Chinatown Showoff- Los Angeles, CA
Kicking off their annual show season, Ken Miyoshi and the Mainstream crew invaded Chinatown LA once again to celebrate the Year of the Rat and let the local car clubs battle it out for early bragging rights. Multi-winners High End Performance, Team Hybrid and AMSeven came to floss as did Honda Ruckus champions, Bowls. www.showoffcafe.com
Tetsu's Tales
New GTR, new Impreza STI, new Mitsubishi EVO. Tokyo Auto Salon 2008 is different with last year. There were many new sport cars in the show. Many tuning companies displayed new sport cars in own booth but most of new tuning sport cars' hood was closing and looked like stock. "Could you open the hood for shooting photo?" I asked. But the staff of tuning company said "Sorry. It is still stock now. We are developing some tuning parts for it. We could not finish to develop the tuning parts for it before TAS." I asked same question for some tuning companies but answer was same. They said "During development." I understand this situation because most of tuning companies got new sport cars after summer 2007. Four or five months is very short time for developing new tuning parts and the new sport cars are not simple cars. If you put the fake or bad quality parts on the new sport cars which would make power down. Now,any tuning companies spend the time and much money for developing the parts for the new sport cars. I can't wait next Tokyo Auto Salon in 2009.
Honda's genuine parts company, Honda Access displayed Sports Modulo Civic TYPE-R(www.honda.co.jp/ACCESS/autosalon08/concept/). Modulo Type-R has Modulo body kit and suspension. The body kit is prototype and the suspension is not coilover but Modulo Type-R is faster than stock Civic Type-R. Keiichi Tsuchiya drove this Modulo Type-R and he liked it. He admired Modulo suspension, which you can buy (www.honda.co.jp/ACCESS/automobiles/civictype-r/foot-gear/suspension.html), but I don't know this suspension is good or bad for the streets in USA. I was surprising Lexus had booth in TAS. Lexus displayed Lexus IS race car. Lexus staff said engineer built this IS race car for developing IS-F. IS race car was looked like GT race car. In this year, some race car teams will take part in GT race with Lexus IS. I don't know this IS race car at TAS is the relationship with the IS GT race cars. I think four doors sedan GT race is not bad. Maybe Honda/Acura and Toyota/Lexus will sell new sport cars for competing Nissan GT-R. The price will be over 8,000,000 yen. I am waiting under 2,000,000 yen sport cars!Tetsu