So Mayday bank holiday has come and gone and a complete shocker it was sunny… really sunny… hottest on record sunny! As such the first thing that can be said about Japfest Silverstone was that the sunscreen was out in force and so by lunch time was the sunburn!

The club had a decent turn out for the first show of the year which is often plagued by being cold and overcast but lets see what was on offer at Britain’s home of motor racing for a Japanese box lover…

We were down to have 14 cubes on the show stand plus Scott’s over on the fast car stand flying the flag for the square life (not that the flag got raised :_( as Scott had a breakdown!) and all 14 made it which is great. We had a nice mix of Gen 2’s and 3’s but the classic white of the Gen 3 seems to be spreading like japanese knot weed into the gen 2 camp as we were a very white crowd!

Now I have a bit of a random thing for photography and cameras so on the day I was shooting with an old Japanese twin lens reflex camera. Appropriate choice I thought being Japanese although almost all digitals come from Japanese companies these days! Plenty of comments made and nice when you break out something so obscure looking that people flee the scene as they think it’s a really serious camera but it does mean I have films to develop so the photos contained in this article are by P1n1on and Paul Male (who even though he doesn’t realise it is pretty much the official club photographer!) I’ll stick up the results of my efforts in a later piece probably and you can also find plenty of shots by looking for the usual tags on instagram. You’ll also have to forgive us being so used to seeing some of these cars we actually forget to photograph them at all!!!

Japfest is a show for purely Japanese marques and the organisers claim it’s the biggest of it’s type in Europe. As such you do have to put up with the field of Blue Subarus where if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all but every car attracts it’s fans and all are welcome here. To be fair though some of those subaru owners step outside the box of standard mods and go a little more extreme…

Firstly lets take a look at some of the Owners club cars….

Star of the show has to go to PaulaTrevor (there a couple but share one account on facebook!) They have 2 cubes the first being the one you’ll have seen before with the pink lego brick engine but this is their latest aquisition (yes they are single handedly getting all of japans cubes here!) a rare as hens teeth Supercharged Impul. Funnily it only stands out to cube owners as all the other car owners have no idea how rare this car is and a lego brick gets more love but seeing this in person it is a lovely cube. Tucked away in the back of the shot is a white gen 3, a common sight in the UK as it seems they’re nearly all white but this one is a bit special…

This is Gary’s and it’s currently one of only 3, 3rd Gen Autech Riders in the country! Looking very similar to the US Krom edition this is JDM car in all it’s bench seat glory even down to the chequered interior that looks ace if a little 80’s. He’s again not had it long and it’s I believe pretty much as it arrived with him but knowing Gary it will be tastefully tinkered with as time goes by.

Paul’s cube is always great and those 18’s always make me think of Diamond core cutters!

We also had a few new members that came which is great and they seemed to have a good time so hopefully we’ll see them again!

 

Walking around on the day you can find other little gems and being owners of Cubes we seem to gravitate towards the slightly rarer more unusual cars that Japan has to offer along with the more outrageous offerings of the modified car world!

You can’t not have some glittery paint and there was plenty of that on show from an interesting GTO (I’m trying to be polite you see) to a very loud orange 350Z.

Then there was our old leaders latest creation the slammed 80’s themed Super Acti…

Phil will always be one to push a boundary and this is just another in a long line of great creations to come out of the west midlands!

The AE86 club were celebrating an anniversary bash as well so loads of tofu delivery vehicles out in force!

Funky Kei Kars aplenty to be found but Kei Kars in the park didn’t seem to be there which was a shame.

then there are just those funky little cars that are tastefully tweaked…

At the other end of the scale you find all the sweet wagons although I didn’t spot my favourite the R34 nosed stageas!

Then there are all the funky cars on the Retro Japanese stand, there is always the Sera (yeah the BMW i8 might have batteries but all of it’s styling comes from a 90’s Toyota) A couple of cool editions to the stand were…

there you have it, first show of the season is done and we are now fully in the build up for Coventry motorfest on the 2nd and 3rd June!

See you all there

 

 

Photo’s kindly provided by

Paulmale42 @flickr

P1n1on @instagram

gbcubester @instagram