We're gonna go against our selfish desires and
not start off our Tokyo Auto Salon automotive coverage with a bunch of vans and kei cars. We've got too many van/kei pictures to sort through, so we'll get to those shortly. If you're new to our coverage of the 2007 Tokyo Auto Salon.
Now that we've got that out of the way, we'll get to today's gallery, the D1/race cars of the TAS. We usually don't create these types of galleries as... well... everyone else does 'em. Every car magazine, website, blog, etc. will focus
only on rides like Nomuken's Blitz-sponsored ER34 Skyline. We've shown that car on this site at least 100 times, but if you really want to see it, here you go:
So while we weren't too excited to see the superstar D1 cars for the millionth time, we
were stoked on seeing some of the D1 Street Legal cars. As the name says, these D1 cars are 100-percent street-legal, meaning that they pass smog and have all of the original factory-installed safety equipment. Furthermore, rules mandate that these cars maintain a full interior, full stereo system (at least as it came from the factory), factory brakes, A/C and any other feature the OEMs saw fit to install. These D1 rides are
attainable by design, yet they are still competitive on a track. We hope to see some of these street-legal D1 rides when the D1 USA points series kicks off later this year.
Greddy literally took the wraps off of its 2007 D1 car, a light blue FD3S RX-7. Seriously, this car was covered up during most of the press/VIP day. We guess Greddy didn't want people to know that it was replacing its light-blue FD3S RX-7 drift car with a light-blue FD3s RX-7 drift car. Yeah, we know that this new car has a RE Amemiya kit, but did Greddy
really need to keep that a secret?
We found some Japanese magazine trying to set up a shot of Tsuyoshi "Shotgun" Tezuka standing in front of his Bee-R Skyline. We "stole" this photo from them while they were still setting up because we're jerks like that.
We found this guy roaming the halls of Makuhari Messe. Apparently he is a good driver or something.
To those of you that don't get sarcasm: yes, we know who this guy is - close Outlook now.
Jumping off the D1-tip, we can't let a Tokyo Auto Salon story be published without featuring at least one WRC-spec WRX. So here it is:
Many Super GT (the series formerly called "JGTC") cars were on hand. It looks as if a lot of teams have jumped to the Lexus SC430, as we counted at least three GT500-spec luxury (non-)convertibles on the show floor. Here's a clean example we found in the Racing Hart booth.
We haven't seen this Lamborghini since we saw that JGTC race at Twin Ring Motegi. Some fun facts about the car: it is run by a private Lamborghini owner's club; its body is made of carbon fiber; the team somehow manages to hire the
hottest race queens to ever walk the planet; no absolutely hot race queens were around the car at the show. Bummer about that last one, huh?
We still have yet to talk about the tuner cars and VIP rides, but we'll go and wrap things up here for today. Be sure to check out our Image Gallery for more pictures of D1 cars, Super GT cars, Super Taikyu cars and other race-prepped rides (race-spec EVO wagon, anyone?).
source: ign
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