Tag Archive for ‘cr-x’

Once A Year, Honda Heaven Exists In Saitama…

Once A Year, Honda Heaven Exists In Saitama…

On my last few days in Japan, I head back over to the Tokyo-side of Japan to check-out the 2nd annual “Chan-Oka Honda Meet” in Saitama. This meet is a special one for me because its entire purpose is to pay homage to the USDM West Coast Honda scene of the mid-to-late 2000s. While we spent the better part of our adult lives in America building Hondas inspired by the ones we saw in Japan, younger enthusiasts over there were studying our interpretations of their style. In the last few years, USDM Honda culture and style has developed a pretty big following in Japan. It’s become a style almost unique to itself because its an interpretation of an interpretation. Like if one person tells another person a story, and that person repeats that story to someone else, and so on and on, eventually the story becomes different. It just retains certain elements, or the core pieces, of the original story. That’s basically what the USDM Honda community consists of. It features many of the core ideologies of what we did here, but the execution is slightly different. Some parts are different because accessibility to certain brands are limited and Japan just does things unique from us because culturally, they weren’t raised the same. The Chan-Oka Honda Meet is an important gathering because it represents a big part of where the Honda community in Japan is headed in the next few years. For guys like me who grew-up during the golden age of the West Coast Honda scene, this meet is Heaven on Earth—but like, a Japanese version of Heaven 🙂

Abandoned Hondas At Real Company And Collecting Rare Parts In Japan…

Abandoned Hondas At Real Company And Collecting Rare Parts In Japan…

As my adventures in the Kansai region of Japan near an end, I find myself in the countryside of the Nara prefecture where I visit Real Company. This Honda modification shop is about as traditional as it gets, playing host to both Civic race cars as well as many more that have been left behind to be reclaimed by nature. It’s always interesting to see what types of gems Yasu and I stumble upon. There are a surprising amount of cars that have been out of service for years, slowly being overtaken by the elements. After that, I take you back to Exceed where I show you some pretty rare parts that both Yasu, myself, and my good friend Cody have been collecting to send back to the good ol’ USA. I came to Japan for many reasons and one of them was to secure products to send home for business as well as personal use.

Rywire House and CR-X Reveal…

Rywire House and CR-X Reveal…

The video was posted last week but I thought now would be a good time to actually get the photos up of the recent private event I was invited to where we got to see Aaron Espino’s CR-X unveiled. Unlike most build debuts, this was actually planned to coincide with somewhat of a housewarming party at Ryan from Rywire’s freshly remodeled home in Huntington Beach, California. I remember once upon a time Ryan had these grand plans for this house. It sounded crazy at the time to build a partition inside his home where he would be able to display a car but Ryan is an unconventional type of dude so we all had faith he’d pull it off. And of course, he did. I don’t have all the details on what was all involved with the overhaul of his house but I know it wasn’t particularly easy—and definitely NOT cheap. There was a point when he wasn’t even able to live in the house because everything was torn down and being built from the ground-up. When he told me he was doing this event with Espino’s CR-X parked inside his house, I just had to see it for myself…

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!!