We Do Japan Super Street StyleIn addition to traipsing around the Auto Salon in a futile attempt to get up-the-skirt-shots of the models (and random women on the train), we had the chance to check out some really cool tuners and manufacturers. Nads pestered the Power House Amuse staff to let him misshift his way around the Tsukuba circuit in a few of their demo cars, and Jonny went behind the scenes at Enkei Japan to see how its latest wheel designs are created. Tein USA's resident Mexican Philipp Chavez kidnapped Ricky, deported him to Japan, and forced him to ride and drive the illest rally, drift, and circuit cars. Needless to say, with R. Daddy's temperament, things got out of control. Want to know the full story? Ha! Tune in next month and find out, Sea Bass.
Osamu Hagiwara designs wheels for Advan. Us, we sit around all day writing stupid captions, like this one.
Just in case you need a carbon-fiber undertray diffuser for your Odyssey, Mugen has got you covered.
Tsukuba Dooba DoThe 1.294-mile Tsukuba circuit may not have the same legendary history as the Nurburgring or even Suzuka, but right now this little track in the Ibaragi prefecture means more to the Japanese tuning community than any other circuit in the world. Tsukuba is regarded as a benchmark of sorts, where tuners try to turn that one magical super lap into a reputation that puts them atop the heap. In most cases, the tuners will build the car and secure the services of some professional driver to wheel their beast around the track. Someday, we might bring the time attack to the US. Nah, we'd never be able to pull off something like that-or could we? Check out the list of times that our boy Tetsu helped us compile. We've already featured most of these cars, and we'll probably feature more of them in the future. That is, unless something shiny distracts us.
"You wanna a piece of me?"
Mugen's new NR wheel was just one of the new designs shown at TAS.