This idea of our first love is so often romanticized in Western culture. There is something supposedly innocent and pure about our initial encounter with the deep emotions that we feel when falling for someone — emotions that cannot be explained in words but that we must experience for ourselves.
Some may laugh or scoff when I say that I have felt these emotions not for a human being but a hunk of metal, manufactured on an assembly line somewhere in Japan. I’m sure many of you reading this know exactly what I mean if you were a youth in the 90s. It was a particular type of car that I first gave my heart — and paychecks — to. It was import cars.
In recent years, without a car to modify, I had largely fallen out of touch with the tuning scene. I had forgotten about my crush, my sweetheart, my “great White Buffalo,” but that love was rekindled during my background research for a recent article I did on the famed Porsche shop, RWB.
Ken Saito of Jalopnik/Automobile and the team over at Speedhunters provide such excellent coverage of car culture in Japan, I realized how much I missed it all as I poured through their work. Their passion, evident in every article, reminded me of my own obsession with Hot Version videos, Option magazines, and the Honda-Tech forums in my teens and twenties.
As I relived the honeymoon of my life as a car nerd, I knew that I needed to reconnect with that part of myself that had sat dormant for too long. And so I eagerly awaited my first major event of 2020: Import-Face Off at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, where I could get back to my roots as a chubby, 2nd-generation Korean-American boy who loved titanium exhausts, Kaila Yu, and salmon sushi.
I’m happy to report that attending brought back lots of the care-free, contended, and feel-good moments of decades past, and provided new avenues for future adventures within the car community.
I’m someone who believes in competition more than just pure show, so I was glad that the event was centered around drag racing. It’s always nice to get outside on a weekend and check out cool cars, but what’s even better is when you get to see them being run, and run hard.
There’s something about being at a track or drag strip, having left all the stresses of home and work behind, and hearing the soundtrack of cars at wide open throttle throughout the day that just makes me feel good. It sounds different when you’re out in an open area with no buildings or other sounds to interfere with that of the exhaust notes carrying cleanly through the air, you hear everything. I guess it’s like being in car heaven for car enthusiasts.
Honda Civics made up a disproportionately large portion of the total competitors, but there were so many other cars on the strip as well that it was hard to get bored. I saw twin-turbo Lamborghini Huracans, an old Toyota Corolla running in the 7s or 8s, and even a Top Fuel dragster that made a 6 second pass. One car that stood out in particular was a lifted Toyota 4Runner. If I recall correctly, he ran somewhere in the high 10s.
I made an effort to take more photos of people, not just cars, at this event. This sort of “slice-of-life” style not only gave me a much more interesting variety of images for this post, but also showed me that this hobby is about more than just “hunks of metal.” Through my lens I saw so many smiling faces, happy families, and old friends reunited. The awards and bragging rights are always nice, but it’s the environment that, in turn, produces the camaraderie that makes these events worth going to.
