On Sunday just gone we took the long drive up to Belfast to attend Dubshed. After a long drive up from Waterford in the rain, which made the journey worse, we arrived at King’s Hall, Belfast. We parked the car and made our way into one of the three sheds to see what Dubshed had to offer us this year.
Im often overwhelmed by the whole idea of importing cars from Japan. Over the last few years on the website, I’ve rambled enough about just how interesting I find the whole process. This little gold Skyline is a classic case of that. Lets just take a step back for a moment, anyone of you out there that has ever built a car, put all that work into it, with friends, family, the people you have met, the people you shared those experiences with, the jobs you worked to save the money to buy those parts, the late late nights of frustration and anger, accompanied by the days of utter joy you shared behind the wheel….
Edmonton has a pretty big Drag racing and muscle car scene also, as it naturally would being an oil driven city, We made it out to the race track a few times. The toys that came out to these events were amazing.
Its not often you come across a good flame job on a Datsun, everything about this from the colour selection to the aero choice is absolutely on point. Its pretty hard to make a ridiculously memorable RPs13 these days, 12 years ago these guys had it on lock…
The EM1, always in the shadows of the hatchback version. When executed correctly they can be amazing to look at. Jamies example was a classic case of getting it right.
So here I was, completely out of my comfort zone making my way across Canada, looking out the window of this chrome train at possibly one of the most epic and somewhat alien landscapes for this little Irish mind. Heading “up north” as its put, not really knowing what to expect. It was incredibly exciting but at the same time pretty scary, I’m sure many of you have that feeling once or twice in your life. This was one of those completely unforgettable life moments, so far removed from everything I had called life back home. I sat there taking snaps out the window trying to process nature on steroids.
Ah, the Toyota starlet. Every single person into cars in Ireland is well aware of the starlet. I’m sure many others from around the world know all about these quirky little machines also. For many it was a first car, a gateway into something fast and fun. For others, the starlet was a car many people aspired to have at one point or another. The stigma that came with these is often negative. But lets be honest, the fact that Japan decided to make such an angry, interesting version of a pretty mediocre little Toyota is what makes us love the place so much. There is almost no reason for it to exist, but we are glad it does.
It has been almost four years since the tragic disaster in Japan. As a car head, like many of you reading this, apart from all the chaos and sadness that followed the disaster on March 11th 2011, we cant help but be fascinated by all that radioactive Japanese metal that was left behind. Google was kind enough to creep in and drive the streets year after year, which is amazing. I have spent hours cruising the streets looking for stuff but I have to give credit o my little brother for hunting out a lot of these, both of us would spend hours cruising down streets spotting stuff. We did one of these posts before and people really enjoyed it, so here is another collection of Cars that will probably never move again.
So where to begin this really? In a fast paced world where the attention span of an average human is almost shorter than that of a goldfish, my little rant with accompanying pictures will probably only be read by a handful of people. And to be honest that’s perfectly fine.