EVENT: Japanese Classic Car Show 2019 Part 2

In part 1 we discussed how JCCS is a prime example of balancing exclusivity and size. The cars are just as important though, the selection of classic Japanese cars at JCCS is second to none. There have been fears that Toyota’s pull out from the California automotive world would be detrimental for the show. While Toyota’s rare gems from it’s collection were missed, as we will see, the term detrimental is relative. The show was still like no other, with or without Toyota’s official presence.

To start that off, I have for you Tommy Dolormente’s KP61 Toyota Starlet. With a curb weight of barely a ton soaking wet with a portly driver, rear wheel drive and a staggeringly high manual transmission take rate, this is possibly one of the greatest hatchbacks ever produced. The only reason this car is not on the tip of every car enthusiasts tongue is their survival rate, which is akin to that of Northern White Rhino. That being said, if you can find a good KP61 Starlet, they’re absolutely amazing vehicles and can deliver more fun with under 100 HP than most cars can do with 300 HP today. Even the smallest power increase can turn one of these cars into quite the pocket rocket.

Anthony Keuth’s Jasper Green Metallic DA9 Integra with a factory optional front lip and 16″ Mugen M7s is a timeless look. Technically, aside from the suspension work, everything you see on this car is an OEM part or a dealer optional part. The final piece that I want to point out is the color, Jasper Green Metallic, which is all too often forgotten about in lieu of the much more well known Aztec Green Pearl but is just as fantastic of a green hue.

This Tercel owned by Edgar Briones has won best in show at shows across California and the owner competes in speed, distance, time classic car road rallies with it. While the car doesn’t have the pedigree of a Supra or an MR2 or, for that matter, even the pedigree of a Toyota Paseo, the originality of this Tercel is it’s charm. Edgar bought the car from the family of a grandma that drove it barely 10,000 miles and kept it meticulously original. The car represents possibly the most unloved Toyota chassis but is still able to turn more heads than the hot boy AE86 across the walkway from it.

This 1980 Toyota Corolla owned by Patrick De Lein is a rare example of one of my favorite generations of Corolla, the AE71 Liftback, modified in period correct kit. While a show worthy AE86 with under 100,000 miles would demand well over $15,000, an E71 in equivalent condition might be able to touch the $10,000 mark if it was exceptionally well equipped and in a rare color. Given their mechanical similarity, if you’re in the market for an AE86, you might be better off just going with an AE71.

Speaking of AE86s though, Janet Fujimoto’s red GT-S on SSR Longchamps is quite possibly the best example of a USDM AE86 in the wild. With only minimal modifications, it stays true to the original appeal of the AE86. There is a completely misguided urban legend that they’re overpowered sleeper monster cars, instantly great drift cars and cure cancer. While they are rather great, they’re more like an E30, just a very well balanced car that, while slow, are very responsive and make you a better driver. While some may disagree on what the actual value of a perfect AE86 should be, we can all agree that they are much more than just the sum of their parts.

This Honda Life Step Van looks like it is the result of some tilt shift camera trickery to make it look smaller than it’s surroundings but it really is this small. The van looks perfectly proportionate sitting on very small SSR Meshes, in fact they’re only 10″ in diameter. Despite the diminutive size of the kei van, I can fit in it with ample headroom. The van even has a manual transmission, the awesome per square inch of this beige van is off the charts.

The Datsun 510 that has the honor of being the featured picture on this post is handily the best 510 build I have seen in person. The S.E.V. Marchal headlamps are a bonus but the build quality across the rest of the car is untouchable. Coated in a wonderful green hue and rolling on RS Watanabes, the car is a crash course in how to build a late 60’s import car tastefully for a timeless appeal. It doesn’t need a crazy wide body kit or a wing attached to the bumper mounts, just attention to detail and some rare additions.

Although a lot more over the top than the 510, this TE37 Toyota Corolla on TOSCO wheels is just as timeless. The classic Japanese car look of tiny wide wheels, bright colors and overfenders began to gain popularity in the 80s with builds like these. Although, this has more than a few JDM touches that were largely unavailable back then, you could just as well visualize this cruising with Minitrucks as you could visualize it carving canyon roads across town.

