Tokyo Auto Salon '99

Well, We made it home. The new face lift FD should be in dealers yards in Japan about now, I wonder if they will sell a lot of them? I went to a dealer and got the free promo video, it's really worth watching even though it’s in Japanese!
 


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Thursday (show set-up day).
Fortunately for me :) a friend, Seiji, got a job at Top secret (GTR Tuning shop) in November.
Ronnie, from GP Performance stayed with him and got to hang around their shop for his whole stay.
Seiji is in Customer service, so we got a lot of it!
Dave and I went over to their workshop Thursday afternoon and hung around waiting for some action. Top secret is situated near Chiba, which is near Narita airport and about 45 minutes from Tokyo by train (Yokosuka line). The shop is another 7 minutes from Chiba train station by car.
It is one of the top 5 biggest "tuning shops" in Japan and next door to the Tokyo Trust/Greedy warehouse. From an outsiders point of view it's like a 1000 hp club! There are about 20 people working at Top Secret.

They have an amazing workshop... and show room…

... and 15 or so customers cars on the go at any one time...
In the above picture you can just see the FD with a Knightsports front, lurking amongst the "other cars".
It belongs to a Female Model and is full on, with rollcage, stripped interior, 17" wheels and an HKS boost controller (amongst other things). Apparently it’s there to be repaired after a guy crashed into the front of her.

We met the Boss. His nick name is Smoky (because he does burnouts whenever possible).
He is a very nice guy and didn't mind if we came to the show with the team to "Help set-up their stand". (Ronnie went out driving on Friday night with some of Smoky’s friends in their GTR's. He had a ride at 299 km/h on the highway through the traffic.
Ronnie made him run again, because they didn't crack 300, they did 302 km/h!)

It took about 3 hours for them to get their act together and everyone just stood around waiting for Smoke's Cue, to "move out!".
When he was happy that the 6000 hp worth of cars were ready to go, we went!
It took about 20 min to get to the show (Makuhari Messe) by car and we had to ride in the van :( . Apparently they only drive at 300 km/h after 1 am.
The show venue is as Dave put it, is " Ma ma ma ma maaaaaassive".
400 cars and "101 car companions" (lightly clad girls).

...
The setting up of the Top Secret stand looked under control so I fired up the video camera and we split to have a look around.
There were 8 sections in 3 buildings.
What's new?
I found 14 FD's at the show.

HKS had a new turbo and manifold set-up. Can't remember the specs but it looked cool.
All their drag cars were there, (and so was Mr. Kobayashi).

And a big picture of the Dead guy, can't remember his name, drove the front wheel drive celica to a 9.8(?) 1/4 mile.
He died, as the story goes, when the "Top Fuel" Honda broke a drive shaft at 309 km/h.
There is a video but it wont be shown as it is too "terrible" (I bet it will be on one of those US "what a way to go!" shows). There was nothing left of him or the car. I was told it was the mid engine civic but that could be wrong.
He was an editor from Option magazine.
From now on, only professional drivers are allowed to drive the cars on the high speed ring,  (Like that dickhead Dai that drove the GTR at the drags in California and Stalled it 5 times!!!).

Panspeed had a new front, all carbon fibre nose hood and fenders all in one piece. very cool, very yellow!.



Amamiya had his usual flock of customers cars.


The blue one with the vertical opening doors  (now sporting Warner electric openers).
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A pink open top roadster version FD with, as he called them, "breasts", a big airo lump behind each seat.   Kind of funky and a bit over the top.
There is some footage of it being built on one of the option videos as a promo for the show. Must weigh 2 ton!

RMagic, totally into drag racing "1/4 Miles avenue". 5 cars, all very well presented, Probably the best RX stand at this years show.

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They make a large range of body parts all out of Fibreglass.
They also do computers, single turbo kits and engine re-builds.

Mazdaspeed had a "new RX7" at one end of the show and a "new RX7" "A-Spec" with all their goods fitted.


The car looks amazing in the new mica blue.

These are some of the parts they were pushing:

non torson lsd           short throw shifter 


Knightsports, curiously absent, (I’m not surprised as it cost Top secret about $90,000 for their little spot), apart from the "white car" shod in 20" wheels on a someone's tire stand.
I took Dave to Knightsports "tuning shop" the next week.. I used to live down the road from them, when I lived in Kawasaki.

 There’s the "white car" down the back, with the freaky air-box bonnet up.
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They were busy and had about 10 FD’s around the place. Two cars were being worked on while we were there.

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One for a twin plate clutch and 10lb flywheel.
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and another for a stock position FAT intercooler!

We hung around until I got them to take us for a ride in the infamous Yellow FD.

.  Turbonetics single turbo and delta race gate (wast gate) + blowoff valve, front split radiator and intercooler. The car originally had a 6 speed sequential box but as it is used as a demo for their products it was removed and a stock box was put in so they could drive in the traffic.


Dave got to go First… They say it has been de-tuned to 380 hp (same as Dave’s stock twin turbo) so it seemed like a lot of trouble for such mediocre output. I was disappointed in the first run but I think it has still had the diff from the high speed ring run (at nearly 300km/h) so it didn’t have that blast off feeling. It didn’t go so well on my second pass either, it either fouled the plugs or shit it’s self, so it was time for us to say "Bye! We had a great time! See ya latter".
Bloody cruisey bunch of guys though. What a job!

Race FD’s at the show:

Yellow Bomex (Amamiya)FD 300gt.

They are now allowed to use the 13B-REW Turbo so they don't have to use the 20B PP na. This is surposed to keep the cost down and allow more RX's into the event.

Matsumoto kyoshi. yellow Bomex FD
Ampm sponsored white FD
FAM speed black FD.
Panspeed yellow car.

Other less notable cars.
2 x F40.
1 x GT1 Porsche
100's GTR's
100's 200 sx.
a bunch of STI WRX's
a few evo's
a van with 255 22" wheels!
lots of mx5s'
and a couple of GTO mitsubishi's