our first-ever Tokyo Pop-Up event. 2025 was a blast but I’m literally flying right into 2026 because big things are already happening.
Hello world, let me introduce you to the new Exceed flagship, simply dubbed “337”. Come see it for the first time with the rest of the world as we debut it Tokyo Auto Salon weekend in Meguro City at Calif Art Gallery Jan 8-12…
Happy New Year!🥂
From January 3, 2026:
I went back to Japan earlier than usual this time around because we have so much left to do before our Tokyo Pop-Up event next. I’ve never been in an airplane in NYE before but it definitely felt like flying to the future landing in Osaka I’m 2026. For those of you who are following my IG Stories you’ll know both these builds are much further ahead than you see in these photos but I’ve been finding every opportunity to try to shoot as much as I can heading into next week…
It’s not every day we have two consecutive builds going on at the same time, let alone being the same color and all but it’s been a great visual going back and forth between the two cars. Yasu has been all over the place, running around doing multiple things at a time. You can definitely tell he’s been a little more anxious than usual so I’m glad I came back early to Osaka to bring a sense of calm to the room…
Literally the evening I landed we already jumped right back into work. The engine had to go into my new EG6 build while we started cutting all the things necessary for the EK’s new livery. For those wondering the engine is a B16B CTR engine. I wanted to stick to a B16B just because I love the way they sound and the intent is to have a more aggressive version of my CTR. The engine was overhauled by our friend Tatsumi from Charge/Tatsumi Eng with bigger pistons, a slight over bore, full balanced, a custom oil pan baffle added, TODA cam gears and more. Rywire made me a custom engine harness that keeps everything nice and tidy so the bay is basically going to look like what you see in the photos when it’s all done. There’s still a lot to do of course and I’ve literally been sleeping at 7-8am every day since I’ve been here. Not cuz of jet lag, we are just up nightly trying to get these cars done. Thank goodness for that giant gas heater inside too, otherwise I have no idea how we’d get anything done with it freezing outside at 28-30 degrees…
Many have been asking for video too and I’ve been filming whatever I can, when I can so I’ll try to get footage of everything leading up to the debut. It’s 8:39AM, the sun is out and I gotta get some sleep 😴…
“These two cars may likely be the best project cars that have come from Exceed since it started 10 years ago and I’m happy to say we are all continuing to get better…”
From January 5, 2026:
Things are definitely moving along over here and the days wind down to the official Tokyo debut of the new Yasu democars. The main thing that would end-up occupying the most time was applying the livery design to the EK4. It’s a brand new design using the new Exceed logo that’s practically the entire side of the car so it took some maneuvering to lay it down exactly as I had done it digitally. We also decided to cut a bulk of the livery ourselves too, excluding the two huge Exceed logos blasted on the sides. It was just a bit more budget friendly since most of the money had gone into the two cars and the pop-up space itself. Since I was the one that created the design anyway, I had a good idea exactly how to lay it all down. Cutting and masking the stuff took a good amount of time too, considering the new office has no furniture and I was literally sitting on a Rays formula racing wheel with a piece of tile as my seat…
While that was going on with the EK, Yasu and Toku were busy working on my EG6. Toku is our silent assassin who spent most nights lately painting parts and polishing the new paint on the EG. Yasu was messing with the mechanical stuff like installing axles, adding a full-size Koyo radiator with Billion hoses, and mounting a new TODA Racing header. There’s still a lot that needs to be done but they seem to have a good idea of where everything needs to go and how much time we have left…
Once the livery was finished on both sides, it was honestly pretty crazy to see. Like it managed to look, I would say, about 95% accurate compared to the original render. That’s pretty crazy coming from us, lol. The Mintia EK we basically just eyeballed everything and had faith it would somehow look right. I wasn’t nearly as skilled with programs like Adobe Illustrator when we did that car so I didn’t even know how to accurately create a rendering. As we continue to move forward, it’s nice that we can approach projects with more refinement and better execution every time. These two cars may likely be the best project cars that have come from Exceed since it started 10 years ago and I’m happy to say we are all continuing to get better…
Looking back on these photos now in October feels pretty surreal to be perfectly honest. These images felt like they were from so long ago because this year has been so busy. So much has happened that this almost feels slightly like a distant memory. I’m glad we can now go back and put these up finally on the site…
I’d say the hardest part was—ALL of it. Because of Yasu’s habitual procrastination and just taking on way too much, everything was a cram session to reach the finish. I hadn’t slept much and Chuy, who came to Japan just to experience the pop-up, got straight off the plane and immediately to work. He didn’t sleep a wink the following nights. I’m actually surprised we were able to reach any semblance of completion because it was all sort of a blur. Building two Hondas of this caliber at the same time in the span of less than two months is ridiculous. It’s almost comical why we even thought we’d be able to pull it off…