Next to the TE37 Corolla was one of the most properly built RA21 Celicas I’ve seen in quite some while. Nicknamed the Daruma Celica for its similarity to a Japanese Daruma doll, the first generation Celica has always had one of the most drastic changes in appearance when switching from the USDM rubber-baby-buggy bumpers to the JDM “banana” bumpers. Naturally this car sports the JDM bumpers with an aftermarket front air dam and for extra cool points, this particular car has a rare OEM acrylic aero nose.

The wheels of JCCS are a sight to behold and the aforementioned Celica does not disappoint with a set of 14″ Techno Phantoms at each corner. In an era where Honda Civics come with 20″ wheels, seeing a 195/55R14 tire brings me joy. There isn’t much better in life than a tire/wheel combo that looks great and can take a pothole without rearranging the driver’s spine.

While this Kenmeri Skyline has fake wheels on it and some questionable engine bay dress up bits, there is a lot of wild stuff happening on it. First off, it is a narrow body car without the wheel arches so the curve in the bodyline over the rear wheel well to the tail light, called the surf line, is fully available to behold. I honestly wish people would keep their Skylines narrow bodied because the surf line is one of my favorite features of classic Skylines. Also note that the car is left hand drive, this Skyline is actually a middle eastern Nissan Skyline 240Y GT and is possibly one of the rarest Nissan models in the world today as their survival rate was tragically low.

This Datsun B210 blew away not only Jana, Big Mike and I but the judges as well as the car went away with a trophy of its own. While not as drastic as the Daruma Celica this generation of Datsun B210 had it’s own metamorphasis once modified even slightly. Once the bumpers are removed and the right wheel fitment is achieved, the Datsun B210 looks downright wonderful. Its a shame that these eventually evolved into the Nissan Versa we know today.

As Japanese classic cars move further into the mainstream, styles that are better known in Japan are expanding onto our shores. The bosozoku style of Japanese motorcycles has finally hit our shores with it’s sky high Takeyari exhaust pipes, extended fairings and wild paint schemes. What’s more is that the niche style of bosozoku scooters has made its way here and it had done so in a way that’s even bigger than the bosozoku motorcycle style is in America.

The appeal of these scooters is much more broad than just the Japanese classic car community, their low entry price and vast aftermarket has become an entry point for many millennials and Gen-Zer’s into car/bike culture that otherwise cannot afford the entry price. This trend combats the hypothesis that millennials don’t care about cars anymore, when most do express some interest in cars but can barely afford to pay their student loans, much less modify a second car. With total prices for builds below $3,000, a bosozoku scooter is an attainable entry point for many that otherwise would not be able to enjoy our culture.

What was once the cheap entry point into car culture fifteen years ago, the golden age Honda Civic, is now becoming more of an investment than a fun hobby. With that, build quality is better now than ever before. Currently Kenji from GReddy has arguably the best EF Honda Civic in the world right now. Not only has it been immortalized as a Hot Wheels car, but it serves as a greatest hits of the best parts produced for the chassis.

The exterior sports an SiR front end, SSR EX-C wheels, JDM fenders and a GReddy liveried stripe down the side. Under the hood the B18C1 engine has been built to produce 1,000 HP but only makes a fraction of that for street use and reliability. The fitment of the full sized radiator and and old school GReddy GS-R turbo manifold is made possible thanks to a smaller GReddy T518Z turbocharger off a 86/BRZ turbo kit. This combination of parts and detail is without a doubt the best EF Civic build in the world.

While GReddy Kenji’s Civic is an absolutely bonkers powerhouse, this Datsun 1200 pickup is the complete opposite. With 60 HP as advertised, it proves that you don’t need a massive V8 to get the job done. Rather, you need only about 60 HP… or at least it makes a convincing argument for double digit horsepower.

Getting back to the roots of JCCS and what I love about it is this Datsun 1200. Japan has made no shortage of truly amazing vehicles, for every GT-R, Supra or STI, there exists a Tercel, Maxima or Datsun pickup. The community doesn’t just laugh them off like most other communities do with their people’s cars, they truly appreciate them en masse. Its not like other communities where only one or two people’s cars get recognized because they ended up with a racing pedigree, with Japanese cars, they consistently get the respect they deserve.

