Hyper Meeting 2008
Tsukuba Circuit, Japan
Foreign correspondents are invaluable to the publishing industry. That's why we love Mike Garrett so much; he lives in Japan, paradoxically has both ears to the ground of the JDM tuning scene, and resides a stone's throw away from the Tsukuba Circuit-meaning we can always count on him to pull through with the sickest event coverage anywhere, like his snaps of the Hyper Meeting 2008, for example. The staple event in the world of all-wheel-drive turbo-four tuning, the Hyper Meeting invites Japan's greatest Subaru and Mitsubishi tuners to prove their mettle on the scene's most sacred battleground each year-and with the debut of the new generation EVO and STI only months prior, this year's meet was one of the best to date. It was JUN's EVO X with a 1:01:31 that claimed the fastest pass by an '08 at the event, with little more added to it than when we shot it for last month's cover. The Runduce Impreza GRB followed closely, claiming the top '08 Subie spot, but the more heavily modded veterans remained atop the competition with sub-minute passes, including Sun Auto's 56.28-second Cyber EVO VII, Varis's Cyber EVO V, and Zero Sports' Impreza, driven by Tarzan Yamada. Still, our favorite machine of the event had to be CS Hiro's chop-top super clean Impreza-with a roof so low, Nakamura-san had to peer through the steering wheel to drive it. In addition to the time attacking, D1 champ Nobushige Kumakubo and Team Orange threw down multiple four-car demo drift runs, and of course, race queens were in abundance to keep their drivers cool...and look hot doing it! www.hypermeeting.jp
Performance Nissan Meet
From warranty compliance issues to highway-robbery-league repair bills, and techs trying to explain how your car's cold-air intake is causing its clutch to slip, does it ever seem like your dealership just doesn't get it? If the answer is yes, you didn't buy from Performance Nissan in Duarte, Calif. These guys get it, as evidenced by the third annual Performance Nissan meet presented by HKS, held in San Bernardino's Orange Show Speedway. Featuring an autocross competition held by Drift Day, and a drifting demo courtesy of Formula D, the meet showcased the industry's greatest parts manufacturers, vendors, tuning shops, models, and of course, tuned Nissans. USDM R35 GT-R? Check. Even Performance Nissan's Andy Kim brought out his own heavily modded 350Z sporting the only Ing's Long Nose kit in the States. At the end of the day, attendees walked away with thousands of dollars of raffled-off industry schwagg, a preview of the upcoming FD season, and an idea of what to expect from Nissan's legendary GT-R supercar, along with a strong reaffirmation of how heavily the car maker impacts our scene altogether. Can your dealership keep it real like that?www.mynismo.com