(the car above is made out of cardboard! I can’t stop thinking about how amazing it is!)
Here’s a 2:30am early access report to Tokyo Auto Salon 2010.
I caught two themes to this show this year, the most obvious was the tuning of hybrid cars. The Prius and the Insight were everywhere as expected by most. Everything from a crazy widebody LF-A inspired Prius to simple tuned ones to VIP tuned by Garson, it seems like everyone had a Prius or an Insight. Mostly Prius though…
The other theme of the show was more subtle…the resurgence of retro JDM tuning. Two of my favorite cars at the show fit into this category.
1. A Hakosuka retrofit onto a Nissan Stagea which included a full Hakosuka GT-R front end swap and also even tail lamps that were Hakosuka styled. This takes the typical R34 front end swap and flips it on its head.
2. A Miata (1st Gen) fully converted both exterior and interior into a Toyota 2000GT Roadster. This car was flawless. I want one. Badly.
Two surprises for me were:
1. The completed Tamon Designs 370Z, the same car which I posted a sketch of just recently on this blog. (the car turned out very cleanly and I think it’ll grow on people)
2. Varis had not only a R35 GT-R there in collaboration with Runduce but also their first Mercedes, a C63 sporting a Varis front spoiler, rear under garnish and trunk spoiler in carbon fiber.
Fans of Voltex will be interested to know that they released a new wing which has the center and side plates integrated into one piece. They consider it a street wing but it looks like a rather unique GT wing.
A favorite from the show for me is a lifesize dead-on replica of a Super GT NSX out of cardboard (crazy surreal to look at). I couldn’t stop talking about how amazing it was!
My last thought for the night was that although the show was downsized massively due to the recession, the extra space was used very well. Option and their affiliates used nearly a full hall to hold what is essentially a very selective car show. They selected a large number of amazing vehicles including a RB26 based GT-R sub-show and a really nice lineup of old school tuned JDM rides. If there were more booths at the show, we wouldn’t get a chance to see so many of these amazing cars ranging from Esprit’s crazy turbo NSX time attack car to various Rocky Auto restored old school Fairladys and GT-Rs to Garage Saurus’s famous orange 884 drag R32 GT-R to the Amuse Vestito 370Z.
All in all, this Auto Salon should provide a lot of inspiration and excitement just like in years past. Its vastly different, yet in many ways the same.
I’ll be blogging in more depth and pointing out topics I want to discuss once I return to LA. At the moment its approaching 3am and I’ll be lucky to survive this blog post without massive blunders in grammar.
Two of my favorite cars at the show…Here it is…THE NEW OLD! Hakosuka Stagea and 2000GT Roadster Miata conversion. Both were amazing concepts and were beautiful to look at.
All pictures are huge resolution so feel free to click on them and save as desktops.
All of the early release pictures will be sent shortly to our newsletter subscribers. That newsletter is being put together right now by Jeff and Colin as I’m writing this blog post.
