Every year I say Japfest will be last, I squirm, make excuses, say I have other plans but every year I make the gruelling 220 mile drive from the North to the deep South. Who better to accompany you on a road trip than Chris? Chris was one of the first guys I met locally through my car club and he’s always shared my outlook on things. Naturally for Japfest he had to have something new, so he’s powdercoated his Lexus IS200 wheels red.

So after driving 220 miles on a diet of Wimpy burgers, Pepsi and my freshly prepped two cd collection we made it. I say we made it I lost the rest of the Northwest guys and I rolled most of the way with a Yaris. Whoever owned that.

With Dave buying a Japspeed strut tower bar, which arrived literally hours before he left from the North East Friday. The Swift Owners crew set about fixing it properly and adjusting his new set of Gaz coilovers in the carpark. Naturally judging by the photo I was no help whatsoever.

The Honda accords rolled in late Friday night near where we’d camped out. My dad used to have one of these when I was a kid allbeit the lower specced sport model

With every aspect of Japanese culture starting to filter through to the UK Jap car scene. Nissan Cube’s are the in accessory for the style savy, what you can’t picture from this is that it was rolling on a set of teddy bear wheels haha!

Stavros had on display this crazy RX7, once campaigned in the D1 series in Japan. The car now scares the elderly on the highways and biways of the UK.

I see this supercharged Rolla ever year yet I never look at the spec. Check out the minature flags.

People thought I was a little weird sticking Subaru alloys on my Sport, but how about Evo 8 Enkeis?  with 8J wide and a relatively low offset a little stretch was required to get these rims to sit nicely.

One of the newest trends for this year is what i’ll deem “Cali style” echoing what you guys are doing on the westcoast. Ironically an interpretation of an interpretation but subtle touches like the yellow headlights grabbed everyones attention.

The latest gen Celica doesn’t get much love, a front wheel drive platform and relatively low power held the car back. But this white on white combo was pretty cool.

My toptip for car shows is to take a look around the carpark. For anyone not familiar with this Toyota Aygo it was produced by Toyota. Mating a 1.8 litre supercharged engine from the MR2 to a converted rear wheel drive chasis with an Aygo body on top. This Aygo puts out 200hp through the rear wheels.

Mitto opted to bring down his ex MCR Nissan Silvia S14

Another carpark find I spied this Amuse kitted R35 GTR sporting Advan wheels. This put half of the cars on show to shame.

Dave took his ZC31S out on track and he didn’t disapoint dispatching a spinning Evo an easily matching a higher specced turbo’d ZC31S.