Wekfest Austin 2021 Coverage…

Wekfest Austin 2021 Coverage…

There is much that could be said about the Texas Wekfest event this year. I think privately some enthusiasts who attended were a little upset by some of the criticisms that were passed-on during the awards ceremony, at least that’s what I heard from people anyway, but nothing was said to deliberately hurt feelings. These things were said with good intentions because we want this region to flourish like it has in the past. I think there might just be a generational gap or something where social media has mislead some enthusiasts into thinking that only certain things are important when it comes to creating good car builds. Perhaps they haven’t been presented with proper examples to help guide them in the right direction. Or maybe people just stopped caring? I don’t know. It’s a bit of a mystery to me….

There’s A CR-X Inside This Fancy House… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #29

There’s A CR-X Inside This Fancy House… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #29

As we begin to approach the end of 2021, things definitely haven’t slowed down during the holiday season and I found myself in Austin, Texas for the final stop of the Wekfest tour. We take a quick tour of some of the more notable cars there and when I got back home, I was invited by Ryan Basseri from Rywire to check-out a private unveiling of a new CR-X build he had been working on. The unique thing about this particular reveal was that it was actually held inside of his house that he had just finished renovating recently! One of his dreams had always been to have a space inside his house to display a car but we never thought that he would actually do it!!

Ichi’s Farewell At The 25 Hours Of Thunderhill…(Part 2/2) CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #28

Ichi’s Farewell At The 25 Hours Of Thunderhill…(Part 2/2) CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #28

With a majority of the testing taken care of, the team from Spoon Sports makes final preparations for the grueling 25 Hours of Thunderhill endurance race. Ultimate Spoon-fan Dan finally gets his opportunity to not only get his dashboard signed by Ichishima from Spoon, he also ends up being a part of the pit crew! Watch as we take you on a journey from pre-grid, to the race itself, all the drama in-between, and the final lap with Tatsuru Ichishima as he bids farewell as the president of Spoon Sports. Also, if you’ve never seen this event before, you must check-out the aggressive driving style of Tarzan Yamada in the dark, foggy night at Thunderhill, it’s incredible!ddd

Wekfest San Jose 2021 Coverage… Part 2…

Wekfest San Jose 2021 Coverage… Part 2…

I am currently sitting on a kitchen counter top in Austin, Texas as I type out this concluding portion of the San Jose Wekfest coverage. It’s about 9PM Texas time and we just wrapped-up dinner at the AirBnb house we are staying at, just a couple days away from the last Wekfest show of 2021. It’s been a pretty wild year to say the least. It started out a bit slow, the months dragged on it seemed, but then by mid-summer, things just took-off. Things started to open back up, there seemed to be an endless amount of car meets going on every weekend, and indoor car shows officially resumed. In the past two months, we’ve done three Wekfest events that took us from Seattle, back home to Los Angeles, and to San Jose for the ‘Super Bowl’…

Ichi’s Farewell At The 25 Hours Of Thunderhill…(Part 1/2) CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #27

Ichi’s Farewell At The 25 Hours Of Thunderhill…(Part 1/2) CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #27

This was a special one. Normally I wouldn’t even attempt to cover a grueling event like The 25 Hours of Thunderhill but I made an exception when Spoon Sports extended the invitation. Not only was their FK8 Civic Type R competing in this series for the first time, it became a monumental event because Tatsuru Ichishima, founder of Spoon Sports, was retiring. To give him a proper send-off, the entire team decided to compete and hopefully bring home a victory at one of his favorite events! Spoon Sports went all out for this one, bringing over their entire staff from Type ONE to be the pit crew for the race as well as having a full staff on-hand to make sure we had three meals per day! I’ve never experienced anything like it. We were so taken care of that I think this will forever ruin other race events for me, haha. Watch as I document the journey from start to finish before Ichishima says goodbye!

Wekfest San Jose 2021 Coverage… Part 1…

Wekfest San Jose 2021 Coverage… Part 1…

Top to bottom, in terms of overall car quality, this might be the best San Jose Wekfest we’ve ever had. I know that sounds a bit outrageous but you have to consider the level of cars that are being built in 2021. Coming into the event, we already had about 10 cars that were definitely going to win an award in the higher-tiered categories. It was just a matter of where we were going to place each car. It’s pretty crazy. In the past, there were probably 1-3 that were going to be up for contention for “Car of the Festival”, which is our version of the best of show, but never was there this much competition. I don’t know if it had to do with timing, since SEMA had just happened a few weeks before or because everyone had so much time off to work on their cars due to the pandemic, but people have really stepped it up. I’m happy to see it. I think through out the last year or so, I had been looking forward to just getting back on the road and doing car shows again. There was hope that there would be some new car builds on the horizon, but I didn’t really know what to expect. It just felt nice to be outside doing car shit again. In the past few months, we did back-to-back shows with Seattle and Los Angeles but there was added pressure to make San Jose good because it was the ‘big’ one…

Is This The Best Wekfest San Jose Ever??… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #26

Is This The Best Wekfest San Jose Ever??… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #26

I’ve been on the Wekfest tour for some time now but top to bottom, in terms of car quality, this just might be the best Wekfest event we’ve ever had in North America. Call it luck or good preparation but the variety that this show offered was insane! From Japanese classics to rare super cars and everything in-between, if you loved custom car culture, this was the place to be. Originally I had thought that I had not shot enough video for an entire episode, being that I was so busy running around everywhere, but when I got home, I realized I had a ton of footage. Sometimes I even surprise myself, I guess, lol!

Notable Builds From JCCS & Autofashion VIP Festival!!… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #25

Notable Builds From JCCS & Autofashion VIP Festival!!… CHRNCLS Vlog 2021 #25

It really feels like this entire past month has been filled with non-stop events! I’m not saying it’s a bad thing but boy has our weekends been busy. You guys got a glimpse at what was special about this year’s SEMA Show but before that week-long event took place was the annual Japanese Classic Car Show. Because of all that’s been happening, the event had to be moved from Long Beach to Angel’s Stadium in Anaheim, which changed the entire vibe of the original event series! It can be debated on whether or not this change was a good one but I will say one thing, this year’s JCCS was HUGE. I don’t even think I walked the entire thing. I did spend some time finding some of the builds that stood-out to us though.

Wekfest Los Angeles 2021 Coverage… Part 2…

Wekfest Los Angeles 2021 Coverage… Part 2…

Man, time is just FLYING by right now. I can’t believe it’s already mid-November. While I’m getting the rest of these photos up from Wekfest LA, we are just a few days removed from the return of the massive San Jose Wekfest event. It’s gonna be a good one this weekend. There are some cars that are going this year that you’ll definitely want to see if you haven’t been to a car show in awhile. San Jose is the big one, the Super Bowl if you will, of the Wekfest series so you should definitely attend if you were on the fence about being out and about this weekend. Today we take a look at the concluding portion of coverage I have of the Los Angeles stop. These are some stills that I took the morning of the event right before the show opened. I really wanted to shoot more but there is just so much going on and I’m running around all over the place before the show even opens its doors to the public…