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In the German-themed Tokyo Coffee & Cars event coverage I posted late last year, I touched on the fact that there had been a British-themed meet a couple of months prior. “Did you want to see pics from that,” I asked, to which many people in the comments section and on Instagram replied ‘yes’.
I diligently added it to my to-do list, and here we finally are. Better late than never, I guess!
This was the very first event that Octane Japan, Ralph Lauren, and a local events company put together, so no one really knew how it would turn out.
But from early on in the morning, it became obvious that this was going to be one of the biggest gatherings of classics – and more modern machinery – we have seen in Tokyo this side of the Mille Miglia event.
The third event, which was Italian-themed happened last weekend, so this post will serve as a nice scene-setter for that coverage.
Japanese people love English cars. They love everything of course, but anything from the UK is sure to attract a large following, something you might have seen from my previous Lotus Day Japan coverage, which was nothing short of massive.
And speaking of Lotus, this Evora 410 was my drive car for the weekend, thanks to the guys at Lotus Japan. They had kindly suggested that it would be sacrilegious for me to show up at this event in anything not from Blighty, so I picked it up and thoroughly enjoyed the Evora 410’s ferocious performance for a couple of days. I really should grab it again for a feature, as it was something very special.
The purpose of this post is to simply serve up some nice visuals for you, so I will keep my commentary to a minimum.
Scroll through the galleries below and enjoy the incredible variety of British (and other) metal that showed up on the warm autumn Sunday morning.
Unsurprisingly, of all the British marques represented at the event, Lotus was the dominant brand. There was a nice mix of new and old models too.
Do you guys remember the TVR Sagaris?
Absolutely stunning is the only way to describe this Aston Martin DB6.
This particular car was built by the Italian coach builder Superleggera.
Rather fittingly, a new DBS Superleggera was parked a few cars up. This car has so much presence.
And this DB7 shows how far Aston Martin design has come in the last 20-plus years.
Along with the gigantic Rolls-Royce pictured near the beginning of the post, this Lagonda was the one of the oldest cars at the gathering.
As the license place shows it was built in 1924, making it nearly 100 years old. That’s pretty amazing if you stop and think about it for a second.
Mention Gordon Murray today and his new T.50 – and the Niki Lauda race version of it – is what will likely come up in conversation. But once upon a time – 1991 to be precise – Murray was also behind another car brand called Light Car Company, or LCC for short. As the name suggests, the focus was making very light cars, well, only one actually: the Rocket, as pictured above. They only made 55 of these in the seven years the company was operational, and it must have been a fun drive given it weighed just 385kg and had 150hp from a Yamaha bike engine. Japan never disappoints when it comes to ultra-rare cars.
Not even an hour in, the main parking area had completely filled up. Anyone who turned up now had to use the Prince Hotel’s additional parking lots. Wanting to see what was there, I headed over for a look.
Other brands of cars had constantly been arriving and there were some proper gems in the mix.
This is Japan after all.
Here’s some air-cooled love – with a hot rod intruder.
So much Alfa Romeo awesomeness in one place. I certainly wasn’t complaining.
And some Porsches to balance things out.
Porsche Carrera 2.7 RS or R32 Nissan Skyline GT-R?
This Mazda Cosmo Sport was a bit of a surprise sighting, and also a reminder that when choosing wheels for your classic you should probably keep the diameter close to stock.
I’ll end things here, not with something British, but the rarest of the rare when it comes to Japanese cars, a clean but very well used Toyota 2000GT. Stay tuned for Tokyo Coffee & Cars: The Italian Edition.
Dino Dalle Carbonare
Instagram: dino_dalle_carbonare
dino@speedhunters.com
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