I love Ireland’s hidden car culture. I always found myself abroad telling people about all these cool Japanese cars that end up in the rural countryside of Ireland and its always met with confusion or disbelief. The car pictured above is an A60 series Carina which used to roll around the streets of Japan. This Carina more than likely spent its time revving and hanging out with people who would consider themselves to be part of Shakotan/Bosozoku culture. Now the car resides down a back road in rural Wexford.
Let’s get stuck right back into our walk around Japfest 2017. I can’t stress how good this event was, it’s a clear indication that we are out of the dark times. The car scene is booming once again.
This article was lost when the website went under. I managed to recover most of it and felt it was right to get these photos up here from what was easily one of the best Irish car shows to date. This will be coming in two parts as there is a huge photo dump with this feature. I’ve left the original writing intact so it might sound a little weird as those were supposed to be posted back in 2017.
As much as I enjoy seeing a stationary Honda, it’s hard to beat the sound of a B-series screaming around a track.
I didn’t want to miss this event. Last year Flip made the drive up and any of the photos I had seen from the day were amazing. The days of seeing Hondas out in the open have quickly disappeared. It seems the bad image the Honda had just over four years ago has vanished.
You can see the inspiration from Nakai everywhere with Alex. He was the first person to enquire about bringing Nakai and build an RWB car outside of Japan. The result was Royal Ocean that you can see here, this was the first one to be built in Canada.
Being home almost a year I felt it was fitting to do a feature on a place I can call my second home. This place helped re-spark my interest with Juicebox, it also saved me from packing my bags a couple of times where I was close to moving back to Ireland.
It has been exactly one year today since I returned from Canada. Before I left, the car scene was in the bin, quite literally. Everyone around me was packing up and heading off all over the world to escape the gloom. The country was a shattered and although things aren’t back to 100% the entire country as a whole is in a much better shape than when many of us left.
EG Ferios were everywhere back in the early millennium especially around big cities like Dublin. They were a popular grey import back before the whole Japanese thing really kicked off.
Time has become quiet precious over the last few years, coming home from nine to ten hours a day of commuting and work and then finding the enthusiasm for sitting down to edit photographs and articles for this site has certainly been a challenge, I have to sacrifice a few things, but I really believe its worthwhile.
The Irish car shed doesn’t get as much credit as it deserves, Sheds are the backbone of our car scene, the anchors to every good build.
What started out as a bit of a Joke on the Internet the other day ended up luring us out on a freezing Friday night standing around in the dark with friends. We were almost excited at the fact this “Cruise” was going down.
“Cruises” have been a part of car culture for as long as I can remember, in all shapes and sizes they have always happened. Its a different kind of nightlife.
As most of us tend to stay in our circles amongst the scene, a lot of cars never really come out of hiding for us to be exposed to here at Juicebox. This little B series is stunning.
Being away for a few years I really didn’t know what top expect at Japfest this year, if you were following the nonsense on the Instagram story, we went a little over board but it was with no regrets. Japfest an end of year calendar for most of the stuff we are into and most of the cars either come off of the road or go into hibernation for the winter.
A lot of people made it down regardless of situations that sprang up which either on the day or close to it. Somehow the weather was on our sides which enticed people to make the journey down. I genuinely would not have held the event if there was a monsoon of Irish rain.