This year’s Jap Show clashed with another big event in the car show calendar, however, this didn’t stop people flooding the gates with their prized JDM cars. A series of track cars, “show’n’shine” and daily drivers started taking their place everywhere around the Pod.
The weather also seemed to be holding up, although a chilly start to the morning it didn’t deter every owner to bring out the cleaning gear and start ploughing through the task of cleaning their cars. Gradually as the day went by, even walking around in a jumper became slightly too hot, not too bad for an autumn day in the Midlands don’t you think?
Car upon car kept on rolling in, I saw everything from Civics (of all shapes), a few old school Datsun’s, Celica’s, 350Z’s, Skyline’s, and of course a handful of 200SX. But then, at around 11am, a true JDM icon rolled near the Grand Stand – the Honda NSX. A true testament from the 1990’s, the F1 Fighter Jet styled car, not only matched the extravagant looks but was also installed with a V6 engine, and the best part was the V-TEC. Now a V6 engine is fast as it is, but being able to rev to the limits gave this car some remarkable power behind the wheel.
Touring the Pod grounds gave me a chance to see exactly what exactly had been driven from various places across the UK to get to one of the final closing car shows of 2013. There was a pristine, chameleon painted R33 GTR that was absolutely stunning in the sunshine, and an extremely tidy engine bay, brought together with red engine bay dress parts.
In addition to this, an extremely clean and very competitively built Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 9, with a 430bhp tuned engine and 435ft/lb at the wheels, this monster has a massive specification list to back up the work that has been carried out, 3 pages in fact – just take a look at the picture!
Other cars also flooded the Pod grounds, new builds and old builds, take Matt Cole’s stanced Civic for example, highly known throughout the Honda community. Not under his wing any more the Civic has now gone to an unknown owner, but nevertheless the car is still looking remarkable – even more so than the magazine cover that it had.
The track action was also packed with rubber-burning drag machines, so packed in fact, I wasn’t able to get a good enough view to film some of the action that went on, just a few snaps of the track with an R34 GTR zooming its way down the ¼ mile and an RX-7 which looked to be ridiculously quick but ended up dying just before the go ahead, absolute shame but these things happen. The Fire Force jet also made its usual appearance and, as usual, ended up blowing peoples ear drums.
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