Cary Inayoshi has come a long way. Brought up in Hawaii, he’s been around the tuning scene since the early-90s, even opening up a shop called HyperSports. He also gave birth to a racing series called Hawaii’s Fastest Street Shootout. In the late-90s, Cary relocated to San Jose, CA where he helped coordinate events for IDRC and Import Showoff, as well as helped A&L Racing and Dave Shih’s Silver Bullet team at races. But everything came to a halt when his daily grind at Applied Materials required more travelling. Cary dropped out of the import community like third period French. But that would change…
Like Michael Jordan coming out of retirement, Cary jumped back into the scene. Today, he helps BLOX Racing with public relations and has a marketing role at SpeedElement Performance. Now much more mature, he isn’t driving around a little hatchback but balls-out in these two sophisticated Lexus sedans.
Meant to be a daily driver, Cary bought the ’08 IS F first. He mounted 19x9/10" gunmetal Advan RZ on all four corners, then had some coilovers prototyped. A custom polished intake was pieced together with the help of Weapon*R and a Borla exhaust finished the upgrades.
With all the typical bolt-ons done, Cary wasn’t about to stop. After being approached by a wheel manufacturer to display his car at SEMA, he pushed the envelope further. Famous Motor Groupe constructed a trunk enclosure for two 12" Kenwood subs, and a custom diffuser was fabricated to give the rear its unique swagger.
But it wasn’t enough. Cary’s IS F had to break necks at SEMA so he took notice of the popular vinyl wrap trend. A few weeks later, the IS was wrapped head-to-toe in bright Apple green with flat black accents.
Finishing up the car, Cary took apart the headlights to have them painted black while adding a green halo around the projectors. A badgeless front grille and Auto Couture front lip rounded out the spec list.
With the IS F sitting pretty, it took a role as Cary’s weekend toy while a newly-acquired ‘07 LS460 became his Monday-to-Friday cruiser.
Not about to leave it stock, Cary picked up some Megan Racing coilovers from SpeedElement, then mounted a set of 22x9.5/11" Savini wheels.
After hearing about a modified LS at VIP Auto Salon being returned to stock, Cary jumped at the opportunity to inherit its parts. This included a full Wald body kit with molded bumpers along with the trunk and roof spoilers.
The car was taken to Reliance Auto Body in San Jose where the aero parts were painted. While the paint guns were out, the engine covers were color-matched. Putting the final touches on the car, VIP bolted up a PTS exhaust system and swapped in black and grey leather upholstery from its old shop car. The rest is history…
Cary shows us how easy it is to build a Lexus. With the newer IS and LS platforms, it doesn’t take a lot of mods to make them pretty—just good planning, reliable shops and hard work. Wanna be a baller?