JapFest 2008 Report

Its easy to imagine that everyone loves old cars when you swim in a sea of blogs and forums devoted to them. The reality is that more modern machinery has a much larger following. I found this out first hand when I went to my first show of the year, JapFest at Castle Combe.

The show was vast, 2,500 cars were on show, of which only a small percentage were there to represent the more retro side of the Japanese scene. What was there made up for what they lacked in numbers, in style and quality. First stop was the stand of eight-six.co.uk, for a selection of Toyotas, not just AE86, but earlier Corollas and Racer86's fantastic KP30 startlet

Moving back to the Paddock area saw a fantastic selection of traders and great line up of esoteric cars from Redline Magazine [link], including a bright pink VIP import;

It was good to see that people’s tastes in imports are moving beyond the latest hot Japanese car and onto some of the more unusual stuff.

By the time I'd worked my way through a sea of more modern Japanese machinery to Quarry I'd seen literally hundreds of cars. Getting to the corner at Quarry I spotted an RX-4 standing out and being much photographed.

The 'flip' paint is a really unusual choice, but seemed to work very well. It was certainly attracting a lot of attention.

I made my way into the final club area, another vast field, to go and hunt out some more cool retro machinery. It was a treasure trove of cars, including probably the finest AE86 I saw all day.

Elsewhere in the field I found a gathering of cool Daihatsu' and standing out like a sore thumb a matt black Honda Prelude on TSW Venoms.

I ended the afternoon talking to the owners of a fantastic 240Z hillclimb car, a conversation which has lead me to sorting out the future of my particular vehicle and hopefully realising my own motorsports aims.

On top of the cars I met up with some good friends, which is what all this is about I guess, which made a good day into a great day. I think I'll definitely be going back next year, maybe we'll see if we can get a bit more retro stuff there next year. Bring on the J-tin army!