This week COBB employees are spread across three different continents. Aside from our operations in Utah, Dave Benson (hard parts engineer extraordinaire) is in the UK attending the Autosports Show while Christian, Billy and I (Trey) are out in Tokyo attending the Tokyo Auto Salon. We’ll be sure to share a full report and pictures from Dave once he returns. Until then, here is a brief update from the Far East.

We’ve been attending the Tokyo Auto Salon for a few years now, ever since we began our relationship with renown Subaru tuner Prova to sell the AccessPORT in Japan. While the show is similar to SEMA, some marked differences exist. For instance, while it is primarily only parts manufacturers that have booths at SEMA, it is not at all uncommon to have ‘tuner shops’ displaying at the Tokyo Auto Salon. By tuner shop I mean a company that specializes more in the installation of parts and custom tuning and often relies on parts manufactured by one of the big manufacturers like HKS, Trust, Blitz, etc. Tokyo Auto Salon is also open to the public, so there’s more of a car show/entertainment aspect to it. Over the years, I’ve seen several companies make the decision not to display at TAS and I honestly can’t say I blame them. It’s disappointing because TAS is the only opportunity some of us get to see their work but at the same time it’s very expensive and there really isn’t a lot of actual business that gets done. In fact, it seems more attention is placed on the models than the cars.

Enough of my babbling, here are some pictures. I’ll post more once we compile all that we have.

I’d probably get in trouble if I didn’t start with a Subaru. 😉 Here’s the next generation Forester. I’ll be honest, not a big fan of the ‘double wheel arch’ in the body line. The new Forester definitely looks bigger visually. I trust Subaru on this one, though. While I like the current quirky Forester design, the number one complaint I hear from others when I try to convince them to buy one is that they are ‘too small’. Never thought that with our Forester XT but I can appreciate where they’re coming from.

Next up, for our Mazda friends we have RE Amemiya’s Mazdaspeed3.

Scooters are big business in Japan, they even make body kits for them now! Selection below from Bomex.

Speed Racer’s Mach 5… sign me up!

There were just a few new GT-Rs (R35) at the show. <insert sarcasm here> It’ll be interesting to see how the car does in the States. I was surprised at how much larger it is than the earlier R32-R34 models.

Christian and Billy checking out design elements of the Nismo SuperGT 500 Z33.

Nismo SuperGT 500 GT-R. Looks like a lot of aero development carry over from the Z33. Impressive nonetheless.

The Lexus IS-F race prototype. A very DTM aero package, LHD configuration. I’m still putting my money on this showing up in ALMS if it races though if I were Toyota I’d run it in DTM if I thought it would be competitive. My reason being that people in Europe (Germany) actually care about road racing. Just look at the live crowds DTM draws as compared to ALMS or any other road racing series in America.

And finally, my own personal favorites. You just can’t go wrong with a clean R34 and since I own a Hakosuka and 1st gen Celica, the Rocky Auto and Top Secret examples below are personal inspirations for my own restoration plans.

That’s all for now. We’ll make sure to post more shortly.