As things had been a little quiet since Japfest on this side of the pond for us, we decided to take a spin up to the JustJap drift day to check out what was going on. The drift days are always interesting because you never really know what is going to come up out of the woodwork.
You have to enjoy people like Davy, people who can’t leave things alone, people that go near stuff and know only the right way to make it out the other side. Take his “work van” for example, I remember when he picked this up from Paddy McGrath and started tearing around in it. As vehicle Bodywork is his profession it wasn’t long before the van was stripped down, with plans already hatched.
It came as quite a surprise to see the amount of cars rolling in all the way till the end, with cars coming from all parts of the country and the general public coming in for a look and not seeing everyone going mental, it must have been somewhat unusual. The cops even rolled in and couldn’t understand why it was day time and over 300 cars were parked up.
I’m pretty excited that some how I can finally write about a public event we put together. Juicebox has been going for about four years now and well it has been an absolute pleasure being able to capture the car scene and chuck it up here on the website. We had toyed with the idea of putting together something like this for a long time, possibly holding a show, or doing another BBQ, the main fear was that no one would turn up, or if something did it would be a disaster.
Let’s face it some of the 90’s cars that rolled out of the Nissan factory have aged perfectly, others are still questionable. Take an R33 Gts-t for example, not many of you will be quick to say they looked or aged as well as similar chassis from that era. On top of that for some reason, Ireland, Australia and the UK just couldn’t get enough of the 33 GTS, we just loved them. We loved putting horrendous wheels and bad body kits and questionable parts in them, pretty much a large portion of R33 GTS’s which exist outside of Japan just don’t do it for people as much as an R32, s13 or an s15, or any of the GTR’s for that matter.
It’s nice to see this car in its current guise. This was actually a car imported by a couple of friends in Waterford city. The car came to Ireland as a half loved Nissan, just like most RPS13’s their story is always a mystery. This example was bright pink, had over fenders, standard ae86 front wheels and a Bomex whale tale. Back then this car was laughed at, a bit of an ugly duckling. Like many cars at that time it vanished, many had thought it was dead forever, just like the fate of many Nissans but somehow it came back out of the wood work, and damn did it look good.
We had to chance to tag along with the Low Brain drifters in Madrid to see them tackle the best in Europe.
We have seen quite a change in the car scene over the last four to five years in Ireland, the growth of a more European influence on what would have been a heavily saturated market of Japanese imports. Quite a large part of this was down to fuel prices, with this wave of Diesel machines brought a new collection of the good, the bad and well some pretty terribly ugly creations The Volkswagen scene itself is quite reserved, it’s a different take on cars and has to be appreciated when done right like this 2.0 TDI B6 Passat.
I got a chance to tag along with the Low Brain Drifters and Luke Fink as they headed to the Alps to take on the French 1500 metres above sea level inside the clouds. A pretty unique event.
Another absolute beauty of a car, tucked away alongside the Cruise AE111 we featured last week is this Kazama Auto RPS13. I love these stories, this car has been in hiding for quite some time, bought in the boom for over fifteen grand and then hidden away as the owner was forced to head to the upside down land of work outside of our failing country. This car is pretty amazing in the flesh, and in the right hands, an immaculate white time capsule of Japanese built goodness, unmolested by the usual unaware Irish man.
Sometimes you never know what you are going to get in an email. A couple of months back we received an email from a young fan of the site telling us about how his father owns not one but two Nissan GTR’s. In Ireland the GTR is not exactly a common site to begin with so after a quick exchange of details we decided to pack the car and head to Cashel to check this out for ourselves. I really couldn’t believe what I was seeing; this was a pretty awesome sight to behold.
A couple of months ago this little Vitz popped up for sale here in Ireland, at a first glance you could see the little cage peeking out through the back windows so we clicked on the ad to take a look. You just have to love the mystery surrounding many of the cars which made their way out of Japan. This is a classic example of that mystery, this quirkly little white Vitz, or Yaris as they are known here, generally seen outside of Japan as a proper commuting A to B machine has a much cooler story than meets the eye.
A few months ago a few mates had come across the Ocean from France to pick up this beauty. I decided to grab a few snaps before she made her way back. I’ve always enjoyed this car. It wears the Garage Masa have the M kit which adds the strawberry face to the s14. Sometimes 15 front on a 14 doesn’t work too good as a conversion as the strawberry front is a little sharper towards the more relaxed lines of the s14, but Ive always like the Masa kit conversion, its a pretty beefy aero kit which doesn’t look out of place.