Tokyo Auto Salon 2011 Report and Pictures!

Every year the Tokyo Auto Salon at Makuhari Messe here in Chiba is considered one of Japan’s huge cultural events.  Like the Tokyo International Anime Fair, Japan Electronics Show, and of course the Japan Golf Fair, these events show the state of the industries as well as a reflection of the Japanese economy and society. While the Golf Fair has struggled in recent years, with its overall size shrinking slightly every year, the Tokyo Auto Salon or TAS continues to grow every year. This year was TAS’s biggest show yet spanning across eight halls and taking up the event stage as well as a mini race track.

The 3 day event brings in car enthusiasts from all across Japan and from all around globe, searching for the latest and greatest car tuning products and modifications. As well as car fanatics, there are many otaku and idol fans who come and see the Auto Salon’s race queens and show girls as well as musical performances by the show’s top sponsor, recording label AVEX. If Japan’s economy is not doing well as they always seem to report, events like these show the exact opposite. There are products to promote and buy and money to be spent. The car industry is gigantic in Japan and its aftermarket offerings bigger than any other country in the world.

Besides all the top tuners like HKS, Blitz, Tommy Kaira/Axell and others, top car manufacturers like Toyota, Honda, Nissan and Subaru were also on hand to show off their racing programs, technology and concept cars. As you can imagine there were hundreds of modified cars spread out across the 8 halls, most sporting huge wheels, body kits, expensive paint jobs and huge tuning mods under the hoods. It seemed everywhere I turned there was a Nissan GTR or Subaru WRX STI. The luxury segment was represented by Lexus, BMW, Audi and of course uber expensive cars like Porsche, Ferrari and Lamborghini.

I was lucky enough to have a press pass and attend the morning 9am – 1pm press only access segment of the show. Because of this I was able to get a lot of unobstructed pictures of the cars and girls, before the public was allowed in and the chaos began. On the technical side, I wanted to travel light so I decided that I would bring my Sony a33 with only ONE lens. I chose my Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 zoom for the task as the 17-50mm (25.5-75mm with the a33’s 1.5x crop factor) would provide ideal focal length for shooting cars and people. Also the fast aperture of f2.8 across the zoom range would allow me to take advantage of the a33’s high ISO performance and shoot without a flash indoors. I must say this lens performed admirably and I did not feel the need for any other lens at the show, even while outdoors shooting the D1 Kick Off Drift event.

This year’s Auto Salon held the a D1 Kick Off drifting demonstration event. Drifting which originated from Japan, refers to a driving technique and to a motorsport where the driver intentionally over steers, causing loss of traction in the rear wheels through turns, while maintaining vehicle control and a high exit speed. A car is drifting when the rear slip angle is greater than the front slip angle prior to the corner apex, and the front wheels are pointing in the opposite direction to the turn (e.g. car is turning left, wheels are pointed right or vice versa), and the driver is controlling these factors. This years demo even featured D1’s top 9 finishers from last years D1 series including famed and popular driver Nomura Ken (who entered the race track standing out of his door with his eyes closed allow the car to drive itself (yes Japan is right hand drive)…

The course was small and tight but drivers still reached speeds of nearly 100km/h and drifted within inches of each other. I did use my a33 to take video footage but upon arriving home and downloading the footage, I was shocked to see I had forgot to turn on the sound on my a33 camera. I had turned off the sound a few weeks ago to film my dog and there was too much wind noise.  As you can imagine that was a pretty bone headed move as the sound impact is huge with drifting. Alas I still uploaded the videos to Vimeo and you can see an example of some of the drifting here… albeit in silence!!!

By the time mid afternoon rolled around, and the public was let loose on the show, it began to get very crowded. It got harder and harder to take good pictures.  Especially when many of the idol fans were now there taking photos from very odd angles (as you can see in the first few pictures of the Show Girls image gallery).  I decided to wrap it up and head home and contemplate my next Japanese super car. Overall the show was great, it was lots of fun and for me my favorites were the Axell matte gun metal GTR (picture at the top of this post), the Kansai Service modified new WRX STI sedan, the Yokomo RC Show Girl (at the top) and the nice and friendly Motul Show Girl (at right). I’ll definitely be there again next year if anyone cares to join me!

As always I took a lot of pictures. Too many to post here on this page as I ended up with over 1200 shots over 7 hours. I’ve broken the images up into 3 galleries you see below, for Cars, Girls and Drifting. The next big even we will be covering is the Japan Golf Fair at the end of February which will be at Tokyo Big Sight. Tourspecgolfer, Tourspecgirl and myself will all be there. After that I’ll be covering the Japan Anime Festival in March. In the meantime enjoy the pictures!

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