It’s that moment of apprehension when you see someone agape at your freshly washed and shiny ride, staring in envy. You think to youself, ‘What’s this joker up to?’ and run over one million ‘worst case senarios’ in your head. Before you have a chance to get paranoid, you realise they’re just another AE86 owner (or admirer) who will shortly introduce themselves to you and, no doubt, start you into a lengthy chat about how and why our little hachiroku is so damn alluring. Being a pretty damn harcore ‘hachiroku guy’ himself, Antonio over at MotorMavens has no doubt been in this situation before, and recently found himself in Seattle on the flipside of this exact kind of encounter:
So here I was; standing inside Goods; checking out some sneakers, when low and behold, a bright red AE86 hatchback pulls up and parks right in front of the store. I couldn’t have even timed it more perfectly, it was funny. I obviously stepped outside the store for a closer look at this red kouki hatchback, and immediately two 86ers got out of the car with strange looks on their faces (you know, one of those “why the hell is this weirdo staring at the car” faces).
However, as soon as I introduced myself as a fellow AE86 owner from Los Angeles, it was all good. No problems. For some reason, no matter where you are in the world… when a hachiroku guy meets another hachiroku guy visiting from out of town, they seem to form some sort of instant connection. (Not in a gay way)
This is probably the biggest reason I started HR in the first place. The hachiroku community worldwide just seems to be full of friendly and genuinely cool people. I’m not an expert on the matter, but I’d say it plays a big part of why some people are ‘hachiroku guys’ and never anything else. I know for sure, I’ll be a hachiroku guy for the rest of my days and damn proud of it too!
But I digress, you should check out the rest of the encounter over at MotorMavens now!