Archive for ‘Coverage’

The Battlecraft 10-Year Hyper Art Show in photos & video!!…

The Battlecraft 10-Year Hyper Art Show in photos & video!!…

Happy New Year everybody! No better way to kick off the new year than to give you guys something to watch. I even updated the intro and everything. It seemed like the right time to just update everything so there are some small changes that I’m sure many of you regulars will notice. In the first episode of Season 11, I take you back to a few weeks ago when we were hosting the Battlecraft 10-year anniversary event. I can’t believe it’s been ten years already. Time really does just fly right by. The episode starts with me giving you guys some current updates, a little history on Battlecraft, and what our event is/was all about! Then it’s time to set-up, figure out where everything goes and hope for the best. We also had a special guest with us since we took Terry’s Integra out of Bowls LA to display at the Battlecraft 10-year. He decided to fly down to experience some Socal car culture and then we send both he and his car back to the Pacific Northwest. Enjoy!
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A few quick hits from Wekfest Los Angeles 2024…

A few quick hits from Wekfest Los Angeles 2024…

Damn, it has been a while since I put together one of these posts. For years and years, the long-form event coverage posts were a bit of a staple here on the site. People that enjoyed reading and seeing large batches of photos would come here to see coverage of events I attended. I’d usually get them up about a day or two after the event too so it gave people the sense of actually being there or some semblance of that. It has long been one of my favorite things to do. Writing that is. It comes so naturally to me that it’s never really been a ‘chore’ do put posts together like this…

So why did I stop?…
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Wrapping up the season at the biggest car show in Los Angeles…

Wrapping up the season at the biggest car show in Los Angeles…

It’s been a pretty big year for us when it comes to car shows but it was time to close out the car show season in Los Angeles for the annual Wekfest event. Since this is one of our biggest shows and one happening in our hometown, we wanted to do something major by having a big display for Battlecraft, Exceed, and The Chronicles. Our brand new Voltex GR86 Street Version II was set to make its first public appearance at this show so we created a full floor display for it so the car could sit center stage. Our actual wheels were still on a boat somewhere in the Pacific Ocean so we decided to present the car on a brand new set of dead stock bronze Volk CE28N wheels. In our heads, we knew this would look good but still ended-up shocked when we finally saw the wheels on the car for the first time. After our excitement calmed we loaded the car up onto the trailer and were off the next morning to the Los Angeles Convention Center…
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Back in Asia and busier than ever!!…

Back in Asia and busier than ever!!…

Yes it sure has been a while but I haven’t just been sitting around doing nothing! These last few months I’ve actually been back and forth from the U.S. to Japan to Indo and back again. There’s just so much going on and with Yasu around, it’s been hard to sit down and put new episodes together. But we’re back now! In this episode, we go to Indonesia to visit Sara Choi, I some how end up driving around an international race track in a wagon before flying to Japan for one of the best events I’ve attended all year! This new car show from the brains behind Option magazine and Video Option brought out all the major tuning shops as well as enthusiast cars I’d only ever seen on the internet. It was crazy! There were cars I’d NEVER thought I’d ever get the opportunity of seeing in-person and they were just all sitting there together. It was a real dream come true and yet another unexpected bucket list item checked-off the list…
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What a busy weekend it was at Wekfest San Jose…

What a busy weekend it was at Wekfest San Jose…

It really does feel like car things are happening non-stop now that we’re in the heart of the summer season. Not long after my trip to Seattle, it was time to prep for the San Jose stop of the Wekfest tour—which also happens to be the biggest. Yasu decided to make the trip for this one as well since we were set to debut the first two Exceed Japan V2 front lips in North America at the show. He finished up the new parts and literally had them overnighted to California so we would have the time to get them painted and installed. We carefully selected two of the nicest Civics in the West to debut the new Exceed lip and had a nice booth display right up front at the show! Before the show however, we had some prep work to do and then it was off to San Jose!…
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Cutting up the Voltex GR86, Wekfest Seattle & first mods on the FL5 Type R…

Cutting up the Voltex GR86, Wekfest Seattle & first mods on the FL5 Type R…

Now that I’m back in the USA, it’s time for me to catch-up on all the stuff that’s been happening here at home. The moment I walked through the doors of Battlecraft, Kristian was already hard at work cutting-up our GR86 in preparation for the Voltex widebody kit. If all goes well, that project should be ready to debut by end of summer. A few days later, I re-packed my suitcase and hopped on a flight to Seattle, Washington for the annual Wekfest event. It was an incredibly busy weekend so I didn’t get much filming done, though I did catch a good portion of the early roll-in. When I got home from my trip to the PNW, I was already re-united with Yasu since he decided to make the trip to California for the upcoming Wekfest San Jose. He showed-up with the JDM headlights off of his FL5 Civic Type R and swapped them immediately since he’d been dying to get his hands on some USDM ones. Not long after, it was time to pay a visit to our friends at APEX’i since they had some special for my new Type R…
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Chan-Oka Honda Meet in Japan 2024 Photos…