I think we all collectively experienced some trauma from early January. I say that jokingly but it’s partially true. After the Tokyo Pop-Up we put these Civics away back at Exceed and really have touched them since. Both still need a good amount of work to get them fully-running. My interior isn’t quite complete yet in my EG and the race car requires a good amount of time before we can say it’s functionally ready to go anywhere. All the parts are there and the cars are together aesthetically, but I’d say they are like 75% “complete”…
I look back on this period very fondly though. It was an incredible experience. I think it helped open a lot of doors of opportunity for us as well. Though it was difficult both mentally and physically, it’s a challenge I’d gladly take on again with my friends. We had a lot of good laughs while putting these cars together. It was cold and miserable at times but I’ll cherish those moments where we all sat around at the shop eating pizza during a break and joking around with one another. It’s those small moments in-between the actual work that I take away and cherish…
Somewhere amongst all this clutter we were able to create some pretty cool Hondas that started out as bare shells. I had this idea of how I envisioned both these Civics would look and I was stubbornly uncompromising about it. They just had to look a very specific way. From the spacing of the brands represented on the livery, to the exact tones we used in every area of the cars and of course, the parts selection, everything was very precise. I took a step back and looked at both cars and I couldn’t be happier with how they came out. It’s literally exactly how they’re supposedly to look from concept to reality…
Having the EK9 at home in California now and still making changes to it has provided a huge buffer for me when it comes to finishing the EG6. It’s sort of an embarrassment of riches I suppose. We started putting this EG together when I wasn’t even ready for it. It’s a project I’d been planning for over 10 years now but then the EK9 happened and it became such a huge part of my life that the EG came too soon. I was so comfortable with the idea that the EG was going to be a long-term project that I fully expected it to not happen. When we decided this Tokyo Pop-Up thing was going to happen, it all snowballed so quickly that I wasn’t even mentally in the space to understand any of it. And then less than two months later, this Civic was just there in front of me. It was supposed to be the most-evolved form of my EK9 but I was still busy evolving my EK9…
As I mentioned before, once the Pop-Up was over, the cars just came back and sat there. The shock of them existing was something we all still had to come to terms with. I don’t think I got over it until May when I saw my EG6 after it got back from the Honda Collection Hall for the Stancenation event. I saw it parked outside of Exceed after we unloaded it off the trailer and it finally started to feel real. I wonder how I’ll feel when the car finally fires up for the first-time…
I was really persistent about having the tires painted for the 337EK because I always felt like we should have done it on the Mintia EK. It felt like it was missing that final touch. I guess it’s sort of cliché to have it on a Civic from Kansai but it matters, you know? When I was working on the livery for this EK even the rendering looked like it was missing something. If we’re gonna have a bright yellow Civic with “OSAKA” in Kanji on the fucking windows we might as well be cliché and just blast that YOKOHAMA ADVAN on the sidewalls…
I didn’t want it on the EG6 however. It’s meant to be a street car and it just seemed a little on the nose. Like it’s trying too hard. I’m not about to paint AD09s with a brand new set of MF10s on it. That car doesn’t need to be gritty. It’s very obviously meant to be clean and simple…
One of the best feelings in the world was seeing the EK on the floor for the first-time after we finished applying the livery. I’ll never forget that moment. Seeing a vision become a reality like this is a different level of endorphin release. It made the previous night of sleeplessness well worth it. I’ll hold onto that one for a while…
At this point of our adventure, we still had no idea if anyone would actually show-up to the actual pop-up. Tokyo Auto Salon is a busy time for people and we were probably the only people crazy enough to bring ’90s Civics to display at an art gallery in one of the nicer, more afluent cities in Tokyo. There were so many other events going on that didn’t even include Tokyo Auto Salon itself where we wondered if anyone would even care about two yellow Civics in Meguro…
I had this idea that if no one showed-up we could finally get some sleep at our Airbnb. Fortunately people came. Like way more than we expected. I’ll eventually get to those photos and have them up on the site too…
Did I also mention that by the time the cars were ready to go it was already time to make the 7-hour trek to Tokyo? The only thing keeping us up was the slight adrenaline rush of making sure Chuy was driving on the right side of the road in Yasu’s FL5…
The one regret I do have is not being there early enough to see the tow trailer driving around Tokyo with the two Civics loaded on it. By the time we pulled-up the truck was already sitting by the venue waiting for us to unload. I think it would have made for some great photos/video. It’s not every day you see two Civics in matching Dakar Yellow II on the streets of Tokyo…
It feels good to finally have this up here on The Chronicles. Thank you for looking and I hope you enjoy the new changes to the site…