Tokyo Auto Salon is one of the great wonders of the car world. It’s the land of the Japanese performance aftermarket, the Mecca of tuners like HKS, RE Amemiya, and Top Secret. And it’s been on my bucket list since I started reading blogs in the early 2010s.
This year, I finally got to see the Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift fantasy for myself—and it’s nothing like any car convention anywhere else in the world.
Photo by: Tokyo Auto Salon
We spent an entire month last year chronicling the most remarkable stories about Japan and Japanese cars, and even in 30 stories, we didn’t find the room to cover TAS. In part, it was due to timing. But it also meant actually getting to Japan to see it. TAS isn’t usually a show covered by US-based media, as there’s little relevant news for us, save for some cool builds and parts. Yet, Hyundai invited us to see two modified Ioniq 5 N models and to see the depth of their efforts to connect with enthusiasts. It was a chance to immerse in the last old-school bastion of pre-COVID car culture.
Every January since 1983, the Japanese aftermarket converges just north of Tokyo at the Makuhari Messe. The name of the convention center is somewhat strange—Makuhari is the name of the surrounding city, and Messe is a German word representing fair or market. How a group of Japanese architects decided to use a German word is lost to the pages of history, and it’s a common practice for parks and conventions in Japan to be called a Messe. It’s just one of the many odd things about TAS.
Not only is it a convention for the aftermarket, automakers also arrange booths and product reveals during the show’s four days. Every domestic (for Japan) automaker had a booth, and so did Lotus, BMW M, Audi, and Hyundai. Think of it like a JDM SEMA show, where a mixture of parts makers and automakers come together to showcase builds and hotter versions of their production cars.
Photo by: Tokyo Auto Salon
I was warned by friends who had been to TAS of two things:
It’s crowded. Extremely crowded.
Don’t be alarmed by the people taking photos of the booth girls.
Otherwise, they told me that I would love the experience. I had one goal: Walk all of the 11 halls of the show floor. I chronicled that entire journey in a recent YouTube video. But there are some in-depth things I didn’t have time to cover on the big screen, like why I was there. Truthfully, I had come all that way because Hyundai offered me an interview I couldn’t refuse: The Drift King himself, Keiichi Tsuchiya, about his Hyundai Ioniq 5 N DK Edition. Unfortunately, the footage from his interview got lost in the mix and didn’t make it to the video.
Photo by: Tokyo Auto Salon
Photo by: Tokyo Auto Salon
Tsuchiya is a legend. He almost won the 1999 edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans in the Toyota GT-ONE, and he was the technical advisor for the Initial D anime. But Tsuchiya is arguably most famous for hosting Best Motoring and Hot Version, the only publications I know of that wheel-to-wheel raced manufacturer-owned cars. His reputation is what led Joon Park, VP of Hyundai N’s marketing division, to reach out and collaborate with him on a car.
Park’s enthusiasm for Tsuchiya and Japanese car culture was evident, almost infectious. Tsuchiya was a longtime target for collaboration, but Hyundai didn’t have the bones or the product to be taken seriously as a performance brand. It wasn’t until N that Hyundai made world-beating sporting machines, and Park could offer Tsuchiya a hand in developing a car.
“I was very impressed with the base of the Ioniq 5 N,” said Tsuchiya through a translator. “The dampers reminded me of a Porsche.” Tsuchiya made a gesture in the air as though steering a wheel, then said, “The steering, too. I could not believe it for the price point.” When asked about what he could improve, he simply stated, “It would be difficult to do much better at this price. We had to choose carefully.”
Photo by: Tokyo Auto Salon
‘I was very impressed with the base of the Ioniq 5 N. The dampers reminded me of a Porsche.’
Tsuchiya worked with aftermarket companies of his choosing for the DK Edition. The car is, frankly, a basic bolt-on build, with a simple set of lower and stiffer springs from H&R, TWS Forged wheels, some carbon fiber aerodynamic pieces, and six-piston brake calipers using the standard rotors. The meat of the development time was tuning with Tsuchiya at Fuji Speedway and on local backroads. Tsuchiya originally considered going more extreme by using fully adjustable coilovers, but found that the standard adaptive suspension outperformed “everything else [he] tested.”
But there was a broader goal to the DK Edition than just making a slightly better I5N. Park wants to cement N as a brand worthy of the same conversations that involve Japanese performance cars. By working with Tsuchiya, and by showcasing cars at TAS, Park is making a deliberate culture play by placing N in direct context with the most recognizable tuner and performance brands on the planet. He wants people to see and modify N cars like a Honda Civic Type R, Toyota GR86, or even a Nissan GT-R. It’s an open-minded attitude to what could be considered a closed shop—Japan is a notoriously difficult market for non-Japanese cars.
Photo by: Tokyo Auto Salon
But it isn’t about selling cars in Japan. It’s about being in enthusiast conversations globally and building credibility. Being at Tokyo Auto Salon is just the first step in a bigger plan, with Hyundai campaigning the I5N in highly niche events like Attack Tsukuba and Pikes Peak. These aren’t the steps of your typical mass-marketing plan. It’s aimed at the core of Japanese performance car nerds–The kind of person who idolizes an FD Mazda RX-7 or a Nissan Skyline GT-R over a Ferrari.
And how it plays into Japanese car culture is clear once you understand TAS. It’s a strange, wacky, and overwhelming place that remains a tastemaker in modern car culture. The best way to try and understand this is by watching it all on our YouTube video. There’s just so much to see.
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