Photos: Kevin (Nachtmensch)

Midwest All-Star bash took place at the infamous USA International Raceway Shawano, WI. Two days of rad drifting.

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Gallery:

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Photos: Ginash George

JDM Chicago held it’s first meet on Sunday May 2nd.  A good variety of cars and overall good vibe. Enjoy the Pics and See you at the next one!

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Photos: Brad Sillars and Jeremy Cliff

Brad and Jeremy attended the 36th annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Friday, April 16 through Sunday, April 18. The race takes place on the streets of downtown Long Beach surrounding the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center and encompassing the Aquarium of the Pacific and a portion of the Pike at Rainbow Harbor complex. The start/finish line is on Shoreline Drive. The weekend event draws about 175,000 spectators each year, making it one of the largest paid spectator special events in Southern California. The main events were race #4 of the IZOD Indy car series, race #2 of the ALMS series, round #2 of the Formula Drift Team Challenge series, Race #3 of the FIL (Firestone Indy Lights) series, and Race #2 for the World Challenge SCCA Pro Championships.

Race Weekend Schedule

Thursday, April 15
In the evening, Tecate Thursday Thunder on Pine Avenue. Festival includes motorcycle jumping, pit stop demonstrations and the Tecate Miss Toyota Grand Prix Pageant.

Friday, April 16
Practice and qualifying sessions for all races; Team Drifting demonstrations; Tecate Light Fiesta Friday Concert.

Saturday, April 17
Three race events: Toyota Pro/Celebrity Race, Tequila Patrón American Le Mans Series at Long Beach race and Team Drifting Challenge. Practice and qualifying for IndyCar Series, Indy Lights, World Challenge; Tecate Light Rock-N-Roar Concert.

Sunday, April 18
Four race events: 36th annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach IndyCar race, Firestone Indy Lights race, SCCA Pro World Challenge race and Team Drifting Challenge.

Gallery:

(Brad’s Pics)-

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(Jeremy’s Pics)-

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Photos: Ginash George

JDM Chicago hit up this year’s SEMA event in Las Vegas, Nevada. We dare you to find better import coverage posted online. As you may know, the SEMA Show is the premier automotive specialty products trade event in the world. It draws the industry’s brightest minds and hottest products to one place, the Las Vegas Convention Center. The SEMA Show attracts more than 100,000 industry leaders from over 100 countries for unlimited profit opportunities in the automotive, truck and SUV, and RV markets. SEMA Show 2008 drew over 50,000 domestic and international buyers through two million square feet of exhibits. The displays are segmented into 12 sections, and a New Products Showcase featured nearly 2,000 newly introduced parts, tools and components. In addition, the SEMA Show provides attendees with educational seminars, product demonstrations, special events, networking opportunities and more.

JDM Chicago apologizes for the delay in posting this blog. However, many of you may have already seen the pics posted in the forums. Over 19k hits in one week!

Gallery I (click thumb to expand):

4 Total Galleries! 157 total pics!

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Photos: Brad Sillars and Jeremy Cliff

Club FR held it’s last drift day of the season at USAIR in Shawano, WI. This was a private event for MWC points holders, staff members, sponsors, etc. From the looks of it, one hell of a time. Some noted comments from some of the participants:

“This event was retardedly awesome in its blatant disregard for safety. 6 car tandems, cars competing without cages, cars going through fences… And yet everything ended up working out pretty great.” - ill Roller

“So much f*cking fun! Even though my sh*t got f*cked, it was such a great event! What a hell of a way to end 09!”
-Nackers

DD29 results
1. Jordan Connor
2. Sam Jiggy
3. Brian Peter

MWC 2009 results

1. Mike Pollard
2. Juan Marquez
3. Simba Nyemba

Gallery (click thumb to expand):

Brad’s Pics:

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Photos: Jeremy Cliff, Ginash George, Brad Sillars
Video: Jeremy Cliff

