When you sit and think of the ever-growing industry of Honda tuners there is Mugen and then there is everyone else. In respect to Honda vehicles, there is the legendary flagship NSX and then there is every other car Honda has built. This begs a question: what happens when Mugen, for the first time in nearly two decades, creates a concept vehicle based on Honda's pinnacle of performance? For Honda enthusiasts everywhere it can be summed up in three words - it's a miracle!
As you may have read in our April issue, I visited the Tokyo Auto Salon for the very first time in 2009. While nearly the whole show was a shock-and-awe ordeal for me, when I first set my eyes on this NSX - while it was atop its rotating podium - I had a near heart attack/jizz in my pants experience. When I finally came to, I remember snapping pics like crazy along with the frenzy of other photogs trying to get their fill. After roughly two minutes and fifty frames, my boss, JDM Wong, came up to me and said "so... you like this car huh?" A sarcastic "uhh... yeah!" was all I could mutter. Grinning, Jon replied "good, you'll be shooting it on Tuesday!"
That night when I returned to my hotel room, all I could think about was making sure this car looked the best it could. Granted there were plenty of amazing cars I would end up shooting while in Japan, but to a die-hard Mugen fanatic this was possibly the coolest car I had ever seen in my existence. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen that wasn't equipped with female reproductive organs and I still couldn't wait to get my hands on it.
The day of the shoot I woke up late, as usual, to Tetsu and Jon getting ready to go and load up our JDM rental car with gear for the day's shoot. After what seemed like an eternity, we finally arrived in Saitama, Japan at Mugen's headquarters. While I admit the first thing on my mind was to get a picture of me with my newly acquired Mugen gloves doing a bird-man hand gesture in front of the Mugen sign (which Jonny sadly declined), I quickly gained interest in the shoot at hand once we rounded the street into the parking lot behind the structure.
As we passed the employee lot on our way to main area where I was to be shooting, it became very clear - I had died and gone to heaven. While the daily drivers sitting in the gravel employee lot looked like an entire year's worth of Honda-Tuning cover cars, we had bigger fish to fry - and little time to do so. How little of time I didn't realize until I had unloaded my gear and Tetsu explained frantically "They have meeting at one-o-crock..." which left me with approximately one hour to shoot both the NSX RR and the Civic RR Advanced... needless to say I spent the majority of my time on this monster.
When I finally had my gear setup I decided to walk the premises to find the optimum location to shoot my dream car... unfortunately even though M-TEC is actually a huge facility by Japan's standards, no such location existed. I essentially had a smorgasbord of angles - all conveniently located within the same 40 square feet of concrete covered with harsh shadows, ugly grating and extremely distracting backgrounds... but I got over it, hell I was in Japan, at Mugen - for free! So I did what I do best and tried to make due with what I had.
Knowing that time was of the essence, Mugen had assembled a team of workers to take on the delicate task of moving this automotive masterpiece. After deciding on a location, the team scurried the vehicle into position and I started moving in the lights. Shooting a white car in the middle of the afternoon is about one of the most difficult things you can possibly photograph - coincidentally it's also one of my favorite scenarios. And while setting up my lights I knew how tough it was going to be to show all of the technical aspects of the car through a photograph.