The turnout for this meeting did appear to be quite on the low side. The conflict of dates around this time of year likely doesn’t aid attendance numbers but it’s good to see a few cars and the people who dig ‘em out and about. I’ll be able, myself, to attend this one year. However distant in the future that might be, I guess the longer it takes the more likely I am able to bring the Prince as opposed to the Kenmeri. AAAAAAAaaaannnyhoo;
Leon's Isuzu Gemini
JZ-powered Hilux
A trophy cabinet full of slammed Crowns with various motivation.
This event started with very humble beginnings, the idea and thought that most people have had, to start an event that caters for Japanese classics. It’s very few and far between in NZ. Our small country’s classic car scene has been dominated for the most part by the rodders of V8 and concourse of European (including British) types. Japanese cars (as with a lot of western society, I imagine) tend to have been looked down upon and scoffed at by such crowds. The reality is though that Japanese cars are more accessible to most, as in their heyday, they’re cheaper and more reliable than their more “prestigious” counterparts.
Enough of the blather though, this is an online blog, you didn’t come here to read my dribble, you came to check out the photographs. So here you go.
70's Mitsubishi GTOs.. remember when the GTO was awesome?
Shared by Mr. D. Carbonare on SpeedHunters, taken at the Tokyo Auto Salon. Aesthetically this S30Z looks pretty… ….average to poor.
I’m no fan of the TE37V and their ability to make stylish cars bland. The bonnet in carbon would be alright, had they not added the god awful American muscle-look raised section, purposeful or not. I’m also not a fan of that manner of air dam, it’s especially evident from the angle this photo is taken on that it seems more to distort the front end shape of a beautiful car than it does improve it.
Super-charged L-series
What IS awesome about the car, the L28改 3.1L stroker motor with super-charger attached. I’m quite keen to find out what kind of numbers the car makes, you can read in the SH article itself that it’s estimated to be around 400hp. Given what other awesome L-series I’ve seen in G-Works, I can imagine this being quite likely indeed.
-Michael
It has been an interesting week. Recently the blue S21D-4 for sale relatively locally took a massive drop in price. It was then bought by some decent sounding chap who lives on the other island of this tiny country. This meant it was no longer available for me to some-how get and then decide which one of the two I wanted to complete. That said, at least it’s going somewhere and likely getting sorted instead of sitting in an old mental asylum.
Then this morning I was browsing the ever wonderful JNC forums and stumbled upon this;
1960 Prince Skyline ALSIE-1
Yep. New/Recent pictures of a recent purchase of one of only 600 Prince Skylines exported to the United States. There are survivors! So cool. (literally, look at that snow!) It really does appear to be in fairly decent condition too…
Piloted by none other than… myself. (As if the shades didn’t give it away)
It ain't pretty, but it's got it where it counts
Even with my relatively conservative (read: noob) lines I still managed to punt said racecar to a 1:56 PB around Track 1 at Taupo with the new ‘slow’ turn 12, which trumps my previous record in my own FWD TX3 by a whole twelve seconds. I can only imagine what sort of laptimes a more experienced/ballsy driver could be capable of doing in that thing.
the Mirage is running a mildly tickled Dirk-spec 4G63 out of a VR-4 and tricky diffs front and rear (yup it’s 4WD). There has been talk of re-tuning the car to run 20psi of boost; now we’re getting serious.
Thanks to Logan/Gorgasm for the photo, and to the guys from Rogue Racing for the chance to blaze around Taupo in this 
