Skyline Festival, Mine's, Nismo and Nissan in One Day! (Part 1)

So let’s take a break from the technical stuff.  This post and the next will be light on words, heavy on pictures...

Recently when my friend Kunal Arneja, (a Skyline R33 GT-R owner himself, and co-owner of the Cars Over Everything Facebook page or "COE" as I refer to it) visited Japan from Canada, my schedule just happened to be free his second day in Japan. Naturally, we decided to make it a Nissan Skyline kind of day!

Waiting for Thomas, showing various bits to Kunal

First, I picked up Kunal and my friend Thomas at a Yokohama hotel.  From there we set off under Tokyo Bay using the Aqua-Line to get to Sodegaura Forest Raceway, where they were having the annual Nissan Skyline Festival.  It was my first time going, so I didn’t know what to expect.

When we arrived, I was directed to a huge gravel and dirt parking lot. I thought I bottomed the car out on the bumpy dirt trail leading to it, but luckily no damage at all. The parking lot though, was amazing, with Skylines from all generations, shapes and sizes. As well as other more normal vehicles.

After parking, and making sure no dust was on the paint,
we started wandering about....

Skylines and Nissans from all years...

Of course our eyes were drawn to R33 GT-Rs

Oh lord, a "V-spec II"??

This should have been a warning to us... overdone 33s? But we then started seeing some nice ones:

Kunal and I posing in front of this beautiful blue one

Here's a better shot of the same blue R33, courtesy of COE

 Obviously some other nice 33s in the lot too, such as:

This purple beauty on R34 rims...

I've never seen these kinds of wheels before on a 33!

We found an American guy who owns this Hakosuka, so had to take a look inside...

Kunal and Thomas with an Autech 33 GTR, R31, R34 and Stagea
(never mind the next rows and rows of goodness!)

Lovely Autech 4 Door GT-R... I want one! (Eventually)

A short walk then took us to the asphalted area near the pits, where we spotted some more interesting cars:

IMPUL R33-R (one of only 200  made) - front

IMPUL R33-R - rear

Not only was this ECR33 painted an interesting color...

but it had Z-tune style fenders...!!!

this R31 GTS-R was awesome though

This is a STREET LEGAL REPLICA of the real thing!

Yes, it certainly attracted attention!

Some huge rear over fenders... interesting rear spoiler

And in the tents, you could find Skyline and car related stuff, including rare mincars..

Even K.I.T.T. (Knight Industries Two Thousand) was there...
No Michael Knight to be seen, however

And then we spotted two very interesting and memorable (in a bad way?) cars:

Looks OK, right?

NO!!!! Why these pseudo Ferrari tail lights?

This one, I still have nightmares about:
Note creative use of silver door edge guard to protect lip spoiler...
Oh and also the fender mounted turn indicators
(usually popular with the over 60, Toyota Crown driving crowd...)

I almost fainted when I saw this... excessive stickers are one thing, but look closely...

WHY???? Not just the wiring, which lead to spoiler mounted rear facing LEDs,
but the crystals on the side plates...

The ultimate in car security, I guess....(but with crystal accents)??

We then heard the announcement, they were going to let a few cars drive on the racetrack, so we went to take a look:

A nice lineup...

But already a couple of hours had passed, and so we made an impromptu decision - rather than stay at Sodegaura for the rest of the day, why not let my car stretch its legs some more and visit some other places? And so we left for Mine's, which is probably the least accessible by public transportation of all the Kanto area tuners...

Photos and write up in Part 2!