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local motorists, we found the right lane and stuck to it, bee-lining
towards quieter pastures. We took a short, spiritual trip to Meihan
circuit and my all-time favourite, HKS Kansai, then looped back
down to where we’d find Trial.
After smashing some 7-Eleven fried chicken, we pulled a
hybrid-quiet hard left into the Trial car park. Bursting at the seams
with hardcore JDM muscle new and old, the Trial parking lot was a
sight to behold. Not entirely sure where to begin, we made our way
to the showroom entrance beside a slammed-out Mini Cooper S.
As we found out soon after walking into the building, Trial
has changed somewhat over the years. An English-speaking
employee in her 40s approached us and, after a lengthy discussion,
commented on the forever-changing tuning scene here in Japan.
“Ten to 15 years ago, the performance industry in Japan was
much, much different,” she told us. “Back then, the projects were
different. Our customers would do huge builds, with big-horsepower
engines. They would modify every aspect of the car to improve itsperformance. These days we call ... the ‘bolt-on era’. Not as many
people are modifying cars anymore in Japan, and those who do are
doing only cosmetic or bolt-on upgrades as the rules are stricter
than before. Now, we stock fewer performance products and we
tune fewer vehicles. Our main products now are seats, like Recaro.”
Completely taken back by this comment, I turned to
Damian and we discussed the differences in car cultures
between New Zealand and Japan. If anything, the tuning scene
in New Zealand is now the opposite. Backyard projects and even
big-power builds are everywhere — I have never seen so many
300+ kW stickers at events, ever! It then dawned on me: yes, Kiwis,
we are incredibly lucky with the performance products and cars
that we have on offer in New Zealand. The Japanese folk are only
just catching on that Aussie-made performance products such as
Hypertune and Plazmaman are the bee’s knees. For us, though,
they’re right next door, and we have an abundance of performance
Japanese tin at which to throw our money and angle grinders.