Sure, there is something truly comical about about seeing the 60 HP Datsun 1200 Pickup right after seeing literal rows of Z-cars and Celicas. That humor isn’t at the expense of the humble peoples truck though, it’s directed at the people who don’t get it. There was once a time where cars like this lift back Celica was once viewed as quaint and the community remembers that. Perhaps that’s why classic Japanese car enthusiasts are so open minded because while they’re en vogue now, it wasn’t very long ago where a Civic got laughed at the same way that a Mirage gets a laugh today.

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EVENT: Japanese Classic Car Show 2019 Part 1

This was the fifteenth year of the Japanese Classic Car Show in 2019, fifteen years is an extremely long time for a car show series to be held for consistently. If we think about it, 15 years ago NOPI was still happening, Wek’Fest still had a few years before it even came into existence and Hot Import Nights was where the cool kids were being seen at. Needless to say, the timeframe that Japanese Classic Car Show has been happening for usually encompasses the entire lifespan of most shows, Japanese Classic Car Show (hereby abbreviated as JCCS) has a handful of traits to make it enduring but the two that make it special are it’s quality and its position as the cornerstone of the Japanese classic car community.

Throughout it’s existence, JCCS has been at the forefront of the Japanese classic car community. While the collector community is more than fans of just one show, this show represents the heart and soul of the culture. While JCCS is at the forefront, it’s still relatively small. Comparing to another show that is a major part of it’s respective culture, traversing this show is not the massive multiple day odyssey that you get with Back to the 50’s. You don’t feel compelled to buy a Japanese Nostalgic Car so you can actually make through the entire show, you feel compelled because you genuinely want one. Where some shows like BTT50’s are big for the sake of being big, JCCS is surprisingly small but what it lacks in size, it makes up for in quality.

Japanese Classic Car Show’s true beauty resides in where it falls on the scale of exclusivity. No, it’s not BTT50’s where literally anything produced prior to 1964.5 is let in but it also lacks the excessive exclusivity found at Concours D’Elegance where tickets are $300 and cars get denied because the stitching on the seats is incorrect. Cars like this survivor Datsun 411 are given the respect they deserve after being kept original for 50 years but a lowered AE86 isn’t chastised for being modified.

The closest that JCCS gets to Concours particular is the eligibility of the cars. Historically, JCCS has had a rolling 25 year rule matching the United States car importation law. When JCCS started, 15 years ago, plastic bumper imports were barely on the cusp of being allowed into the show but as time has moved on, the cars have gotten newer and newer. The inclusion of newer cars has taken some time to get used to but fears of the chrome bumpers being pushed out were unfounded. What was once a show of early Japanese oddities now has made space for the golden age of Japanese cars without losing its soul.

Originally, JCCS had a separate show called JCCS Neo-Classics, but with the closure of the Toyota Headquarters in Torrance, CA, they had to find a way to merge the two shows. The merger meant that, eventually, JCCS had to leave its long time home of Queen Mary Beach for it’s current location across the bay. While it was briefly lived, the Neo-Classics show was a great way to ease plastic bumper cars into the larger JCCS community and also allowed the series to test the waters of more modern vehicles like this Racing Beat RX7 convertible.

These newer vehicles also represent the time where Japan went from being seen as just an entire country of austerity purchases, and wrongfully thought as keeping up with the world, to a time where they objectively dominated the world. In decades prior the Japanese models had to be sold to us but, by the 1980’s, the world had to be counter offered away from Japanese cars. The 1980’s saw the Japanese brands not only dominate the middle class’s driveways but by the end of the decade, they were coming for the European luxury brands.

The inclusion of plastic bumper cars has also been important for the community as a lot of those cars are some of the fastest appreciating collector cars in the world right now. With that sudden appreciation, a lot of attention is being paid to the trends at JCCS so the larger car community can see what people are doing with these early and golden age Japanese collectors.

As people are coming through for the RX7s and 240Zs, some are discovering the other gems that people don’t talk about. For every two well known cars, something like this Mazda 626 Coupe was at the show. It is never a bad thing when cars that were once looked over as just another semi-sporty RWD Coupe get their moment in the spot light for what they are.

