- VAD Admin
- Jan 17, 2017
- 2 min read
Every time January comes round we have a decision to make, do we head to the Autosport show at Birmingham, or the Tokyo Auto Salon in Japan, this year the TAS2017 show won the toss up and are we glad we made that choice, to say the show was brilliant is an understatement, for us it’s the show of the year, and one we just don’t like to miss, sorry Autosport, but Japan does it bigger and better.
Tokyo Auto Salon 2017 (TAS)
For this trip we teamed up with our good friend Iby at Speedwells, and it was his first Japanese visit, so it was up to us to show him around and take care of him, and as he hasn’t stopped talking about it since, I think we can safely say he enjoyed his trip immensely, he is a big Japanese sport car fan and his current line up is a 700+ wide body supra, with an all new black wide body in build process, as well as the awesome 280ZX V8 Turbo he is also currently building, so this trip was to add a little inspiration to his up and coming projects, as well as getting to see a little bit of Tokyo.
Our hotel was a stone throw from the Messe hall where the TAS show is held year in year out, it seemed so much bigger this year than it has the previous years, and the cars on show, as always in Japan was mind blowing, although the continuing trend of over fendered cars was in full force, and to be honest if you have seen one you have seen one you have seen them all, the cut and paste kit are in full flow and sorry apart from the odd over fender conversion like the BN Sports RX7 or the awesome Old & New Porsche 997, the rest had little or no interest, although we did capture a few pictures for all to view.
The show was set over 3 huge halls, plus the outside entertainment, and it took us a full two days to get around it all, but as its set out so well, one halls just flows into the other apart from halls 9,10 & 11 that are set away from the main halls, but worth the visit just to see the Top Secret R32 and the BN Sport wide body RX7, they both made us drool.
Our personal favourites from the show have to be the wide body Aston Martin Vantage from ACR Performance and the Porsche 997 flat nose from Old&New Japan, we will be bringing both conversions to European shores, and we will cover both in up and coming blog posts.
With the show covered on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Sunday was a free day, so we decided on heading off to visit Tokyo city, with a trip to Ginza, the highlight of the day was walking around the kaminarimon, which is a great experience, full of the old traditional Japanese buildings, and miles of little market stalls. Until next year Japan, it can’t come round quick enough.
Ginza Strip & kaminarimon, Tokyo Japan
