Expansion pack
Pretty much right after the adventures in Vegas we headed further west to California to prepare some of our rides for export to Japan. Before that we bought one more for @Niatross, he decided to get a BMW M4! I was quite excited about this, especially cause me and Benny took it for a little shakedown before shipping it.
Needless to say it feels way different than most of the older cars i'm used to drive, this one's a proper modern sports car! It has many different electronic thingies to keep you on the road but i turned those off to go sideways a bit. 
Even with the assists off, however, you can still keep it planted on the road if you're careful with the throttle and steering, and if you're know what you're doing you can go even faster than the car would usually allow you! The M4 is a really popular sports car all around the world and now i can see why, great performance for a gradually lower price, they've depreciated quite hard in their few years of production!
Eventually we got it to the port to join the other cars and move to the land of the rising sun. The garage in Oklahoma was getting quite crowded so me and Benny decided to basically split our collection in 2 places, and Japan was an obvious choice since we've made a lot of friends there after visiting a few times.
The 300ZX has turned many heads in the States, i'll miss driving it there but i feel like i've annoyed enough people with the 2-stepping.
I actually imported it from Japan last year, and i have to say it's been really fun having it here for this time. On the other hand it feels kinda good to take it back home.
The reason for this Evo moving on is obvious - it's illegal. I bought it in April from a government auction with many JDM cars seized from a tuner in Tulsa which was then caught selling drugs. It quickly got viral and there was even an article written about it! You can also read a post i wrote at that time here. I was quite lucky to acquire 2 cars from that auction, one of them being this great condition Evo 6.
It would take more than 5 years for it to become legal to import, but even if i had it here for that long i couldn't drive it, due to an illegal import it didn't come with a proper title. I hope it can live on like it was supposed to in its homeland, despite its shady history.
This Mark II has been my daily for a long time, yeah it's RHD but if you think about it, it's the most practical and spacious car i have, minus the F150 which i'm not really used to drive yet. While it may have looked just like every other Camry to some people it was admired by others, driving it felt special but strange at the same time. This was one of the first JZX90s legally imported in the USA but as years go by, many more models are getting 25 years old and eligible to import, meaning that a few more have popped up here recently. There are so many JDM enthusiasts here!
Benny shipped his R33 and S2000 but he copped a couple more cars in Japan too, they were already waiting for us in our new (to us) garage, located in Inawashiro, Fukushima. It was an old warehouse converted into a tuning shop but the place went broke a few years ago, opening up a good opportunity for us! There's not much to it so i guess it didn't attract any attention for a potential buyer until now. But we're cool with that, for now we just need a spot to store some cars and work on them. Luckily we got a nice bonus - the surroundings are just fantastic! Inawashiro is a relatively small town with a lake named after it, that should be a nice spot to chill out. And on the other side is Mount Bandai, one of the top 100 geographic landmarks in Japan! The best part is that i found out there's an epic touge road leading to it.
Benny found this Hyundai which should be a great daily! Well, nothing special but that doesn't really matter in this case - what we needed was practicality and reliability.
Meanwhile he also got himself a project car, that would be the AE86 roller. The R33 next to it was a late birthday gift for me by him and the Kami-Sama boys, from the looks of it i'd say this is a drift car! It looks a bit rough at first glance but that's the way it is with drift cars. It got me quite excited because i see this as a replacement for my S14 which was flooded by a typhoon and later sold to @FranklinAnderson, i hope he'll manage to rebuild it. Another car that Ben wanted is a S13 Silvia he posted earlier, sadly the deal fell through but he quickly found a good substitute for it, he should keep you updated about it soon. Now the R33 should turn out like the S14 i mentioned before, easily driftable but still not too hard to drive it on the streets. It's already a good base for that, i just have to try it out to see how it goes, i hit up the boys in Tokyo and we agreed for a drift session at Ebisu next weekend. See you there soon!
