Tag Archives: Japan

Carland Autumn Meet

October 21, 2008 in Events by

Since their very first meet was a success, Carland held a second one last weekend to enjoy the many changing colours of Autumn on the mountain roads!

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Rough World AE86

October 16, 2008 in Feature Cars by

Care of Auto Otaku (via Kultivate) comes this staunch little Levin with some serious attitude. Some strange body mods but the wheels and colour definitely make up for it. Simplicity in its finest form!

Check it out Here.

AE86 Celebration @ Nikko Circuit

September 30, 2008 in Events by


Miguel from Newera Imports always has great coverage of the Japanese AE86 scene and again he doesn’t disappoint! On Sunday 5th Aug (the day before Monday 6th August aka hachiroku day) Tec Arts, one of Japan’s top AE86 tuners  and a family run business with a lot of passion for the AE86, organised a day of driving, drifting and AE86 celebration. Techno Pro Spirits were also there with their N2 race car, as well as other very cool AE86’s.

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HACHiRoCK!! FESTA 2008

September 23, 2008 in Events by

Ahhh Japan. Does a week go by without another massive AE86 event happening somewhere on your small-yet-crowded island? First it was 8/6 day, then the insanity of racing at Okayama and now “HACHiRoCK!! FESTA 2008” When will it end? (Never we hope!)

The event is held annually in a reserved parking area owned by the Sagamiko Resort in Kanagawa and last year saw over 250 cars turn out for a day of AE86 fun and friendship. HACHiRoCK!! FESTA is mostly a social event where AE86 owners from all over Japan can get together and meet up with those they might only have ‘spoken to’ on the Internet.

The event is organised around an official schedule and within it there is an ‘Introductions’ segment where they go from group to group (organised into regions like yokohama, tokyo, kansai, etc) where everyone can find people they know on Minkara (A Japanese ‘Cardomain’ style site) and Mixi (Japanese ‘Facebook’) as well as people who live in your region and get to know them a little better. Oh and of course talk endlessly about your own car and the experience associated with drivng, racing, fixing and living/breathing an AE86 life.

For the 2008 event, over 20 sponsors turned up to support the gathering (including all the big workshops like Garage Annex, Expert-Oz, TOOLBOX, Ukiya Shoukai, CBY, TecArts and heaps more!) with more than 300 cars attending! It was an AE86 gathering of epic proportions!

Most of the workshops who turned up, brought along their top-shelf demo cars to no doubt garner interest in their hottest new design idea or perhaps just to gather spectator drool off the floor. A few of the more well known AE86-exclusive drift teams made the trip and transported their entire squads down there too!

It’s one of the biggest social AE86 events of the Japanese AE86 enthusiast calendar along with several other internationally renowned meets, its surely one to watch out for next year. Watch the HR Blog for next year’s direct coverage when our reporters head over to cover the massive event planned for ’09.

Check out the pics from the day here.

Okayama AE86 Festival 2008

September 17, 2008 in Events, HR Originals by

After pouring over the photos from last years coverage on the web, I knew then that I simply had to attend this years event. So after saving up all my cash and asking countless people to finally find someone who would come with me on the trip to Japan, I was truly on my way to attend the AE86 Festival in Okayama Circuit and man… WHAT an experience!

Hit the jump for the full story and over 200 photos from the event!

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Ueo Katsuhiro: The Greatest?

September 1, 2008 in AE86 History, HR Originals by

Few people garner as much respect from AE86 enthusiasts as Ueo Katsuhiro (植尾勝浩), In fact perhaps the only man to make ’86 fanboys jump with glee like giddy schoolgirls more would be Keiichi Tsuchiya himself. I thought it was high time we at HR Blog took an in-depth look at the history of the man who brought the AE86 to the world professional drifting stage. Should we stick to fact or legend? Is Ueo the greatest AE86 drift pilot of all time? Is that a worthy title? Let’s find out.

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’86 Drifting Bikini Girls? Oh Yeah

August 28, 2008 in Random by

Probably the coolest yet most bizarre thing I’ve seen this year, this spin off of the ‘DRIFT’ series of DVD’s is the story of 3 girls dubbed the ’86Angels’, one 86 and an all-girl drift battle to end all battles.

Titled DRIFT Special: Beauty Battle, you only know it’s going to be awesome. Here is a short highlight, but make sure to watch the entire story (with dubious subtitles) from the first video.

Even More Ebisu Drift Madness…

August 25, 2008 in Events by

This time it’s the crew over @ 7TUNE with their version of the event. Lots of ’86s in action in the photos (it’s huge gallery and almost every picture has an AE86 in there somewhere).

Check it out here. I just can’t get enough…..

More Ebisu Madness…

August 19, 2008 in Feature Cars by

Antonio from Speedhunters really can’t resist his deeply-rooted ’86 urges and continues to deliver the goods with another blog of awesome hachiroku’s from Ebisu Summer Drift Festival last weekend.  Check out these three tasty morsels of Toyota engineering complete with engine pics and the lot over at Speedhunters blog. Love your work Antonio!

86 Style: Natsumatsuri

August 18, 2008 in Events by

The Ebisu Circuit Summer Drift Festival (aka Natsumatsuri) was held last week and the humble 86 was out in force. The event is non stop track action for 36hrs and is held on the many different track layouts found at Ebisu Circuit. Our friends over at Speedhunters have full coverage of the event here and we have posted up some pictures after the jump, enjoy.

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