I’m playing catchup, editing these photos and chucking them up on the site, but I’m enjoying the process of looking back at the progress so far. You’d miss build threads on old forums. These days it’s youtube for that sort of stuff. Regardless of the vlogs, I’ve still been snap-happy shooting as many photos as possible of the progress.
If cars could speak, Reubens C33 would have quite the story. Fortunately, we have managed to document most of its life since it left the motherland, a hack machine that someone threw together. Reuben imported this car with the sole purpose of making some extra cash. It wasn’t until it landed that he started trying on wheels and parts that he fell in love with it.
Much like our photos from the 2019 BBQ, right before the world knew anything about the word Covid, we made our way to the most famous car show in Ireland, held in September every year. This event was a washout, and as expected, we were a little deflated after just coming back from our trip to Japan, which you might have seen on our youtube channel.
We did a lap of the paddock, trying to capture whatever caught our eyes and battled the never-ending heavy downpours that followed.
Little did we know this would be the very last sizeable Irish car show as nothing has happened since the Pandemic took hold of the world. Regardless, enjoy these quick photos from a pre covid world. It took a little longer than expected to get around to putting them on the site, ill keep the words to a minimum here and let the high-quality selection speak for itself. Enjoy – Neil
What a way to see Nikko, a track I’ve always wanted to see at a dream event. The “car gods’ were good to us on this trip. It was a fantastic way to sign off our car hunting in Japan. Our 18 days of travelling from the north to the south had let us meet so many people. We had seen so much stuff, from shops to cars to scenery to tracks, engaged with many interesting people.
After a look about power vehicles, we decided not to take the piss as the lads wanted us out of there, and we made our way up to Nihonmatsu to meet Chogo.
Once we were good to go, we decided to make the drive to Ebisu, we knew we would get there late, but that’s where we would be meeting Chogo from CSS in Nihonmatsu, the town just down from the circuit where we met the guys before.
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.
We were redoing our very first trip all over again, but no one was complaining. We had to check out Global Auto before it closed, arguably the most incredible line up of Japanese dream cars globally; the view at this place is entirely surreal, like something out of a video game. Continue Reading
Another show we made our way to in 2019, just before we left for Japan, was DB on the quay.
What I liked about this event was the dockside location and the varied mix of cars. Usually, our BBQ is primarily bringing Japanese machinery through the friends we have met over the years. I’ve always wanted to include more variety, but we seem to have a nack in creating bonds with people with the same interest, more specifically Japanese cars.
Ireland has a very diverse car culture, and sometimes it’s hard to bring a mixed bag of enthusiasts together as they tend to stay in their groups. We have a show called Japfest which promotes Japanese cars, and we have VW and old Ford events with a similar style, again usually bringing people from the same crowds together.
D-Mac reminisces about building his AE86 to compete in D1 during the golden years of drifting, we get a tour of the shop and encounter the strongest Irish accent.
At this point, we thought the rust chasing was coming to an end, oh how we were wrong! Barry had worked his way up to the front end of the car, cutting out the last few bits around the shock tower, making his way to the front end.
Barry chases the last bits of rust on the AE86 shell before we give the underneath a coat of protection. This progress is interrupted many times by a variety of distractions.
I have a lot of memories with this car, I passed out and slept in it at Gatebil one year in Sweden, I got the chance to take a passenger spin with Luke Fink on the side of the Alps back in 2013 as he drifted the narrow ski resort hills…
Barry is back to cut the rust out of the AE86. Jackie calls down to apply fresh seam-seal the vulnerable parts of the Trueno! More progress and fewer distractions with this one.