There’s an interest group or car club that’ll cover just about any vehicle, truck or bike – Import or Domestic. The growing interest in restoring Japanese cars spawned Motor Trend TV show; JDM Legends, non-drama guys out of Utah who build some precision resto’s of classic Japanese cars, selling them for big bucks.
This emerging trend has not been lost among the big Asian car manufacturers. With recent Southern California shows, such as the celebration of Japanese and Korean cars at the Peterson Museum and last weekend’s Toyota Owners & Restorers Club event in Long Beach, there’s wide interest in the 60’s cars and certainly today’s factory rockets.
There are also importers who’ll offer exotic, specialty right-hand drive cars and help you to import them from Japan, without much extra effort. The market has also grown for importing low mileage Honda F20C, 240 horse engines out of the S-2000 sports car. Japan has restrictive smog laws requiring a replacement engine, perfect for transplanting into a vintage BMW or Volvo in the States.
As seen at this TORC event, there are also later model Toyota V8 truck engines finding their way into Corolla’s and other lightweight vintage coupes. At this show, supported by Toyota and a local Toyota dealer, it was an all Family Reunion, welcoming any generation of Toyota, Lexus and Scion vehicles.
What’s not to like? Lightweight body, popping in a higher horsepower engine, computer re-mapping, better fuel system, bigger turbos and the like, just like any other era of hot rodding. Even these Anime-influenced customs drew crowds as well.
Enjoy this Gallery from the 24thToyotafest in Long Beach, California.
Some of these are very cool… but that dinner table front spoiler! Retarded!
I think the first and second Gen Celica’s were some of the best looking Jap cars, ever. They had good power from the factory, and it’s a shame they never really put out any performance offerings back in the day, but then, it was the Malaise Days of the auto industry. The ’80’s Supras were total badass, but not handsome like the first and second gen cars, which were also nicely proportioned and sized, IMO…
Were there any early 70s-80s Corollas there? I owned 10 or 15 of those over the years, including a very nice ’82 Corolla SR-5 Coupe that I wish I still had.
I was hoping to find some pictures of the ’85-’87 Corolla in there, last of the RWD versions. But now I want to get an Mk II Supra after looking through that gallery.
I keep an eye on the local craigslist hoping for a Cressida wagon to pop up again. I missed so many just after we moved to the Bay Area and now they seem to have stopped popping up.