So last year we wrote down what we thought would be hot and not in 2008.  Our crystal ball isn't perfect of course, so we had to see how the year went before we were proved right or wrong.  Whilst we expected some trends to be on display in 2008 on cars, we were also judging by the rise of interest on forums and blogs in particular areas because building a new car can take more than a year!

So here is what we predicted and our thoughts on how it went. 

On the up

Retro Tourism - The big news here was the increase of people going to European shows from the UK, due in part to the increase of coverage in magazines as well as the internet providing motivation to get to foreign shows thanks to photo sharing and easy contact with local people.  We also saw people travelling from Europe for UK shows, which was very pleasing.  With our tightening financial belts this is going to be a tricky trend to keep up.  The dedicated will still be doing it, once you are bitten by the retro show road trip bug it is hard to stop.

White Cars - Definitely the colour to have your more modern motor in, indeed Performance VW ran a feature exclusively on white cars earlier in the year.  It hasn't made its way onto more retro cars, but then how often do they get resprayed?  Maybe one to keep an eye, but it is possible it'll pass the retro scene by.

Actually Buying Japanese Cars - I think this is a trend that was on the up in '08, the coverage Japanese cars shows get, the interest and the questions whenever one gets posted on a forum shows the ground swell of interest has translated into actual purchasing.  Not just the obvious models either, the more obscure Japanese and Far Eastern cars provide a draw for a lot of people.

Retro Focussed Publications - As mentioned in our mid year report we cheated at this one as we had inside information.  However it is worthy of note that we were surprised by dep-o magazine starting, as well as the amount of retro coverage on Speedhunters, well done chaps!

Body Coloured Rims - This didn't happen, what was interesting though was the rise in coloured centres, people painting lairy colours or contrasting colours on their wheel, so basically the exact opposite of what we predicted in paint terms.


Going down

VW Split Screen Campers - The amount of people looking for interesting alternatives to the VW Split Screen still grows, there are many alternatives out there.  The VW Splitty isn't going anywhere in the hearts and minds of retro fans though.

Boring Wheels On Fords - Definitely on the up this one, if the queries on the Retro Rides PCD database are anything to go by.

Ebay Bargains - Ebay seems determined to turn itself into a shop rather than an auction/bidding service, which is a shame and it means that bargains are much harder to find.

Rained Off Car Shows - We were right on this!  Well at least for the shows and events we went to.  Never very warm though.

False Rat Look - Hopefully gone are the days of the ratty car masquerading as rat look.  Which means people are starting to appreciate cars that look rat, but are solid and run well.  We hope!


All in we didn't do too bad.  Check back tomorrow for our 2009 trend predictions.

Hello! Did you miss us?  We had a lovely break over Christmas, we knew we'd not be able to consistently deliver new content over the holiday period so rather than do one or two posts we saved them up for a bumper new year!

We have a whole bunch of entries already worked out as well as some new ideas we are going to be doing over the next few months.  Also we will continue to massage the look and feel in order to get you the best user experience possible.  We will continue to update the blog at least three times a week, although we aim to do it daily.  This week you can expect to see some more trends predictions for this year, as well as an assessment of our accuracy from last year's list!  We also have a couple of winter warmers up our sleeves from last summer, in order to keep you motivated through the winter months.

We'll start with what we were up to on New Years Day though, this certainly wasn't a winter warmer!  We attended the BuySellCortina meet last year and wrote a feature on it, now we have our lovely Flickr account we are able to share more of the experience with you form this year's event : http://www.flickr.com/photos/retroscenemag/sets/72157612105556779/

So welcome to RSM 2009, we hope this is a great year for you and your car(s) and that you are enjoying what we do here at Retro Scene Mag.

 

Please excuse our slight break in transmission, Christmas time is pretty busy for all of us at RSM, particularly as we've been sorting out the voting for the Retro Rides Awards 2008, check it out for a short cut to some great builds from this year and some cool cars coming next year.

Anyway on to this.... 

 

 

So I found this thread on the fantastic Japanese Nostalgic Car forum and it didn't seem to have a huge response, I guess after the photos that went around last year from inside the Zama facility people were not as awestruck by it.  From our point of view this set of photographs contains more of interest to us, whilst it still documents the more modern Nissan racing cars it also captures most of the older Nissan racing heritage, including some fantastic rally cars.

The goodness doesn't stop there as this trip was for more than just a visit to Zama and includes visits to the Japan Super GT event and Z Fiesta, a gathering of the various Z cars, including some killer S30s and S31s.

Check out the original thread for a flavour of the rest of the trip, some tourist photos of Japan and street spotted cars.

This is why the internet and photo sharing is so great for car enthusiasts.

Okay so I was going write up a big "Christmas List" in order to maybe make some cash money from Amazon referrals in order to finance either a) My Aston martin or (more likely) b) a Christmas present for myself, a book or a DVD maybe.  However whilst going through things I realised that I'd rather spread this stuff through the year and highlight maybe one book or DVD every so often.  What prompted this decision was this awesome book : 

The blurb : "The love of fast cars has exploded - from a rebellious underground pastime to become a huge worldwide cult - spawning its own sub cultures in music, art and fashion. Ten years in the making "Speedseekers" is the ultimate book on the world of Hot rods and Kustom Kulture. Author Alexandra Lier has spent a decade at the epicenter of the scene from the drag strips of Bakersfield to the Bonneville Salt Flats to Los Angeles' most devotional garages, revving engines and burning rubber with the world's foremost mechanics, racers and adrenaline junkies. Not just for gear heads! Peek under hoods and into interiors and meet the fascinating characters that have devoted their lives to the pursuit of the ultimate rush. The book features full color photographs and graphics throughout. It is more exciting than a nitro burning supercharged Hemi."

