Japshow 2014 @ Santa Pod, UK

[Words by Tom Bradstock] It’s been a little while since I’ve been to a Japanese car show here in the UK, mostly due to not having any money due to being a ford owner.  Anyways with such a great venue on my doorstep (20 mins drive) its always good to pop along to the world famous Santapod when ever I can, and a good Japanese car show is always a good excuse.

It was good to see a fresh mix up of cars there, it seems the more often you go to shows the more you see the same old cars every time.  One thing I noticed was there is a lot more of a mix now than their used to be. A lot more Civics, more Mx5’s, more Silvias and a lot more of the uncommon cars.

I’ve noticed the R35 GTR is becoming massive now, I think I must have seen well over 100 of them during my walk around, and I would say 80% of them highly modified. One amazing example is the Knight Racer R35 (Knight Racer are a company from my home town).  I remember seeing this car at a few local meets and the owner is friends of friends, but it was only running 700bhp, so it seem’s they have gone further as its now running 800bhp along with a lot of carbon fibre panels which the company themselves sell.

It’s a stunning example of what you can do and I must say it has an amazing sound to it.
Also Sevenvally Motersport bought along their Nissan Qashqai-R SVM along. Which I can imagine is a riot to drive, its great to see tuners engine swapping the R35 heart into other cars. A quote taken from their webpage – “The Qashqai R will carry a SVM1000R conversion with the potential of further power upgrades at a later date. A fully forged & blue printed 3.8L engine with SVM stage 6 GT1100 turbo chargers are the base foundation for the conversion.”

Was also treated to the unicorn of the scene, the Hakosuka Skyline, again you don’t see these at UK show’s but in the last couple of years they have started popping up now and then.  Last time I saw one was in Japan, so it was lovely to see another in person, such a beautiful car, but as JDM fans we know this already right.

I was happy the weather stayed nice for the event, Santapod can be a nightmare if it rains, as the main attraction stops so there isn’t really much to do.

Over all it was a good show, with some great cars and I hope the ones on show in this write up give you a little taste of how the UK scene is doing and how healthy it is. The UK scene is lending itself to the Japanese scene I think but we also have a massive static/air scene obviously influenced by the euro scene as well, it’s a great mix.