For the last 15 years, I’ve owned a workshop in Auckland, New Zealand, servicing, building, and tuning Japanese race and road cars. JTune, and some of the vehicles I’ve had a hand in creating over the last decade and a half have previously been featured on Speedhunters. After a few busy years, I finally decided to take a break from full-time at the shop and embark on a few adventures in Japan.
My first trip this year was for Tokyo Auto Salon, at which time I also travelled down to Fuji to meet with HKS about a special Toyota GR86 project. I returned in the middle of summer to check in on the progress of the build, and also visit some other shops. One of those was Car Shop Glow.
Though I missed 7’s Day (7/7) in Japan by a week, I was determined to visit and learn more about one of Tokyo’s most renowned RX-7 shops. Car Shop Glow is today most well known for its custom LED lights, but it also does servicing and full car builds from a humble building in Nerima-ku near the heart of Japan’s capital city.
Car Shop Glow was established in 2006, with its owner, Yukimitsu Hara, initially selling his LED light products online. By April 2008, he opened a showroom, focusing mainly on customising American and European cars.
In 2009, a customer – who was a manager at Super Autobacs – offered Hara-san his ex-Knight Sports Mazda RX-7, which he was no longer driving, at a hard-to-refuse price. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity, Hara-san bought the FD3S, signalling the beginning of the Car Shop Glow demo car.
Taking the RX-7 to Tsukuba Circuit in the same spec he purchased it, Hara-san clocked a 1:06 lap time on 17-inch street tyres, setting a benchmark for future upgrades.
At that time, many of the other FD3S RX-7s in the Tsukuba paddock were equipped with RE Amemiya widebody kits, so Hara-san had one installed and finished the exterior off with a fresh paint job and a pair of his custom tail lights. The kit upgrade allowed for wider tyres, prompting a return to Tsukuba at the earliest opportunity, where Hara-san cut his TC2000 PB lap time down to an impressive 1:02.
From that moment, he was hooked on time attack.
As Hara-san continued competing in time attack events, proudly flying the Car Shop Glow flag, the company began receiving tail light orders from Japan and abroad, further boosting its profile.
On the back of this, Car Shop Glow expanded its range to include lights for other models – the Toyota Supra, Honda S2000 and NSX, and Subaru Impreza, among others – and ventured into aero parts, exhausts and suspension, all of which are today sold in Japan and abroad.
Over the years, Hara-san’s FD3S evolved through various time attack seasons, becoming lighter, more aerodynamic, and more powerful. You can read all about it Dino’s 2015 feature.
The RX-7’s best time at Tsukuba Circuit is an impressive 56.4-second lap – achieved with OEM-based brakes and the factory ABS removed. That setup might raise some eyebrows, but given TC2000’s track layout – short with only a few heavy braking zones – it makes sense that balanced and easily warmed-up brakes could be more effective than a big brake kit. Sometimes, simplicity wins, especially when you don’t want to spend too much time fine-tuning brake balance and bias.
Currently, the RX-7 is fully stripped back, with big plans on the horizon. When I asked Hara-san about his goal for the car, he shared that he’s eager to push the limits and go even faster; a 53-second lap is the dream.
In Tokyo and other Asian cities, physical space is a real luxury, but when it comes to modified cars, that doesn’t mean that build quality is compromised. Many enthusiasts build impressive machines right in their driveways or home garages. Case in point, another Car Shop Glow RX-7: Tani-san’s wild ‘GT race car for the road’ as recently featured by Toby.
To coincide with our visit, Car Shop Glow arranged for a few customer-owned cars to stop by the shop and then head out for a drive in convoy.
Given Hara-san’s penchant for time attack racing, when seeing any other aggressively styled RX-7s outside Car Shop Glow, it would be easy to assume it’s a race car, too. While some of these builds do hit the track, most are exclusively street cars heavily inspired by Hara-san’s FD3S. Regardless of how modified they are under the hood, seeing these cars out on the road is pretty cool.
I want to give a big thanks to Hara-san and the Car Shop Glow staff for opening up their doors to us, and for everyone who brought their cars out. Stay tuned for the night cruise!
Jacky Tse
Instagram: jtune_nz
Photography by Ash Bechan
Instagram: pixeltoon_media
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