Two one-owner 90s Toyota Sedans show up at the shed at the same time from Japan, with really cool signs of their past.
A Vertex day at Mobara Circuit, with plenty of good cars showing up. Here are some photos from it.
This is the story of Ireland’s top 40 cars from the Forgotten JDM Car Boom. We deep dive into why so many famous Japanese icons ended up in Ireland and what happened to them.
We get invited to a private gathering of drift cars in Chicago before Final Bout.
This stuff doesn’t happen enough anymore, not with my generation of friends. Back in 2010 ish, this was an every weekend occupancy; we were surrounded by the best of cars, which we 100% took for granted at the time. We were all parked up with the best chassis, and the country was flooded with high-quality imports; it wasn’t uncommon to see a sight like this in every town up and down Ireland. Unfortunately, the recession came, and so did the end of days like this; cars were broken for parts, most people emigrated, and whatever was left was locked away in sheds.
I am screaming at a few hundred people to let them know the burgers are ready. This was a lovely day out, the JUicebox BBQ, which is essentially a day of thanking everyone we have met over the years for keeping the Irish car scene going and all the friends and acquaintances we got to know through this car stuff. Our friend Adam Osborne was kind enough to shoot all these photos from the day, as we have a million things going on, so it’s hard to document and organise the event. I hope you enjoy his selection of snaps below; he has an excellent eye for capturing delicious images. I’ll let the rest of the photos do the talking.
We visit a hidden collection of rare Japanese cars in the Irish Midlands.
A few photos from our little night drive in the summer of 2021; right after all the misery of covid had lifted, we decided to get together for a meet-up and appreciate the joy these rusty Japanese cars bring. A route was mapped to drive for some spirited driving, but we got some food beforehand. Far too many of our vehicles are sitting in sheds these days, never getting the use they deserve, so it was great to get them out for a blast. Finally, everyone went home smiling, reminding us why we got into these things in the first place. In Ireland, as the years progress, you tend to see fewer and fewer of these cars on the road; they live their lives in the shed as our climate isn’t the best for cheap steel Japanese machines.
What a way to see Nikko, a track I’ve always wanted to see at a dream event. The “car gods’ were good to us on this trip. It was a fantastic way to sign off our car hunting in Japan. Our 18 days of travelling from the north to the south had let us meet so many people. We had seen so much stuff, from shops to cars to scenery to tracks, engaged with many interesting people.
Once we were good to go, we decided to make the drive to Ebisu, we knew we would get there late, but that’s where we would be meeting Chogo from CSS in Nihonmatsu, the town just down from the circuit where we met the guys before.
We had come up with an ambitious plan, hit D1 early in the morning and then drive five hours to Sports land Yamanashi and potentially meet up with Alexi from Noriyaro and our mate Andrew from Ireland. We heard about a night drift event at Yamanashi and were told not to miss it.
If you watch the vlogs, you are probably aware of how this shoot came about. Just after we finished up taking photographs of Johns Sileighty, he mentioned his friend Padraig who had a pretty tasty selection of cars not far from the photoshoot location.
We head to the hills and check out a few hidden gems, a stunning Sileighty, and an angry JZX100 Cresta.
So as I stated in the first post, this was a considerably good night at Daikoku and felt like a split feature was worth the effort.
The wait was over, after a failed attempt to get into Daikoku on the previous night, we were adamant to make it here for a Saturday night no matter what. We hung around in the Up Garages close by and made our way towards Daikoku around 9 PM to get an early spot.