Pretty much right after the adventures in Vegas we headed further west to California to prepare some of our rides for export to Japan. Before that we bought one more for @Niatross, he decided to get a BMW M4! I was quite excited about this, especially cause me and Benny took it for a little shakedown before shipping it.
Needless to say it feels way different than most of the older cars i'm used to drive, this one's a proper modern sports car! It has many different electronic thingies to keep you on the road but i turned those off to go sideways a bit. Even with the assists off, however, you can still keep it planted on the road if you're careful with the throttle and steering, and if you're know what you're doing you can go even faster than the car would usually allow you! The M4 is a really popular sports car all around the world and now i can see why, great performance for a gradually lower price, they've depreciated quite hard in their few years of production!
Eventually we got it to the port to join the other cars and move to the land of the rising sun. The garage in Oklahoma was getting quite crowded so me and Benny decided to basically split our collection in 2 places, and Japan was an obvious choice since we've made a lot of friends there after visiting a few times.
The 300ZX has turned many heads in the States, i'll miss driving it there but i feel like i've annoyed enough people with the 2-stepping.
I actually imported it from Japan last year, and i have to say it's been really fun having it here for this time. On the other hand it feels kinda good to take it back home.The reason for this Evo moving on is obvious - it's illegal. I bought it in April from a government auction with many JDM cars seized from a tuner in Tulsa which was then caught selling drugs. It quickly got viral and there was even an article written about it! You can also read a post i wrote at that time here. I was quite lucky to acquire 2 cars from that auction, one of them being this great condition Evo 6.
It would take more than 5 years for it to become legal to import, but even if i had it here for that long i couldn't drive it, due to an illegal import it didn't come with a proper title. I hope it can live on like it was supposed to in its homeland, despite its shady history.
This Mark II has been my daily for a long time, yeah it's RHD but if you think about it, it's the most practical and spacious car i have, minus the F150 which i'm not really used to drive yet. While it may have looked just like every other Camry to some people it was admired by others, driving it felt special but strange at the same time. This was one of the first JZX90s legally imported in the USA but as years go by, many more models are getting 25 years old and eligible to import, meaning that a few more have popped up here recently. There are so many JDM enthusiasts here!
Benny shipped his R33 and S2000 but he copped a couple more cars in Japan too, they were already waiting for us in our new (to us) garage, located in Inawashiro, Fukushima. It was an old warehouse converted into a tuning shop but the place went broke a few years ago, opening up a good opportunity for us! There's not much to it so i guess it didn't attract any attention for a potential buyer until now. But we're cool with that, for now we just need a spot to store some cars and work on them. Luckily we got a nice bonus - the surroundings are just fantastic! Inawashiro is a relatively small town with a lake named after it, that should be a nice spot to chill out. And on the other side is Mount Bandai, one of the top 100 geographic landmarks in Japan! The best part is that i found out there's an epic touge road leading to it.
Benny found this Hyundai which should be a great daily! Well, nothing special but that doesn't really matter in this case - what we needed was practicality and reliability.
Meanwhile he also got himself a project car, that would be the AE86 roller. The R33 next to it was a late birthday gift for me by him and the Kami-Sama boys, from the looks of it i'd say this is a drift car! It looks a bit rough at first glance but that's the way it is with drift cars. It got me quite excited because i see this as a replacement for my S14 which was flooded by a typhoon and later sold to @FranklinAnderson, i hope he'll manage to rebuild it. Another car that Ben wanted is a S13 Silvia he posted earlier, sadly the deal fell through but he quickly found a good substitute for it, he should keep you updated about it soon. Now the R33 should turn out like the S14 i mentioned before, easily driftable but still not too hard to drive it on the streets. It's already a good base for that, i just have to try it out to see how it goes, i hit up the boys in Tokyo and we agreed for a drift session at Ebisu next weekend. See you there soon!
Expanding places but shrinking the wallet
2 weekly paychecks: +V$2250
Shipping and travel costs: V$6500
Remaining: V$25596
)))))))))) . JK , welcome to Japan guys , this is gonna be very epic !
