For the final 15 years, I’ve owned a workshop in Auckland, New Zealand, servicing, constructing, and tuning Japanese race and highway vehicles. JTune, and among the automobiles I’ve had a hand in creating over the past decade and a half have beforehand been featured on Speedhunters. After a number of busy years, I lastly determined to take a break from full-time on the store and embark on a number of adventures in Japan.
My first journey this 12 months was for Tokyo Auto Salon, at which era I additionally travelled right down to Fuji to satisfy with HKS a few particular Toyota GR86 mission. I returned in the course of summer season to verify in on the progress of the construct, and likewise go to another retailers. A type of was Automobile Store Glow.
Although I missed 7’s Day (7/7) in Japan by every week, I used to be decided to go to and study extra about one in every of Tokyo’s most famous RX-7 retailers. Automobile Store Glow is immediately most well-known for its customized LED lights, nevertheless it additionally does servicing and full automobile builds from a humble constructing in Nerima-ku close to the guts of Japan’s capital metropolis.
Automobile Store Glow was established in 2006, with its proprietor, Yukimitsu Hara, initially promoting his LED mild merchandise on-line. By April 2008, he opened a showroom, focusing primarily on customising American and European vehicles.
In 2009, a buyer – who was a supervisor at Tremendous Autobacs – provided Hara-san his ex-Knight Sports activities Mazda RX-7, which he was now not driving, at a hard-to-refuse worth. Not desirous to go up the chance, Hara-san purchased the FD3S, signalling the start of the Automobile Store Glow demo automobile.
Taking the RX-7 to Tsukuba Circuit in the identical spec he bought it, Hara-san clocked a 1:06 lap time on 17-inch road tyres, setting a benchmark for future upgrades.
At the moment, lots of the different FD3S RX-7s within the Tsukuba paddock had been geared up with RE Amemiya widebody kits, so Hara-san had one put in and completed the outside off with a contemporary paint job and a pair of his customized tail lights. The package improve allowed for wider tyres, prompting a return to Tsukuba on the earliest alternative, the place Hara-san lower his TC2000 PB lap time right down to a powerful 1:02.
From that second, he was hooked on time assault.
As Hara-san continued competing in time assault occasions, proudly flying the Automobile Store Glow flag, the corporate started receiving tail mild orders from Japan and overseas, additional boosting its profile.
On the again of this, Automobile Store Glow expanded its vary to incorporate lights for different fashions – the Toyota Supra, Honda S2000 and NSX, and Subaru Impreza, amongst others – and ventured into aero elements, exhausts and suspension, all of that are immediately offered in Japan and overseas.
Through the years, Hara-san’s FD3S developed by means of varied time assault seasons, turning into lighter, extra aerodynamic, and extra highly effective. You’ll be able to learn all about it Dino’s 2015 characteristic.
The RX-7’s greatest time at Tsukuba Circuit is a powerful 56.4-second lap – achieved with OEM-based brakes and the manufacturing facility ABS eliminated. That setup may elevate some eyebrows, however given TC2000’s observe structure – quick with just a few heavy braking zones – it is smart that balanced and simply warmed-up brakes may very well be simpler than a giant brake package. Typically, simplicity wins, particularly while you don’t wish to spend an excessive amount of time fine-tuning brake steadiness and bias.
Presently, the RX-7 is totally stripped again, with huge plans on the horizon. After I requested Hara-san about his objective for the automobile, he shared that he’s desperate to push the bounds and go even sooner; a 53-second lap is the dream.
In Tokyo and different Asian cities, bodily area is an actual luxurious, however relating to modified vehicles, that doesn’t imply that construct high quality is compromised. Many fans construct spectacular machines proper of their driveways or dwelling garages. Working example, one other Automobile Store Glow RX-7: Tani-san’s wild ‘GT race automobile for the highway’ as lately featured by Toby.
To coincide with our go to, Automobile Store Glow organized for a number of customer-owned vehicles to cease by the store after which head out for a drive in convoy.
Given Hara-san’s penchant for time assault racing, when seeing another aggressively styled RX-7s exterior Automobile Store Glow, it might be straightforward to imagine it’s a race automobile, too. Whereas a few of these builds do hit the observe, most are solely road vehicles closely impressed by Hara-san’s FD3S. No matter how modified they’re beneath the hood, seeing these vehicles out on the highway is fairly cool.
I wish to give a giant due to Hara-san and the Automobile Store Glow workers for opening up their doorways to us, and for everybody who introduced their vehicles out. Keep tuned for the evening cruise!
Jacky Tse
Instagram: jtune_nz
Pictures by Ash Bechan
Instagram: pixeltoon_media
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