It’s been a while since I’ve been back in Chicago. Typically around this time I would be in Japan so I’d have to opt-out of this stop on the annual Wekfest tour. Now that the tour is back in full-force with a full schedule, we can all get back on the road to do more car things! Chicago is the first on the schedule and we are back to see what this gritty city has to offer!
Didn’t expect to start modifying the GR86 so soon since we are still waiting on so many parts to come in from Japan but this was an offer we couldn’t refuse!! APEX’i recently received their new N1-X Evolution Extreme Muffler system from Japan and provided us with the amazing opportunity to run the first one in North America! As many of you know, we are in the process of building a stateside version of the Exceed Japan demo GR86 and it just so happened that Yasu is also running the same exhaust. I guess you can say this opportunity was a serendipitous one.
If the title and the click-baity cover photo didn’t give it away, we’re unveiling a new build! I’ve been hinting at a new project car since the year started and I guess I must have spoken it into existence because here we are! We introduce you to our new Exceed-supported Battlecraft demo car and give you some updates on what Ryan Der has been up to with his Civic. A guest with a pretty unique build passes by the shop and more!…
It’s been awhile but we’re back!! 2022 has started off kinda crazy for us over here. Though we haven’t made a video this year, there is so much going on behind the scenes!! While we are busy planning out the rest of 2022, we provide you guys with some updates on Ryan Der’s Civic build, we meet the legendary GReddy RX S-Roc for the first time, Kenji from GReddy tells us a fantastic story about his history with the S-Roc, and I stop by round 2 of the VTEC Club USA event at Buttonwillow Raceway!!
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!!
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
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!
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!
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.
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…
