After a short break for lunch, it is finally our turn to take our skills to the track. Earlier in the day we were told that our session would be cut short if it started to snow. Snow? They've got to be joking; this is the moment we've all been waiting for, and a little bit of bad weather wasn't about to CB us. It took a couple laps just to get used to the whole left-hand shifting deal. Sure enough, just as we are about to plop into the next car, it starts to snow. We're not talking a few flakes here and there, this is a full on blizzard.
Nothing left to do but grab all our gear and retreat to the tour bus. That's just enough time for a nap before we hit the Ramen Museum and our next hotel.
Coilovers Galore
Super Street Revisits the Tein Factory...Or Do We?The Tein factory has changed locations since our last visit. Surprisingly, everything in the new building looks exactly like it did in the old one. Nonetheless, we did find some pretty cool stuff to check out. Too bad Ro-Ro wasn't around to steal some stuff. We think he's in rehab for his kleptomania right now.
Because we were snowed out at the track, we had a chance to ride in the Tein cars around town with different suspension setups. If we had our international driver's license, we could have driven them ourselves, but we don't, so we ended up sitting shotgun again.
Up and Down: Hybrid Wagon Damper: Like Hittin' Switches, Only Not Stupid
One of the main reasons that Tein brought us to Japan was to check out the unveiling of its new Hybrid Wagon Damper at the Tokyo Auto Salon. These little doohickeys are pretty badass. It's pretty much a coilover suspension setup, but with a separate controller that allows you to raise and lower the car from inside the cockpit. The only downside is that there are no plans to release these dampers in the States. Oh, and they're really expensive. But other than those two slight complications, we wouldn't mind slapping these things on any car that we own. Hey, at least they ride comfortably. Not like that time we thought it'd be funny to replace the springs in Nads' RSX with gummy worms.
Nads Tears Up Tsukuba With Power House Amuse
Has he seen us drive? I had to keep repeating this question to our friend Taro Koki from Zigzag Asia (producers of the Best Motoring Video series). Taro also works with Power House Amuse and he asked us if we wanted to join the Japanese tuner in a customer appreciation day held at the world-renown Tsukuba circuit. The purpose was to allow us to sample some of the Amuse machines and sit down with the man himself, PHA creator and big boss Hideki Tanabe.
Most Japanese tuning names lose something in the translation, and at first glance the Power House Amuse moniker looks like another fine example of this linguistic nightmare. To put it simply, Tanabe-san wanted to amuse his customers with the products. Power House was added because Amuse is a shop that specializes in ECU and muffler tuning, which enhances the power of the car. Did you get that? There will be a quiz later.
Everyone knows that if you reduce poundage you increase the power-to-weight ratio, thus elevating performance. Tanabe-san says anyone can strip parts, but his goal is to make something light, comfortable, and fast. He knows the fun of driving a light, powerful car, but he doesn't want to sacrifice comfort, that is, unless you are referring to his Carbon R, a beastly 571hp carbon-fiber-bodied R34 GT-R that Tanabe-san himself blasted to a 57.810 mark at Tsukuba's big track.