The D1 Grand Prix (D1GP), is a production car drifting series from Japan. After several years of hosting amateur drifting contests, Option Magazine & Tokyo Auto Salon founder Daijiro Inada, and drifting legend Keiichi Tsuchiya hosted a professional level drifting contest in 1999 and 2000 to feed on the ever increasing skills of drifting drivers who were dominating drifting contests in various parts of Japan. In October 2000 Inada and Tsuchiya reformed the contest as a five round series. At the following year for the following round, it was the introduction of the two car tsuiou battle, run in a single-elimination tournament format, a common tradition for touge races which would become popular with car enthusiasts.

Since the beginning, the series has spread from the United States to United Kingdom and Malaysia to New Zealand with an ever increasing fan base all over the world. The series has since become a benchmark for all drifting series as its tsuisou format became widely adopted in drifting events throughout the world and is the most highly regarded of all series. The series also helped to turn not just its personnel, it also helped to turn many of its drivers into celebrities with appearances in TV shows and car magazines all over the world along with scale models and video game appearances for their cars. Also, it would be credited for the increase several-fold in tuning businesses specializing in drift set-ups.

D1GP made it’s debut in Chicago on Saturday August 1, 2009. Overall it was a good event and competition. The event featured a car show and of course the drifting. Results are as follows:

1st- Ken Nomura (R34 Nissan Skyline)
2nd- Forrest Wang (S14 240sx)
3rd- Harri Hokkanen (S14 240sx)

D1GP gave JDM Chicago rights to be the exclusive Pace Car for this weekend’s event! Read more about it here.

The official video:

Gallery I by Brad Sillars (click thumb to expand):

Gallery II by Ginash George:

Gallery III by Jeremy Cliff:

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Photos: Ginash George
Words: Justin Salvadalena

For a while now a few of the Team Echo members have had the idea to host a parking garage car show/meet & greet. We were bored with the typical car show and wanted to do something this area hadn’t seen in a while. We feel like Chicago is missing out on the import scene and we need to bring it back to our area.

I have been hosting Scion only shows at the dealership I work for, Arlington Toyota Scion, for 3 years. They have gone from 40 people per show to 120, with great success, but still everyone sees the same cars each year. Each year I try to do something to differentiate from the rest of the dealership shows and this year I wanted to make our show known. In order to do this, I needed the help of my club, Team Echo and my friends club 935 Wiked Draggers.

935 has put on shows at McCormick Place as large as HIN before, so I figured they would be a great addition to achieving success at this show. Both teams got ideas together on what to do and we figured out what we would need for this show. We all agreed that this would hopefully be the start of many shows to come that would help bring the import scene back.

It took a ton of work and countless hours planning this event, but from what we saw, it was a complete success. Ofcourse there were minor glitches, but what show doesn’t have those. We learn from them and build for the next show. Members from both teams have gotten numerous compliments on how well the show was hosted and how incredible the outcome was. It seems that just about everyone wants us to do this again next year and to keep this alive.

Hopefully with the support of our teams, Scion, my dealership, vendors, and our local car community, we can put Chicago back on the map. We hope that everyone makes it out next year for a bigger and better show!

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Hot Import Nights (HIN) is the country’s largest touring automotive lifestyle event and the leading influencer in the sport compact car market. In addition to a  display of the nation’s best and most numerous customized show cars, this one-of-a-kind pop culture experience also features live music/dance performances in a unique lights-out, nightclub atmosphere.  Thanks again to HIN for allowing JDM Chicago to cover this event. Want to check out MORE pics from JDM Chicago members? Click here to see the pics posted on the forum. We must warn you, some pics are definitely NSFW!

Drift Coverage

Photos: Brad Sillars

Gallery (click thumb to expand):
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Show coverage

Photos: Jason Kiang
Gallery (click thumb to expand):
Discuss the Pics & Event on the JDM Chicago Forums by clicking here.