The Dream AE86 bumper lands at JDM Distro from Japan. Here’s a little mash-up of a work day in the life, unloading dream parts with a remarkable history.
A Panda Levin AE86, the first Corolla we spotted on our first trip to Japan, is imported into Ireland and calls down to the shed.
We break down the cost of our Japan in a Van road trip, give you a few handy tips for embarking on a similar journey and explain what’s coming next for the Juicebox channel.
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.
Drifting Legends! We finish our Japan journey at the Battle Magazine Cup held at Nikko Circuit. We also get caught in a typhoon before heading back to Ireland! It’s been a blast making these videos and reliving the trip. Cheers for tagging along and enjoying the memories with us.
After a lovely evening at N-Style, and a rather uncomfortable afternoon, we were exhausted. We hadn’t slept much the previous night for obvious reasons, and this night was shaping up to be no different.
We wanted to head out to areas around Sendai and take a look at the coastline. We never really made it up this far on our last trip and figured it would be interesting to stop seeing how the locals have been coping with the 2011 earthquake and tsunami damage.
The guys from CSS treat us to an insane night of proper Japanese street drifting on a mountain touge. We hit the jackpot on this one. We also take a trip through the Fukushima disaster area and call into our friends at N-style custom.
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.
Utsunomiya is roughly halfway between the greater Tokyo area and Fukushima, so it was an ideal spot to park up for the night. The next day we had some time to kill, so we decided to check out the Honda Museum as it wasn’t too far from where we stayed.
We visit the world’s greatest Honda Collection at Twin Ring Motegi, have a chance encounter with Asimo, and get treated to Touge mountain racing with one of the original members of CSS.
One of the things I couldn’t believe was the number of abandoned houses on the way up the road. The further we headed north, the fewer young people we saw, and it seemed like a lot of the smaller towns look deserted,
The sleep at Daikoku was pretty rough. Looking back, I don’t think we slept at all. The roads above Daikoku never ease off. It’s a constant stream of traffic 24 hours a day, not to mention people cruising into the car park at all hours revving cars. What did we expect?
Still, it was funny to say we slept there. Originally It Daikoku intended to be a rest stop for people passing by, so it made sense at the time. We needed to get to JDM Distro before 11 am, so here we were brushing our teeth in the toilet area and hitting the road to Saitama to the Distro Japanese warehouse.
The night wasn’t over yet; we decided, since we were on the outskirts of Tokyo, we would head towards Daikoku. It was a Wednesday night. Still, we had nothing else to do; Thursday was our only day to drop the parts off at the Japanese JDM Distro warehouse, so we had to stick around the greater Tokyo area.
Winds Auto has a long history with the AE86. The owners have been selling them, drifting them and making parts for the AE86 chassis for over 20 years. Winds is a husband and wife setup. Obata, the owner, is an ex D1 driver and former member of one of my favourite teams Guntama-R.
His wife Hiromi used to drive the pink AE86 in Formula D. They are well-established drivers, and it’s great to see they are still in business and still operating and actively drifting together to this day.