After an intense night of street drifting, running from the Japanese 5-0, and with some of us being awake for almost 30 hours, we decided to have a day to relax and, er, look at even more cars. So after a stop at Starbucks to wake ourselves up, we went for drive through the very pretty looking city of Nagoya, and down to Nagoya Bay where a huge Super Autobacs sits. For those of you unfamilliar with Super Autobacs, it’s a chain of superstores in Japan and other parts of Asia that sell absolutely thousands of automotive parts. From tyres, wheels, oil, aftermarket parts, and more acessories than you can begin to imagine. Where else in the world would you find a D.A.D LUXURY POTATO HOLDER to put your McDonald’s fries in?
Sadly photography isn’t permitted inside the store so I couldn’t grab any shots to show you (although there’s some covert footage in the film) what it’s like, but the sheer amount of stuff inside gave me a headache. Fortunatley there was something a lot more interesting going on outside. The Nagoya Super Autobacs has a garage set up and a rolling road, which was being used for a D1SL Power Day for competitors to see how much power their cars were pushing out.
So all of a sudden I had a line-up of D1 Street Legal cars in front of me. To say I was giddy was an understatment – I was in my own little slice of heaven.
What made this even better was that most of the cars and people there were part of the shops and teams we’d planned to check out and meet during our stay Nagoya. Mitto, who was our main guide for most of the Outsiders Tour, lived in Nagoya for a year and made friends with a lot of the street teams in the area. I’ve spent a lot time watching and following some of these teams so finally having the oppurtunity to meet them was incredible.
Here’s Mitto with one of the guys he used to drive with called Go. Go is from a team called Get Drunk, and yes, that name is real, and there are obvious reasons why they call themselves Get Drunk. Go was one of the friendliest and funniest guys we met on the tour, and when he heard I was a big fan of his team he gave me one of his tomodachi stickers!
We also gave him some Driftworks, MEINOMAI, and Outsiders stickers which he happily put on his car.
Which is this wild looking R32 Skyline that has over 500PS. If I’m honest I wasn’t expecting to see it looking so clean. In a lot of the D1SL Option videos I’ve seen it’s usually in a bit of a state or being crashed. Go got himself noticed and made fun of a little in the D1SL series thanks to his impressive crashing skills and for crying afterwards, in fact the tomodachi sticker he gave me says “This year I won’t cry!” on it.
Now I’m sure those of you into drifting know already that stickers seem to be a big part of drifting, and in Japan they play an even bigger part. Tomodachi means “friend” in Japanese, and many drifters and teams have their own personal tomodachi stickers which they trade with their friends and other teams. What I found amazing is just by looking at the windows of car, and with a bit of working out, you could see who the drivers is friends with, drives with, which area they come from and the teams that they’re down with. It’s like there’s a whole story on every car.
One of the teams I was looking forward to seeing the most in Japan was Mind Control. I noticed during my time in Nagoya that a lot of the street cars there are quite subtle and classy compared to other regions of Japan. I love the fact that Mind Control manage to bring that over into their competition cars too. However this S15 is one of the more outlandish looking Mind Control cars there is with it’s canards and GT wing.
They’re also very well put together inside and out with great attention to detail. I’ve got some shots under the hoods of some of the cars when we visited MCR Factory (Mind Control’s workshop owned by leader and D1SL driver Mashashi Yokoi) and they really are beautiful.
But they are most certainly not show queens, and get used hard on and off the track.
Parked next to the MCR Factory S15 was MHC leader Hiroyuki Yasue’s D1SL S15 Silvia.
Being able to look around these cars so closely was a real treat and I got to see many details that no amount of searching on the internet could give me. Check out the scrapes on the rear overfenders – that’s some pinpoint wall rubbing.
The cars seen a lot of action in the D1SL series judging by the amount of inspection stickers on the front fender.
This 180sx from Mind Control was simply evil looking. I’m pretty sure this was on display for MCR Factory on the Drift Tengoku stand at the Nagoya Exciting Car Showdown or Tokyo Auto Salon a few years back. It’s looking somewhat more abused since then.
It looked like the Mind Control team were really out in force, this Zenki S14 with OEM Navan aero was beautifully clean. It looks even better when it’s at it’s usual ride height, but the owner had raised it for the rolling road.
Speaking of which, I noticed there was a big crowed gathered around the rolling road. I managed to sneak through and grab a shot of Masashi Yokoi’s D1SL Silvia on the rollers – The noise and smoke was crazy.
The gentleman of larger proportions spent most of the day sitting in the boot of cars weighing them down so they could get traction on the rollers!
Away from the rollers and further down the line-up was this really clean Kouki S14 from Get Drunk rocking full URAS GT aero.
This S15 Silvia was a bit of a jaw-dropper. The paintwork was simply stunning.
It’s amazing how the full Vertex Edge kit transforms the S15 from an agile looking thing into a beefy hulking beast like this.
With Super Autobacs being a place for any type of car enthusiast, there was a ton of drool worthy machinery rolling in throughout the day. It was like all those years of playing Gran Turismo just came to life.
From drift cars, grip cars, super cars, classic cars, VIP cars, it was all there.
I’ve always had a soft spot for Honda’s NSX, and this example sitting on a set of Advan Racing TC-II wheels was simply gorgeous.
You don’t see a Porsche 993 GT2 everyday, let alone in Japan.
Just as I thought things couldn’t get much better, an embodiment of automotive pornography rolled in.
The Kenmeri Skyline.
It was difficult to tell whether it was a genuine KPGC110 GT-R or not as a lot of the more common GT models have been made to look like GT-Rs with badges.
Either way, my day had been made and I was completely in love.
I decided to take a little stroll over to the carpark that was situated behind the Super Autobacs store. I stumbled upon this Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX estate. It’s a shame this car was never sold officially outside of Japan, I think it’s much better looking than it’s Subaru rivals.
As I made my way up through the car park I had my first encounter with the JZX110 Toyota Verossa. I wasn’t sure whether to smile, cry, or run away. Looking at the Verossa is a little like looking at a piece of impressionistic artwork. You really have to stop and contemplate the meaning behind it, what on earth Toyota were thinking, and decide for yourself whether it’s hideous or a thing of beauty.
After I recovered from the Verossa experience, I headed up to the top level of the car park where I came across a more handsome member of the JZX family in the form of this JZX100 Chaser.
Tucked in the corner was this track focused looking EG Honda Civic. It looked like it’d seen a fair bit of action going by it’s battle scars.
While checking out the RC drifting this immaculate 4-door GC10 Nissan Skyline cruised by. I think my brain had overdosed on cars by this point.
With the sun on it’s way down we decided to call it a day, grab some food and have an early night. Somehow that turned into 33 beers and many hours of karaoke, but hey, we were in Japan, can you blame us?
– Daniel Bridle
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Hey guys, almost can’t sleep now waiting for the DVD..
This was like the best post EVER!!!!!
Indeed..
Killer write-up man. Brings back a lot of sweet memories 🙂
Awesome blog dude !!
Cant wait for the DVD
Awesome blog post , I can’t believe you didn’t explode at the excitement Dan.
That silver s15 looks the bomb.
Hey guys, awesome post. Visited a place like that when I was over there. They really do have everything you could possibly need for your car. You have anymore info on the purple S14 Zenki? I am in love with those headlights and a set of those would really help freshen up the look of my 240.