PAPERCUTS> Before Rauh Welt, it was ROUGH WORLD.
As I was looking through my bookshelf today, I noticed one of my favorite issues of Hashiriya Battle Magazine laying out. It was a special AE86 issue from 1997, and even though there were always lots of AE86s in BM in general, they somehow figured out how to stuff more AE86 issues in there! God bless you, Takahashi san (BM's henshucho, or chief editor) and Battle Magazine. Battle Magazine has brought joy to my life.
Many of you might roll your eyes after reading that statement... but seriously, if it weren't for BM and my other favorite Japanese mags, the only publications my friends and I would have been able to flip through all these years would be the American "import car" magazines, which always featured bright colored, custom stereo-with-neon, non functional rollcage-having, widebody-without-wide-wheels showcars on their covers. (The US magazines have improved a little bit since then... but just try to dig up an old import magazine from 1997 and you'll know what I'm talking about.)
Anyway, this particular AE86 special issue of BM is one of my favorite magazines in existence because of a feature on the legendary AE86 crew, Rough World. Of course, I couldn't read the text, but what was presented to me in color photographs really messed my head up. I didn't even know what it was at first; I just thought the cars looked so cool. At that point, I hadn't even figured out it was because of the perfect blend of camber, stretched tires, wide wheels, and slam that made the cars look so cool. Read more...
Many of you might roll your eyes after reading that statement... but seriously, if it weren't for BM and my other favorite Japanese mags, the only publications my friends and I would have been able to flip through all these years would be the American "import car" magazines, which always featured bright colored, custom stereo-with-neon, non functional rollcage-having, widebody-without-wide-wheels showcars on their covers. (The US magazines have improved a little bit since then... but just try to dig up an old import magazine from 1997 and you'll know what I'm talking about.)
Anyway, this particular AE86 special issue of BM is one of my favorite magazines in existence because of a feature on the legendary AE86 crew, Rough World. Of course, I couldn't read the text, but what was presented to me in color photographs really messed my head up. I didn't even know what it was at first; I just thought the cars looked so cool. At that point, I hadn't even figured out it was because of the perfect blend of camber, stretched tires, wide wheels, and slam that made the cars look so cool. Read more...
PAPERCUTS> 1969 Mazda Carol in Daytona
I was hanging out at the Cipher Garage with Antonio recently and we were flipping through his massive collection of old magazines, most of which he's shot fantastic photos for. One of them was Daytona, a Japanese market magazine that mostly covers imports — in this case that means American cars. But being the nostalgic JDM nut that I am, this wicked 1969 Mazda Carol caught my eye. I had actually seen this a couple of years ago in Japan, and you can see a few photos of it in the Japanese Nostalgic Car gallery of the New Year Meeting classic car show. Read more...
PAPERCUTS> Someone actually made this FF Corolla cool!
For years and years, we've been real big fans of J's Tipo Magazine, which started life as a Japanese magazine devoted to old school modified cars, or kyusha kai. J's Tipo is a product of Tokyo-based Neko Publishing, which also produces a lot of other cool car magazines. Since J's Tipo has a different chief editor than when it first started, the magazine's content shifted slightly to reflect the tastes of the new editor-in-chief, so unfortunately, we no longer see as many old school cars in J's Tipo as we used to. Read more...
