Tokyo Auto Salon 1999 (Japan)
The Highlights

Well, the whole trip was a highlight.
I will outline each day of the trip below.


DAY 1

OK, We arrived in Tokyo on Friday 8th January. The first thing to do was to check into our hotel.

Here is the view from our room.

remember to click on the pics for full size

 

After dropping off our stuff, we then spent the whole day at the Auto Salon, the pics can be viewed by following this link. Here

DAY 2

Another whole day at the Auto Salon, and then off to OSAKA to check out the street racing and drifting.
The 4 hour trip on the bullet train was awesome. It was better than a business class air flight.


This is Gavin trying to catch up on his sleep after averaging 3 hours sleep each night...!

 

 

DAY 3

I spent most of Sunday sleeping after getting absolutely wasted in a Japanese bar on Saturday night.
However, the other guys managed another day at the Auto Salon, while I looked around in some electronic shops.

Check out the phones...! You should see how small they are. These pics don't really indicate this.

 

DAY 4

While we were at the Auto Salon, I was approached by a man working at the "Top Secret" stand. He knew me, but I didn't know him, it was amazing, it seems he was living in NZ for a while and knew of me and my cars.

This was great as he helped me with some translations whilst at the show. A good friend of mine, Ronnie Lim from New Zealand (the man behind BAD20B) was also at the Salon.

We arranged to meet Seiji and Ronnie at the TOP SECRET workshop on Monday. What an awesome workshop, with a very good reputation in Japan and around the world.


These guys have built some absolutely amazing cars, which we found was typical of most top Japanese tuning shops.

TOP SECRET are famous for their 1027bhp Supra running a RB26 Twin Turbo R33 Skyline Engine. This car is capable of over 320km/h and last year travelled to England where it was booked for 197mph on an English motorway.

The President of TOP SECRET, Mr Nagata (nicknamed SMOKEY because of his burnout tendencies) is a keen driver of his highly modified Japanese super cars and is often out on the street racing with the younger guys.

 

The photos above show Seiji on the left and Mr Nagata (Smokey) on the right.

 

This is a TOP SECRET modified 500bhp Silvia.
 

DAY 5

On Tuesday, we went to see the TRUST factory. This was excellent. We were assigned a tour guide and were given a traditional Japanese lunch.

You should have seen the Turbo's and Intercoolers stacked up. I wish I had taken more still photos of this stuff. I mostly used my video camera while at TRUST.

 

 

DAY 6

Wednesday, we visited RE-AMIMEYA so that I could get my JC COSMO ECU modified. We spent most of the day there, but managed to squeeze in a visit to JAM Racing and Super Autobacs.

The highlight of this visit was meeting the man himself Mr Amimeya.
 

DAY 7

Thursday, we went back to Mazda to pick up a new CD Stacker for my JC Cosmo that I had ordered. We also travelled to see MAZDASPEED.

This was awesome. You should have seen the 787B Quad rotor Le mans racer.

 

 

DAY 8

Friday, The last day. We spent most of this day buying stuff from the electronics stores. You wouldn't believe how cheap the stuff is.

At around 5pm we left for the airport in Narita. We were in such a rush to get back that I left a pencil drawing of a 1967 Cosmo behind. I was really pissed about that.



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