We strike Gold at Tsukuba and witness one of the most incredible classic track days in Japan.
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.
Here are some photos from the time we drove down to Group D. Group D is the brainchild of Darren McNamara, a well-known legend in the Drift scene. Darren has been tinkering with Corollas for a long time, and he developed a rear coil-over suspension for the AE86 with a company from the UK called AVO. You have probably seen the vlog episode from this day, with the old legend and his lovely little starlet. I had a mega backlog of photos from older episodes that I will throw up on the site every Friday. Enjoy the images of the day below.
So many of you have just watched our recent video about our BBQ from last year. Here are some of the photos we somehow managed to get while putting together the event.
The Irish motor festival was the brainchild of the guys at Drift games, they managed to secure Punchestown as a Drift venue once again and use of the massive exhibition hall which is right next to the drift track. It’s great to have another show on the calendar each year and we’ve always loved Punchestown.
After what would only be an unforgettable night at Daikoku, we rolled the dice and chanced our luck. It was late, we had been kicked out of Daikoku and there was one place left on the list I wanted to tick off before we went home.
After our visit to RWB we pushed on further into the outskirts of Tokyo. One shop which was not too far from RWB is called G Corporation, another on the must-see list for a long time, we had to go. I’ve always been a huge fan of their S-Chassis kits and outlandish paint work.
Like I’ve discussed in previous posts, there is so much automotive content to take in when visiting Japan. On our journey, we spotted so many interesting car sales or car related businesses on the side of the road. If we tried to pull into all of them we would have gotten nowhere.
So a fresh year is upon us with the Irish automotive calendar. We decided to check out what was happening and modified live. IDC was in full swing and as we discussed before, the event gets more than its share of coverage so it’s unnecessary for us to be giving it full coverage.
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.
Shoes are such a massive part of building a car, they can make or break a look. Finding the right shoes in a sea of similar builds can be such a daunting task. This Godzilla was already wearing a set of shoes which were almost impossible to replace, TE37’s finished in gold.
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.