Down On The Street In Japan

onthestreet

Last Wednesday Japanese Nostalgic Car blog posted a link to a photogallery containing a lot of rusting and rotting J-Tin. Personally I like watching photos of those desolated cars and went reading the blog of the person making those photos. Then I found out that he doesn’t only shoot rusted cars, but he is taking snapshots of all interesting cars he finds, a bit like the Japanese equivalent of Down on the Street by Jalopnik.

Let’s see what hachi rokus you can find down on the street in Japan in the months February 2009 till May 2009. (may not be suitable for the faint hearted!) ;)

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Jono Bennett’s F20C Weapon

The stance on this Levin is just pure sex, and the decals are some of the freshest and most unique I’ve seen on a racecar in a long time! No less that it’s powered by two liters of VTECs!


FR Or MR?

toyota mr86 panda

What if you like the looks of an old retro Toyota, like for example the Toyota Corolla Levin AE86, and you would like the car to have the engine in the back for better handling? You create the MR86 of course! :D

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Something Different: OSTC ’09

11rzrxs

With over 300 retro rides parked for a day in the sun, the Old School Toyota Car Club Classic Import Car Show last weekend was a huge hit!  With people coming from all over the Eastern States of the USA, it was surely a day of steel and chrome appreciations with not only Toyotas represented, but also a selection of Datsuns, Mazdas and even a few domestics too!

Go have a look at the variety of rides (including more than a few AE86s!) over @ AEU86 Forums!


AEVO86?

polish_4g63_ae86

Those crazy Poles are at it again! This time turning their attention to the hachiroku and deciding to ditch the 4A-GE in favor of a 4G63 Evolution engine! Not only that, but the entire rear cradle and independent rear suspension setup from an S13 Silvia has also been tucked under the little AE86!  Nuts!

See the entirety of the build up pics and finished images too over at racingforum.pl


Run Free Nostalgia

runfree_levin

Irish lad James has some cool photos of Yamashita-san’s Levin Coupe from waaay back in 2005 when he was lucky enough to visit the Run Free workshop.

Check em all out over @ AEU86 Forums!


Tec-Art’s Wallpaper

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Over @ Noriyaro. Get it now!


Enemies Then Friends

hachirokuguys

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!


Too Much Headroom?

AE85 Trueno Coupe chopped roof

The majority of average-height western hachi-roku drivers know how short the Japanese actually are: if you are below 6 foot you can still sit okay in the GT seats Toyota put in the AE86 BUT If you are over 6 feet tall, you seriously need to think about low mounted bucketseats or modifying your current seat rails.

Apparently a Japanese man (probably about the size of Ken Nomura) not having this problem thought a roof chop would look great on his AE85 Trueno Coupe:

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Panda Party

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All white and all rocking smooth and clean mods, these fairly standard-bodied rides are a refreshing change from the ever-increasing madness we see coming out of Japan and the USA sporting all kinds of wide bodied, flared, blistered, pumped and who-knows-what-else body work. Chester Ng has these great shots of a crew of AE86 lovers from Hong Kong up on his website.  Sometimes less is more and for this selection of hachiroku it couldn’t be more true. I love the ‘Takumi’ and ‘Keiichi’ copycats, they’re almost perfect!