You’re fifteen years of age, your Dad tells you Christmas and birthdays sorted for the foreseeable future, somehow you have ended up with your dream car. You look outside and you are the proud owner of an AE86.
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.
So for the people who have been following our trip to Japan so far, quite a lot of this will be car related (as you may have guessed). This holiday was planned out as a car holiday, so it’s going to be an automotive heavy story throughout.
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 I enjoy most about this event is how varied the selection is, not narrowed down to only drift enthusiasts or classic car its a perfect cocktail of car people right across the board and anything, literally anything can make an appearance. Check this KP pickup for example, something I have never seen before. A crazy idea!
It absolutely astounds me just how much of a following there is for Toyota here in Ireland, go anywhere, literally anywhere, in a city or especially in the country side and smaller town and the Toyota has ruled the roads for over 30 years. What better way to greater awareness for Suicide in Ireland amongst car enthusiasts than with an event like this. Held this year in the Cork marts in Fermoy the show really dragged some gems out of the woodwork.
I honestly feel bad for the AE111 Levin, it had a lot to live up to following the AE86 legacy along with its two older bothers the 101 and the 92. None of them were rear wheel drive but all possessed fresher better engineered hearts than the original Eighty Six.
Sometimes its best to just work with a winning formula. This Trueno is the perfect example of working with whats out there to create a timeless Gem. The AE86, especially a Panda schemed Trueno is probably one of the most iconic cars lingering on the top of any Japanese car enthusiast.
David picked up this car from a friend a little over a year ago. Prior to that he has never owned an AE86, but it was high on the list of cars he had to own, and simply put, hard work made that become a reality. It’s taken a very short period of time for David to shape this car to suit his personality, however I can tell you that this car is far from finished, in fact as I write this I know he is planning a change again in the near future.
I never really had a chance to say goodbye to this car, a car that for some reason I had such a love for. Its strange when someone finds themselves becoming so attached to a purple piece of metal. On paper it shouldn’t have worked, its colour is ridiculous in real life, its life was sort of a mystery to many. With a little digging we found out that the car was an ex J-blood demo car, by the looks of it, it was the first car to rock those pretty infamous over fenders and wings that the entire world has used over and over.
This was always an interesting build from the Guys at Auto Rest. Obviously built to compete with the DC2 Integra type-R, this Levin actually looks pretty good in, the styling is done quite close to the actual ITR but doesn’t look out of place on the AE111, it would be interesting to see a battle between this AE111 and the DC2, anyone out there know if this ever went down in an of the Japanese videos? Either way a cool car.
Hyper Rev vol18