If you’re like most people in the world and you’re coming to see the more well known JNCs like Datsuns, AE86s and Celicas, then you had nothing to fear. Datsun Z cars easily outnumbered any other single make, not model but literally entire make. There was easily a Z car for every Honda, Toyota or other Datsun, Mitsubishi was outnumbered five to one and, for the Subaru to Z-car ratio, it was easily a dozen to one.

While Z cars were a dime a dozen at the show, one would assume the best Z-car in the show would be the rarest and most desirable. However, easily the best Z in the whole show was also the “least desirable” for collectability, being not only the emissions strangled 260Z but a 2+2 at that.  Luis Rivera went out of his way to hunt down a 2+2 for the project. His build with it’s molded metal fender flares, a 240Z two-seater front end and a profound split pea soup green combined into what might be my favorite Z-car build in recent years. The car easily stole the show for the Z-car class.

Two of the most authoritative connoisseurs of green cars, Jana and Big Mike from the Think Bigger Project both agree that this car is unbelievable. According to Mike, Luis wanted to build a S30 that would stand out from the crowd and we can rest assured that he has done so. Builds like this are something that can make you think differently about a platform as a whole.

With the prices of S30s going through the roof, the often unloved long boy 2+2 is suddenly becoming all the more desirable. The 2+2s are a bit of a commitment though, every panel of the vehicle is different from the two seaters and they are often in far worse condition due to the relative undesirability as a collector so the chances of being underwater with a restoration is nearly guaranteed. That being said, can you really put a price on the extra cargo space for when you want to bring along some light reading?

Another chassis that was often considered undesirable was the R31 Skyline GTS-R. It is true that it did pale in comparison to the R32 GT-R but we have to remember, back in it’s day, the R31 was neigh untouchable and many consider it entirely worthy of the GT-R badging that Nissan was coy to apply without absolute confidence. It also was the first Skyline to sport the iconic blue Calsonic livery that we see replicated on this R31 coupe. Today R31s demand equal to and in some cases more money than it’s younger R32 brethren.

If you’re completely at odds as to what this is, you aren’t alone. It is actually a RT114 Toyota Corona Coupe, namely a RHD model. The Corona was Toyota’s first compact car sold in America and it eventually moved up market when the Corolla arrived before eventually being replaced in our market with the Camry in 1983. While the Celica was the Toyota sports car of the 1970s, the Corona Coupe occupied an awkward space as their GT model replacing the yet even more rare Carina. It was powered by the venerable Toyota R20, known best as a truck engine reliable beyond reproach and all Coronas that were sold in America were exclusively RWD. Unfortunately like the Mazda 626 and 260Z 2+2, the RT114 Coronas were rare and never got their proper respect stateside. Frankly every generation of Corona gets about as much respect as Rodney Dangerfield and should be worth a hell of a lot more than they currently are.

Speaking of not getting any respect stateside, there were several Japanese imported Toyota Hiaces. These have always been the ultimate in Japanese vanning, I absolutely believe that if these were imported to America in the 70’s and 80’s, they would have eaten Volkswagen’s lunch.

Just look how plush that interior is! If you compared this to a Volkswagen Vanagon from the late 80s, this would obliterate in in any comparison test. The van pictured is very clearly a high spec with the rear sunroofs and doilies on the seats. A keen eye will also see how pristine this is in that it even has the Pre-Delivery plastic on the pillars still.

One might ask why Japan never brought these to America and it is a valid question. However when you look at the marketing of the special editions, it begins to make sense. In Japan it was common to put a small paragraph on the side of cars in awkwardly translated English, needless to say this slogan kept me from sleeping the following night.

There is so much to say about JCCS, honestly it is a prime example of why everyone loves the SoCal car community. It isn’t that their cars are objectively better but their great cars are in such abundance that their shows are world class. A lot of shows can take a tip from JCCS because of how well it balances exclusivity, styles and ages. I can’t possibly cover every car in the show that was worthy of looking at in a single post, honestly, I would have to start an Instagram page of just JCCS cars to do that. What I can do is give you a second post with more of the cars, until then welcome back to The Carbitrage.