That right there is present I would like to see under my Christmas tree come December 25th.

Whilst we would very much have liked to be in Japan this past weekend for the Yokohama Hot Rod Custom Show, we sadly had to be at home doing Christmas shopping.  We have to use the power of the internet to transport ourselves there.



Straight up Mike has some great coverage over at Speedhunters : Part 1 here, Part 2 here.  However we're going to go a bit off piste and head over to the Japanese side of the web for some more alternative coverage.

Firstly Mooneyes itself has a great blog that is regularly updated in both Japanese and English, here it has the last few days run up to the show as well as a handful for images from the actual event.  If you are a fan of Japanese cars, hot rods, customs or even just Mooneyes, this is a must read and should be straight in your bookmarks for future reference.



Getting full galleries of the event has so far been slow, with this one on Flickr being the main one we've found, it is predominantly motorcycle focussed though.  We have used a couple of the photographs from the gallery to illustrate this entry.

The guys from KustomKulture.jp have a range of posts about the event, usually with one or two photographs, a lot of them aren't of the cars, but people hanging out, which gives you and idea of the social side of this event for the builders and traders: Nash, Satoshi, Jetwrench, Wish.

Beyond those guys we found this gallery from Hullingbird, which had a nice overview of the whole event.  Also The Flat Head, had a nice traders eye view of the event here.



Our link is from the point of view of VW guys at the show; being such a widely regarded show Yokohama Hot Rod Custom Show tends to being out some great cars, this includes the aircooled scene as well, Flat4 has some cool photos here.

Let’s hope that next year we can give you some live photographs from the event!

In the UK our international motorshow consists almost entirely of manufacturers showing off their latest and greatest road cars along side some concept cars and the chance to ogle some unobtainable super cars.  It seems in Essen they do things differently, Essen seems to be a motorshow for the car enthusiast, rather than just a platform for new cars to be sold.



Germany website Motoso has hooked the world up with a fine set of pictures from the event on its Flickr account, if you can tear yourselves away from the painted "booth babes" then you'll catch a glimpse of the newest cars and ideas sat alongside hot rods, customs and youngtimers.  They also have a hall of dream machines which can be seen in this nice flickr gallery here



It would be nice if more shows that included new cars also celebrated the general cult of the car in all its facets from those of us that like to modify, to those that keep their mint Hillman Avenger going, and over to the new generation of people modifying cars, we are in effect all in this hobby together, just different aspects of it.

My favourite car I've seen so far from the event is this BMW Art Car :



I've long been a fan of the art cars, they just have something the right side of bonkers about them.

Our friends over at Speedhunters also have a couple of posts about the Essen event for you to check out.

In these dire times for the motor industry it is maybe wise for manufacturers to remember they live and die by their heritage and perhaps should be embracing those of us that love older cars a bit more.

We've mentioned before our love of shoes and our obvious love of all things lowrider, so we're always pleased when our interests collide.  With it coming up to Christmas we've come over all capitalist consumers and gone on the hunt for suitable footwear.

First up we've got C1rca's range of Low Rider shoes.  Part of their al50 range you've got a choice of two, firstly black with lowrider details :


C1rca also have a range of accessories with suitable lowrider detail on them as well.

Next up we have the aptly named Lowrider shoes, instead of having cars and wotnot printed on them they have lowrider style graphics and artwork.  The best selection we've found is at Sears or you can try ebay as they come up occasionally.



Of course if you are feeling creative, get yourself some plain white shoes and get going with your own custom art work.  Custom gasser shoes anyone?

It's the start of a new series here on RSM, we're setting the camera to close-up and taking a look at individual parts of the cars we love - celebrating those little touches that draw us enthusiasts in every time. First up we have...Mk1 Cortina Rear Lights:

What was the designer thinking as he penned the back end of the iconic Mk1 Cortina? Why did he choose to put a circle into the vee shape he'd drawn? Did the lights come first? Was he drunk? We may never know, but whatever his driving force was he produced and icon. In fact the design was so good that other designers plucked them from the mediocrity of a mass produced saloon and amalgamated them in their own artistry: 

Spotted! Mk1 Cortina lights doing a stunning job as part of the TVR Grantura.

 

Here they are again! Mk1 'Tina lights appeared on ice cream vans everywhere...I'll have a flake in mine please.

If you know of any other uses, let us know. Mk1 Cortina lights, we salute you!

 

I doubt there is a car enthusiast that hasn't dreamed of stumbling across a barn, or a garage that has a car already in it, even a humble Austin Allegro would do for most people, but it is those real jackpot finds that cause the biggest stir.

Hemmings.com blog has a great entry on a new barn find in New York It always amazes me that these collections sit either undiscovered or unrevealed for so long.  The images on this entry have come from that find.  Check the entry on Hemmings for more photos and details.

One of the most famous to do the rounds on the internet in recent years it the Portugese "barn find", which turned out to not be a barn find at all, but a photographer documenting a car collection.  However real barn finds do happen an Vintage Sports Cars has a page of them, some really special machinery has been found.

The subject is interesting enough to have had a couple of books written about it. Tom Cotter's The Cobra in the Barn : Great Stories of Automotive Archaeology as the name implies has some great stories of barn find cars.

 

 

 

If you enjoy that, or have already enjoyed it you may want to pick up The Hemi in the Barn also by Tom Cotter.

 

So keep that dream alive, every time you see an abandoned barn, or garage, that temptation to just peek through the door edges, to see if there is something inside, is always strong.  You never know, one day you may turn up that Ferrari 250 GTO SWB,.. or an Austin Allegro, it doesn't matter which.