Winds Auto has a long history with the AE86. The owners have been selling them, drifting them and making parts for the AE86 chassis for over 20 years. Winds is a husband and wife setup. Obata, the owner, is an ex D1 driver and former member of one of my favourite teams Guntama-R.
His wife Hiromi used to drive the pink AE86 in Formula D. They are well-established drivers, and it’s great to see they are still in business and still operating and actively drifting together to this day.
A chance encounter with Smokey Nagata and Hiroshi Tamura, otherwise known as MR GTR at Daikoku PA. We also stop at a few legendary AE86 shops and drop the gold bonnet off at JDM Distro.
We decided to head out of Nagoya and start heading as far as we could north. On the way out of, just on the outskirts of the city, is Rocky Auto, it was getting late, but we decided to change it anyways before it got dark.
Day 12 was upon us. We woke in Nagoya and wanted to check out the Woow circuit Super AutoBacs, featured in the Driftwiorks outsiders video. We missed this place on our last trip, and from what I had seen online, this is one of the best Autobacs in Japan.
We visit the worlds most unique AE86 shop, known as Noby Booth and get lucky with a private tour of Liberty Walk’s collection as we work our way back to Nagoya.
The stuff we encountered in Japan comes in waves literally! Just as we finished having our heads fried at Liberty walk, around the corner was a small Daihatsu dealer, which had an equally incredible selection of cars.
We were heading back into Nagoya and felt we couldn’t pass up an opportunity to Liberty Walk. The shop has seen a massive amount of success in the western world in recent times, and many people would say wats the point in visiting these shops? They’ve seen enough coverage over the last few years. We are fans of the stuff this shop puts out.
Although we had been to 86 festival, there was a couple of shops along the trip that I had to visit, one of them being Noby Booth. The shop has been going strong since the late eighties. It reminds us of Japans golden era for cars; its storefront has frozen in time.
That night, we decided we would work out way back towards Nagoya, stopping off in Hamamatsu for the night for a few beers and food and walk the city streets. We enjoyed the slightly slower pace of life this city had to offer.
After a long night of drifting and about two hours of sleep, all of our phones made a crazy sound simultaneously, and we freaked out. Luckily it was an Earthquake warning, just like the ones Alexi told us about, warning of an earthquake in the area.
We visit the worlds most unique AE86 shop, known as Noby Booth and get lucky with a private tour of Liberty Walk’s collection as we work our way back to Nagoya.
Thinking back, walking away from Meihan was a tough call. If we stayed at Meihan, it would have been a great show, but we felt that greatness was waiting at Yamanashi. Fuck it, why not be greedy and get two epic events on the same day. Something you could only do in Japan!
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.
For some of you who have been enjoying these blog posts, I figured some shots of Budonoki would be cool to post here. Ill keep the words to a minimum and let the photos do the talking.
We drove for a good hour outside of Osaka to the outskirts of a town called Nara. This is where the legendary Honda shop known as Zero Fighter is based. After our day of mixed greetings, we didn’t know what to expect with what we were greeted to at Osaka JDM earlier in the day, so our expectations were low.