I’ve been on the road a lot lately visiting some amazing people in some equally amazing places. Just this month I’ve jumped from Las Vegas to Dubai to Bahrain to San Francisco with a day or two spurts home in Los Angeles in between travels. Next up I’m off to Arizona, and then Japan (pre-Auto Salon and then again for TAS of course!). I apologize for the lack of my personal posts lately, the traveling has made it impossible to keep my regular blogging pace. I’m going to make it up to you, I promise! Continue reading at the Real JDM.

I had been up all night, late into the morning, searching for the cheapest tickets to Japan. Where in Japan? Narita Airport. With the trip already planned, and all the stops laid out, I just knew I had to get started planning where I was going to go next. I had a lot of stops to make if I wanted to please the CarDomain crew. The trip was planned for January 15th, after the holidays. I had been looking for tickets within my budget for before that, but to no avail…

Originally I had made the plans for personal reasons, and although this is still true, I’ve decided that now is the best time to do some good photos and reports on some great places in Japan. With a brand new Panasonic Lumix in hand, and a heck of a lot of cash to spare, I think I’m set. After all, I had neglected to grab some photos the last time I went to Tokyo, so this time, it’s payback time.

The stops? Rauh Welt, Top Secret, RE Amemiya, Zele International, and a few private dealers. Of course I have to do some sightseeing, and I’ll be reporting every once in a while on the interesting cars I see driving around. In the meantime, here’s your chance to throw out some more ideas on good shops I should visit!

Thanks to all the participants in the “Guess the JDM Minivan” posting here on CarDomain. We do have a winner, and its noname666, who happened to guess it almost when the posting went live. So much for the experts here at SEMA! Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "Interview with the Builder of our “Guess the JDM Minivan” Minivan" »

I have been having a real hard time trying to identify the JDM Minivan that has been displayed in the DUB Booth since Monday. I have asked the (real) booth professionals with no luck. I left a phone message with the Air Runner Systems distributor in Anaheim to no avail. I even threw out the question to other Bloggers here at SEMA. So now its time to throw out the question to our readers. Identify this wild custom JDM van, and win some CarDomain Swag. Read more after the Jump!

Continue reading "Guess the JDM Minivan, Win Some CarDomain Swag" »

ASI Japan has released this image of what their Prius aerodynamics package will look. According to ASI, this is the confirmed final version of the design. In other news, ASI has launched a sub brand called ASI Green to release this Prius kit. More at The Real JDM

There has been some buzz about this car ever since the rendering came out. After looking at the above picture, I think you can understand why the buzz is so strong. This car is hot!

So the deal is that Original Runduce came to Varis with a collaboration idea on this upcoming demo car. Since the Varis full bumper (pictured) is offered in two pieces already, this project is relatively simple to produce. The standard Varis aero kit is retained and an original Runduce front diffuser is added to the Varis bumper to create an aggressive new look (reminiscent to the R35 GT-R Amuse front diffuser).

Continue reading "Varis X Runduce CZ4A Evo X Collabo!" »

There is one thing about Japan that you’ve just got to love. No matter how many tuning shops and modified cars there are out there, finding something very special and most importantly of all, different, is not as hard as some may think. It all comes down to a need to be unique and stand out from the crowd, something that becomes very evident if you spend a little time in Japan. This need to be different is precisely what drove the owner of the exceptionally clean JZX80 you see here to go out and create something very special, a car that would satisfy his personal tastes and objectives without following any preset guidelines. From the outside it might just look like your regular twin-turbo powered JZA80 Supra, spiced up with some nice touches like these TRD Sports T3 5-spoke wheels. But one turn of the ignition key is all that’s needed to reveal that there is something a little strange going on under the hood. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Dino Dalle Carbonare

What makes a classic car? Is it a pre-war Bugatti, a ’57 Chevy, ’32 Ford or perhaps anything slathered in British Racing Green and stuffed with a rat’s nest of Lucas electronics? But what about our automotive brethren across the Pac Rim, from the island nation most known for the Camry and Accord? There’s some deep history here such as Honda’s S600, Toyota’s 2000GT, Mazda’s Cosmo or this – Nissan’s OG “Hakosuka” Skyline spotted at the Japanese Classic Car Show held on Saturday, October 3 at Irvine, California’s Hidden Valley Park. This was the fifth anniversary of the show, which is open to any pre-1985 Japanese car. This particular PGC-10 is a 1971 model owned by Mickey Castillo. JDM urban legend says that of the handful of C-10 Skylines in the States only a few are authentic GT-R models. I really don’t care if Mickey’s car is an R because it’s chock full of sick Sonny Chiba style. Hit the jump to see more tasty morsels from JCCS.

