First off, sorry for the few low quality pictures this was a out of the blue situation and I only had my trusty but very useless mobile phone camera with me, and the shop owner was not a real fan of picture taking so I was very careful to not upset him.

On the way to work that afternoon I noticed a shiny set of Work Equip 01’s that were just sitting in a window beside the road in a shop called the Junkyard located in Ota. The shops outer grounds were covered with 4WD’s ranging in size and shape all with lift kits and huge lights hanging off the front, sides and anywhere they could be placed. This prompted me to ask the question, why would such sought after wheels be sitting in a shop that by the looks of it only deals with vehicles of the off road type.

8:20pm My last class has just finished and I’m jumping into the work car to head down to Junkyard and try and persuade the owner of these Equip 01’s to hand them over to me for a large sum of yen. Park the car head to the front door where I have a little look around from outside the glass window display then a slight knock on the door and this head pops up from the back of the window looking weirdly as he discovers I’m not the usual Japanese customer but a foreigner with big shiny eyes staring back like God himself has stood before me. He points to the door signaling its open and to come in, as I step in the door I notice the large stack of brand new tires casting a shadow over me all of which happen to all be brand new Advan Neova’s in the sizes of 195/50’s, one of the most common size for AE86’s a far cry from the huge 4WD tires laying around outside.

After a short broken English / broken Japanese chat with the shop owner I have already found out by his deep laugh that the Equip 01’s were not for sale but just part of his collection of negative offset wheels he has laying around the shop, a short count of the full sets of negative offset wheels in the shop alone would leave you running out of fingers and toes to count the sets. He showed me around his shop pointing out the many parts he has such as TRD dry sump setups, TRD N1 AE86 cams, multiple 4AGE engines and that’s just naming the ones I could remember. He then asked me if I would like to have a look at his racing car, which was loaded with a NA 280HP 4AGE built by himself, one of only 2 sets of completely custom Ohlin coilover suspension setups in Japan, the usual stripped out interior with Bride carbon fiber buckets, a huge array of Omori gauges replacing the standard instruments along with a full cage and anything else I may of missed, ohh yeah did I mention 280HP NA 4AGE with 5.6 diff ratios and TRD custom gear set!!!

While he was going through the above modification list with me and telling me about his life obsession with the AE86 I was having a little look around the workshop noticing the never ending sets of even more negative offset AE86 wheels, along with more built and un-open engines just laying around as if they were used as paper weights. We then headed back to the main shop as I noticed him playing around with his phone, he then pointed the phone at me showing me a 13B engine sitting very snuggly inside a AE86 engine bay, along with the 13B powered AE86 he also showed me his fully restored Limited Black Edition AE86 with negative offset 15×9J SSR’s sitting nicely under its very expensive guards. He also asked if I would like to come to his house to view these cars and talk some more, now I don’t even know this guy and he’s inviting me to his house in the middle of no where in country Japan, I done the wise thing and said of course take me there stranger!

The picture below as you can tell is the 13B powered AE86, more pictures further down.

30 Minutes later he turned up out the front of my work picked me up and asked if I was hungry because he wanted to head down the local Flying Garden to get some Aussie made hamburg’s (Japans cheaper option to real steak), I too was very hungry so we both deiced it was time for some hamburg’s. While we chatted many questions were asked, he was telling me he works 7 days a week and ever since he could remember he loved the AE86 for unknown reasons even to himself. I ended up knowing his brother who works at the local wrecking yard in Isesaki and he has seen me come in and out of yard in my unmissable bright orange JZX90. After we finished the meals we headed up to counter where he simply refused to let me pay for our meals then we quickly got in his car and started heading to his house.

After 10 minutes or so of driving we were parked outside this huge 3 story building with 2 large electronic sliding doors that opened up to his garage. As the lights slowly warmed up and turned on in his garage you notice these cars sitting under wraps, he then pulled up the car cover reviling this large T-winged AE86 with huge wide body sporting a 400HP 13B that goes down the quarter mile in 11 seconds on slicks with next to no traction. This car was bought in pity from his friend and owner of Matsui rotary shop after he spent too much money leaving him with an empty bank account. After 5 engine replacements finally the outcome was a car that had been penalized personal by Keiichi Tsuchiya for running laps around him in one of his personal racing RX7 FD’s on race day at Fuji Speedway and a car that would be capable of running in the late 9’s or early 10 second bracket if it could only get traction. All up I would say it was worth the 5 engines to make such an insane track / drag and yes drift car. Along with his 13B AE86 was a big American Cadillac sitting on deep dish wires and another AE86 he was restoring to be used as dedicated drift car.

It is lacking offset in these pictures, but on race day I’m sure thats not the case with the large amount of negative offset wheels at his disposal.

What a night it ended up being, after a simple question about a set of wheel was asked I have now made a great friend, a man that’s passion for AE86’s was unquestionable. Hopefully I will catch up with him soon and find out more information about his past and get some better photos of his workshop and his crazy creations.

Only in Japan this kind of thing can happen, this is one of the reasons I love crazy place!

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 22nd, 2009 at 7:56 PM and is filed under Drifting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.