Cab ride to the airport-$20...Cheapest, smallest, most uncomfortable coach seat to Tokyo-$500 (Thanks, Primedia!)...Two extra seats to accommodate Jonathan's unusually large head-$500 each (Thanks, Jonny!)...Shuttle bus from Narita airport to Makuhari-$15 dollars...Escalator down to the 2003 Tokyo Auto Salon show floor-really confusing because we can't read Japanese and could have been headed into a yakatori place for all we knew.
We could tell you so much about Japan; how expensive it is, how crowded it is, how small everything is, how badly Jonny wanted a JDM haircut. But we would rather dive right into the festivities at hand. This show was stupid fresh-not like Avril's stupid necktie but more like Flavor Flav's so-so dope giant clock.
Boss, Z Car! Z Car!
If this show could be summed up in one letter it would have to be Zzzzz...Sorry, we must have nodded off; this jet lag is killer. But that one letter is in fact Z, as in Fairlady 350Z (or Z33 for you chassis code snobs). It was most definitely the car of the show and we witnessed dozens of them sprinkled throughout the three massive halls of the Makuhari Messe.
Perhaps the most telling Z at the show sat on the main turntable within Nissan's booth. If the distinctive red and silver Nismo livery wasn't enough, the car also sported the number 23 normally reserved for his airness and the team's GT500 Castrol Pitwork GT-R. While the two works GT-Rs did switch to a variant of the Z's VQ engine midway through last season, the Nismo reps we spoke with denied the possibility of a factory-backed JGTC effort. The Nismo peeps added that they would only build GT Zs for private teams who wish to compete in the GT300 class. GT300? GT500? Factory-backed? Who cares, we just want to see it on the track.
Nismo also had its 350Z S-Tune street car in the Nissan booth. The S-Tune adds an aero kit and rear wing, more aggressive shocks, springs, and sway bars, 18-inch wheels with Yokohama AVS rubber, and some more horsepower (increased to 290) through minor tweaks and a new exhaust. Nissan's motorsports division is also working on a more aggressive R-Tune track version and a super-hyper Z-Tune model.
In a little corner of the Nissan booth, we found a 450hp VQ35 engine. This sucker was all motor with a ridiculous 13.5:1 compression ratio, built entirely with parts found in the Nismo catalog. While Nissan keeps promoting the Nismo brand in the States, we have yet to see anything like this in the parts department of our neighborhood dealership.
We saw other Zs from C-West, Fabulous, Impul, ings, Mine's, Recaro, Signal, Top Secret, and Trust, just to name many more than a few. In the Option2 area, JUN Auto Mechanic displayed a bright orange 350 that will eventually include a grip of engine internals with the capper being a 3.8L stroker kit! Not to be outdone, the HKS 350 flexed a complete line of engine hardware that included pistons, rods, cams, a complete exhaust system, and individual throttle bodies.
VeilSide was showing off not one, but three Zs with different body treatments called Version I, Version II and, wait for it, Version III. In an odd departure for a Japanese tuner, one of the Z33s was sporting an NX decal (hmmm, a sign of the times?). We also understand that VeilSide's boss man, Mr. Yokomaku, has a supercharger in the works.
What About The Others?
While the Z exerted a Kobe-like dominance throughout the Makuhari Messe, there were some other larger-than-life luminaries looming over the show floor just like Yao. Yo. Yao. Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Subaru, and Toyota were all out in force. The Honda Customize World and Subaru Customize Village displayed tuned versions next to their factory counterparts but the heaviest OE hitters were the Mazdaspeed RX-8, Subaru WRX STi, and Mitsu's Lancer Evolution VIII.