Continue reading "Suntory Times! Classic Car Show with a Japanese Twist" »

I was talking with fellow blog reader Jay Hundred about the variety of JDM tuning recently. Jay brought to my attention a curious new release by Toda Japan. I call it curious because I really wonder how many people are buying a 2,355,000 JPY stroker kit (26,500 USD before wire losses, shipping, etc) for their aging Ferrari F355. On one hand I’m not surprised because for as long as I can remember Toda has had a hand in F355 tuning, but I’m just surprised that by now they didnt release a stroker kit for a F360 or F430. I just dont see many people racing and modifying F355s. Most that have this kind of coin to drop on a pricey stroker kit seem to have moved on to F360s and newer. Although I’m guessing Toda can and will prove me wrong since they just released this comprehensive kit.

Regardless, the Ferrari F355 must really move nicely with nearly 500 horses and a redline near 9000rpm coming out of this 3.9L V8. Thanks Jay Hundred for the lead on this.

With all news being GT-R related around here lately, today I looked for something as far opposite as possible to post. So here we go, a customer car of the most unique kind…a UKDM widebody Range Rover Sport! And not a GT-R. Check.

This is a cool story to me and is something I think a lot of readers can relate to that are in my age bracket. My client Rob started working with me almost five years ago on his Honda S2000. Over the years we worked together and he ended up putting together one of the cleanest and nicest S2000s I’ve still ever seen. It is absolutely a flawlessly executed street car build, top notch 100% (another post will come on that). Continue reading at The Real JDM

I find myself to be in the minority when it comes to the use of car pictures…I almost always find the rear of tuned cars more fascinating than the front. Despite knowing that is wrong from a media perspective, (magazines almost always feature the front of the car primarily), I rarely care about convention and I find myself almost always featuring a rear shot first and a front shot later on. Most of the cars I’ve had a hand in building I also prefer the rear to the front as well (my S2000 for certain I prefer the rear profile over the front).

Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "Honda Insight Aero Tuned" »

Import Showoff is arguably the OG import car show, precluded only by the Nisei Cruise of the late Eighties and early Nineties in LA’s Little Tokyo District. And for Showoff architect Ken Miyoshi it only made sense to bring his car show to the Nisei Week Japanese Festival a few years ago as the Nisei Week Showoff thus reuniting real import car flava with the Nisei Festival.

Back in the day the car quality at Import Showoff was second to none. The fake wheel and knock-off body kit crowd needed not apply. The shows were all about the cars. But in ’98 Hot Import Nights seamlessly blended the club kids with the car clubs proving it’s not all about the cars. Yet for some of us it was always all about the cars. While Ken may have diluted his original recipe with a few grains of rice over the years the Nisei Showoff has basically maintained the quality of one of Mr. Miyoshi’s old school Mainstream Productions. And one recent trend Nisei showcases is the resurgent Honda movement. For example, the engine bays of these Civics feature nothing fast nor furious, just shaved and filled sheet metal, tucked wire harnesses and built motors. Hit the jump to see more random observations from what might have possibly been the final Nisei Showoff. Say it ain’t so, Ken!

Continue reading "Goodnight Nisei Week Showoff, There Will be no Encore" »

Following up on the popular garage life post from a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to share pictures of one of Nigo’s homes and specifically his garage (pictured above). Nigo is of course the founder of A Bathing Ape clothing in Japan and owner of the hilarious pink BAPE camo’d Bugatti Veyron featured years ago on this blog (as well as a BAPE camo Phantom and camo classic gullwing SL Benz).

I think Nigo’s goal in spending is to singlehandedly keep the Japanese economy afloat. With the mass of stuff he manages to accumulate, he might be pulling it off. Next time you blow a couple hundred on some Bapestas, you’ll clearly know where a bulk of your money is going… Continue reading at The Read JDM

I’ve been down to the Daikoku Parking Area rather often this last month. First it was the RX7 annual meeting in July, then the AE86 gathering last week, but last night it was more of a small get together with a few car-otaku friends of mine. I wasn’t expecting to shoot anything as it was just our monthly meet, but I brought my camera gear in the back of the 34, just in case. It’s a good thing I did, as there were quite a few interesting cars that dropped by over the course of the night. Continue reading at Speedhunters

By Dino Dalle Carbonare

After slowly setting foot onto my doorstep, I felt the sun glare onto my body. I had to shield my eyes to take the twelve steps  to greet the beleaguered and somewhat shy fellow beside my garage, with the extremely common name of James. What James drove, however, was not common. James didn’t know much about what it was that he was driving, besides the fact that he loved it with a passion, and that he was proud to call it his own. He didn’t know that what sat in my driveway held many mysteries, and my day was about to be filled with surprise, and disbelief, all at the same time. What he was driving was a Nissan Skyline BNR32 GT-R, but not your everyday average GT-R. This one was quite special indeed.

Continue reading after the jump!

Continue reading "No Price For Knowledge: the Story of a GT-R" »