Oh yeah – I forgot about the cars! Upset because you haven’t seen any Civics at all in Japan? Well, so was I. When we met Jun Tanaka, he kinda chuckled because there were three of us out to lunch with him and we all drove Civics. I didn’t realize how much of a small market the Civic commanded until then. It was echoed in this trip but then we saw perhaps the cleanest EK (yes, really an EK!) Civic Type R. Start drooling.
What’s that? You’ve already seen yellow hatchbacks before? Yeah, but this one has an almost complete Type R interior?
Oh, you saw that at the latest Hot Import Nights? Well, how about the missing front seats which were awaiting install (sorry for the blurry pics. . .my steady-ing hand was um. . .busy):
Ah, see? Spoon buckets – you weren’t expecting those, were you? Then how about this?!
I wasn’t expecting to see a “Mugen Equipped” badge on ANY car in Spoon’s hands, but this was running the super-sex Twin Loop exhaust. It seems that even Spoon recognizes how great the sweet sounding Mugen exhaust is. That is where it stopped, though. They took over the performance under the hood and created the single cleanest all Spoon engine bays ever created!
Needless to say, my mind was numbing from the overload, but I had to keep going. That was only two of many cars to check out. I sobered up enough to turn around and peer at a core support of a random S2000. Neat, he gets his fluids changed regularly . . . at freaking Type One for God’s sake!
But then again why wouldn’t you when it’s a slick-ass beast of an S2000 like this?
Okay, definitely sensory overload. I’m gonna go take it easy and scope out the bland looking blue EG upstairs. Since it didn’t have any Spoon stickers or blue and yellow schemes on it I thought it’d cool me down:
Too bad to get to the front of the car I had to squeeze past s couple million-yen’s worth of tiny Spoon boxes. Now it finally hits me. Women like Amber love seeing those tiny light blue boxes from Tiffany’s and guys like us love seeing those tiny white boxes from Spoon. It’s all so clear. . .
The car seemed to be sedate. Hell, even though it had an authentic Spoon lip, the wheels were mismatched! Wait a minute, the fronts are five lug and the rears are still four. What gives? Well, one of the wrenches ran over to me and wanted to know if I wanted any shots under the hood. C’mon. I’ve seen almost anything under the hood of an EG so “That’s okay” I told him. I didn’t want to disturb his work on my account – hell, we both could have gotten yelled at by Ichishima-san. So, I turned to take some picturess of the DC5 Integra Type R behind it when suddenly my ears picked up the only few words I know in Japanese. Well, they were in English but are 100% Japanese in my book “K20A.”
“Pop it,” I told him without letting him finish his sentence. He smiled the biggest smile I had seen all this trip and for good reason. Remember that K swap header in Inchishima-san’s office? Here’s why!
I stood in amazement for quite a while. When I finally looked up, Ichishima-san was beaming quite proudly. I bowed my respect to him and his creation then took the above picture. I realize now it captures none of the beauty of the swap but nonetheless, there it is.
About that DC5 . . . it was a purebred race DC5!
With some nice duct work:
To feed a true Spoon Sports balanced and blueprinted endurance racing engine! Hot damn I’m never gonna get tired of seeing these gorgeous yellow valve covers!
Just beyond the DC5 was a white S2000. Not too unlike the one downstairs, but this one was special in its own right:
I told you since TAS – EVERY rear wheel drive car had the widebody treatment!
While I was upstairs I took a moment to snap a shot of the shop floor. Of course it’s impeccably clean, but it also had some customer cars.
Wait a tick! Another Civic! So this is where they’ve all been hiding. But this one surely has a lot of stickers. Normally in America that means stay away, but in Japan that means, come hither – I’m hiding some goodies for you!
I can tell this was run on small circuits because of the Alex Motorsports adjustable wing risers. The front bolt on the brackets acts as the pivot, then in the back you can see three holes for adjustment. This one is set in the middle.
It was stripped out-ish like any race car, but damn was it dirty. And what’s with the pop cans in the cupholder? Race cars don’t have cupholders!
It turns out Japanese dirt-circuit racers do! It’s not a “rally” car like a WRC rally car, but it drives on small closed course Japanese dirt tracks. Imagine “Ivan ‘Ironman’ Stewart’s Super Off-Road” but without the jumps or unlimited nitros. So why was it there? I can’t tell you for sure because the hood was shut, but I can tell you what a rally car looks like when it throws up!
Suddenly I noticed I as the only one meandering about. Jesse and PB were over in the workshop corner talking to one of the wrenches. I wondered what was going on so I wandered over. I only caught the last part of the conversation but knew it was about the small lever he just installed on the transmission. It was a K series transmission for sure, but why the funky actuating lever? Two simple words: Lotus Elise! Spoons dropping K series into everything! Watch out HASport!
I had finally seen it all! My head was spinning, I was getting dizzy, and I thought I saw half a B series. What the hell? Half a B series? Yeah; half a B series.
