For the final 15 years, I’ve owned a workshop in Auckland, New Zealand, servicing, constructing, and tuning Japanese race and highway automobiles. JTune, and a few of the autos I’ve had a hand in creating during the last decade and a half have beforehand been featured on Speedhunters. After a couple of busy years, I lastly determined to take a break from full-time on the store and embark on a couple of adventures in Japan.
My first journey this 12 months was for Tokyo Auto Salon, at which period I additionally travelled right down to Fuji to satisfy with HKS a couple of particular Toyota GR86 venture. I returned in the course of summer season to verify in on the progress of the construct, and in addition go to another outlets. 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 certainly one of Tokyo’s most famed RX-7 outlets. Automobile Store Glow is in the present day most well-known for its customized LED lights, but it surely additionally does servicing and full automotive 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 automobiles.
In 2009, a buyer – who was a supervisor at Tremendous Autobacs – supplied 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 cross up the chance, Hara-san purchased the FD3S, signalling the start of the Automobile Store Glow demo automotive.
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, most of the different FD3S RX-7s within the Tsukuba paddock have been outfitted with RE Amemiya widebody kits, so Hara-san had one put in and completed the outside off with a recent 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 minimize his TC2000 PB lap time right down to a formidable 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 in the present day bought in Japan and overseas.
Over time, Hara-san’s FD3S advanced via numerous time assault seasons, turning into lighter, extra aerodynamic, and extra highly effective. You possibly can learn all about it Dino’s 2015 function.
The RX-7’s finest time at Tsukuba Circuit is a formidable 56.4-second lap – achieved with OEM-based brakes and the manufacturing facility ABS eliminated. That setup would possibly elevate some eyebrows, however given TC2000’s monitor structure – brief with only some heavy braking zones – it is sensible that balanced and simply warmed-up brakes might be simpler than an enormous brake package. Typically, simplicity wins, particularly whenever you don’t need to spend an excessive amount of time fine-tuning brake stability and bias.
At the moment, the RX-7 is absolutely stripped again, with huge plans on the horizon. Once I requested Hara-san about his aim for the automotive, he shared that he’s wanting to push the bounds and go even quicker; a 53-second lap is the dream.
In Tokyo and different Asian cities, bodily house is an actual luxurious, however relating to modified automobiles, that doesn’t imply that construct high quality is compromised. Many fanatics construct spectacular machines proper of their driveways or residence garages. Working example, one other Automobile Store Glow RX-7: Tani-san’s wild ‘GT race automotive for the highway’ as not too long ago featured by Toby.
To coincide with our go to, Automobile Store Glow organized for a couple of customer-owned automobiles 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 could be straightforward to imagine it’s a race automotive, too. Whereas a few of these builds do hit the monitor, most are completely road automobiles closely impressed by Hara-san’s FD3S. No matter how modified they’re beneath the hood, seeing these automobiles out on the highway is fairly cool.
I need to give an enormous because of Hara-san and the Automobile Store Glow workers for opening up their doorways to us, and for everybody who introduced their automobiles out. Keep tuned for the night time cruise!
Jacky Tse
Instagram: jtune_nz
Images by Ash Bechan
Instagram: pixeltoon_media
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