Chan-Oka Honda Meet in Japan 2024 Photos…

For the past two years, I’ve purposely extended my Spring trip to Japan so that I could stay for the Chan-Oka Honda Meet. The name comes off a little weird to us in America but it’s named by and after the guy who hosts it. Chan-Oka is a very-devoted Honda enthusiast who focuses primarily on tuning and styling from the early 2000s era of Hondas from the West Coast (California, Seattle, etc.). His group of friends absolutely love this particular type of style. They study it using whatever resources are available to them online and also by looking through old issues of Honda Tuning and Super Street magazines. Many of these guys have never been to America before but it’s actually pretty surprising how good they’ve become at replicating this specific look. I guess you can say the same thing about Americans or people from other countries and how they try to replicate Japanese car builds while never having set foot in Japan…
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Plenty of surprises on a trip with Sara Choi and friends…

Plenty of surprises on a trip with Sara Choi and friends…

Over the past year or so, I’ve been joking around with Sara calling her my ‘manager’ because she’s been trying to convince me to go back to Indonesia with her. I went 7 years ago and though it was a fruitful life experience, I can honestly say that I didn’t have the greatest of times. I don’t think I ever made it a secret either. Whenever people asked me if I would go back, I often said I wouldn’t. Not so much because I was treated poorly or anything, I think the people that invited me last time tried the best they could to give me the most positive of an experience. Circumstances just made it difficult for me to fully enjoy it. When Sara Choi decided that she’d start competing in a drift series down in Indonesia, I was all for it. I’m always gonna root for one of my closest friends. She planned to spend a bulk of her time down there to practice and train to be a better driver but there were definitely times when I think she felt homesick and wanted her friends there. She brought it up a couple times and at first, I wasn’t really trying to go. Just because mainly I’m pretty busy as it is with a loaded travel schedule and I had this preconceived notion that I wouldn’t have much of a different experience if I went back. But some time went by and it seemed like Sara was really enjoying herself down there and wanted me to see it for myself so I told her if she wanted to plan it out for me, I’d bring some of our other friends down there too and we’d make a trip of it…
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The gang’s all here for Osaka’s BIGGEST Car Show!!…

The gang’s all here for Osaka’s BIGGEST Car Show!!…

It was starting to feel like I had been in Japan forever. I’d say I was missing home but Osaka is basically my second home so they only thing I was really missing were my friends. That is, until they finally showed-up! It was good to see their faces and spend time with them again because Yasu might have been getting tired of just seeing me every single day. Osaka Auto Messe was fast approaching and everyone arrived just days before. Nana showed-up first after visiting some friends in Gunma, then Der and Kristian landed early morning in Osaka. We grabbed some food, walked around the city, and then it was off to the biggest car show in the Kansai region, Osaka Auto Messe!…
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Designing a real Civic race car in Osaka for Exceed and No Good Racing…

Designing a real Civic race car in Osaka for Exceed and No Good Racing…

A couple months ago, Yasu acquired an old EK4 Civic race car that had spent much of its life competing in the Suzuka Clubman one-make race series. The car physically was still in pretty good shape but you can tell that it had been raced a lot. It just had a lot of wear and tear, you know? He wanted to do more circuit racing and time attack events this year using this newly-acquired EK4 so he asked me to design a livery for it. I don’t know why he thinks I’m capable of it because I’ve actually never done a full livery on a real car before but I figured I’d give it a shot. He owns a body shop so if it came out terrible, we could just tear it apart and redo it. My friends had always talked about doing a “Mintia” livery because it’s our favorite Japanese mint and has long been an inside joke. I think most of our friends and acquaintances know about Mintia because we’d always share them with everyone. Der even has a credit card with a custom Mintia skin. So I studied the packaging and went into full detail trying to come-up with a way to use the EK4 as its own Mintia case. Around late October last year, I came up with a pretty rough version of it. Over the course of the last few months, I refined it as Yasu started to transform the car in real-life. He painted the Civic a custom blue hue that matches the Mintia packaging and the graphics started to take shape once I arrived back in Japan last month. Now you all can see it come to fruition…
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