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Japan Day Three, Part Three: Auto Terrace 2

Sep 27, 2017

After leaving the Honda Auto Terrace, we set our sights on Suzuka Circuit. The GPS was leading us in the right direction but we kept getting side tracked along the way. I had my camera ready and with the weather improving it was much easier to shoot. This is another picture heavy blog with 130+ images so take some time and look through them all.

I spotted this Celsior on the way out of the Auto Terrace and laughed so hard at the thumbs up hand stuck on the antenna.

Down the road I managed to snap a blurry picture of an EK9 with what look like to be Skyline R32 wheels and some other mods.

Suzuka is not only home to the world famous racing circuit, it’s also home to some of Honda’s oldest manufacturing plants. Not far from the circuit we started spotting Honda signs and buildings.

Closed off from the road, the main plant was on the other side of the huge green fence. This fence and brush would continue all along the perimeter of the plant.

BB Prelude rolling around near the Suzuka plant… you can see part of the sign on the left hand side. This was a Honda town… almost ALL of the cars on the road were made by Honda!

More buildings that either are owned and operated by Honda or are privately owned and run contract work out to Honda. These buildings hold the machines that make random bits for Honda automobiles, like door handles, key locks or dashboard buttons… things like that.

I spotted a sign that said Honda Access which is the accessory division of Honda. Honda Access is a brand that offers aftermarket parts for Honda vehicles, but made and sold through Honda. Nothing we will ever see in the USA. -__- (www.honda-access.com)

We randomly drove by this place after taking a side road between the Honda plants. Called “BELL DEER,” it looked like some sort of garage that did modifications and repairs.

The first thing that caught our eye was this beautifully preserved Japanese market EG6 Civic parked on the side of the street.

This thing was in great shape. All of the interior was in tact and in great shape. It’s nice to see one of these just hanging out in Japan unmolested.

It looked like more of a junk yard, but once we found someone there they told us that they were moving all of the cars to a new shop. It looked like they had been there for a while honestly. You can see a red FC RX-7, R32 Skyline and a few other cars in the yard.

This R32 GT-S Skyline was parked out front with a pair of oddly shaped wheels on the back. Not a bad looking car overall… probably a drift car.

This was a pretty neat looking riced out DA6 Integra. Complete with the fake JDM-ish one piece headlights, DC2 Type R wing and side stickers.

Z32 Fairlady Z with a body kit sitting next to the DA6. This thing was in pretty rough shape on the inside.

An old beat up looking EK4 Civic SiR was sitting in front of the guys shed. Collecting parts, dirt and… lamps?

…lamps?

Another FC3S RX-7 on jack stands. The owner mentioned he had many motorcycles and other cars inside of the building. We asked if he would show us around but he said everything was a mess and didn’t want to open the doors.

More junk piled up.

Back to the DC5 and finally… on to Suzuka Circuit. We were only a few miles away at this point.

Across the street I spotted this old Honda N600 just rotting away. I love these cars and it’s sad to think that almost all of them have rusted away.

Driving by Suzuka speedway I was snapping pictures like crazy. Most of them didn’t come out, but I posted this one so you could catch a glimpse of the row of NSX’s that were parked near the building. There was at least 10 of them in all different colors. I wish we were able to get inside.

When you get near racetracks, you’ll naturally start to see awesome cars. Suzuka was no different and I snapped a picture of this Subaru WRX STi R205 driving in front of the track.

2012 is the tracks 50th Anniversary so they had tons of flags and signage up everywhere. We stopped in front of the main gate for a quick picture.

I managed to spot and snap a picture of this nice DC2 Type R behind the gate.

Parking lot filled with almost all Honda automobiles. I don’t know if I ever mentioned it before, but everyone in Japan backs into parking spots. Very rarely will you ever see people pulling in straight like they do in America. It was really neat to see.

If you have ever raced on Suzuka Circuit on video games, right as you come to the main straight you’ll spot a Ferris wheel on your left hand side… this is it.

Tim wanted us to take a picture of him in front of Suzuka by his car, as as soon a I did this hardcore yellow Honda Beat rolled through the picture. He was definitely there for the exclusive member track day.

This thing sounded like a pissed off lawn mower. I saw a lot of these things over there but honestly most of them of the were not very interesting.

The road follows the outskirts of the track, so you can see some of the grand stands from the street.

Certain sections of the track are actually over the road so you’ll go under a few tunnels.

Not far away from the track, we found the a holding yard for Honda. There were a few thousand cars sitting here waiting to be trucked up and transferred to the docks. I can only imagine this yard back in the day being filled with Type R’s and NSX’s that were being pumped out of the Suzuka plant. Now it’s filled with N Boxes and Fits… -__-

Pulling out of the Suzuka Circuit area you can see the huge Honda plant in the distance.

You can see the Honda plant from the sky. The pictures you just saw were taken from inside of the top yellow square, you can see the large vehicle holding lots. At the bottom, you can see the first few turns of the circuit… not far away at all.

We tried to get into the track but since none of us were members, we could only access the theme park. With all of the other things had to do that day, we decided not to go inside of the track. On our way back to the freeway to head to Nagoya, I spotted another Auto Terrace. This one was even better than the last one so we pulled in to check out the cars on the lot.

This is what a Honda dealership should look like.

Pre-Face lift version Honda Integra DC5 Type R

Face lift version Honda Integra DC5 Type S.

Two Honda Accord CL9 Euro Rs.

This is one of the cleanest EK9′s I’ve ever seen in person. This car was damn near mint… and all done right. More pics of it later.

Facelift Honda Civic EP3 Type-R on Advan wheels.

Honda Civic FN2 Euro Type-R

Another beautiful Championship White Honda Civic FD2 Type-R. I can’t get enough of these cars.

Tim has been looking for an S2000 for a while at this point so now was a good chance for him to check some out.

I never thought I would ever see almost all of the Honda Type-R cars in a line… at a used car lot. haha

We noticed two other red Type-R’s near the entrance to the dealership when we pulled up. When I walked closer, I realized what I was looking at.

Yes, a real Mugen Civic RR.

A brand new Civic FN2 Type-R was parked right next to it.

The gold Mugen brakes were beautiful behind the Mugen wheels.

The salesman gave Tim they keys to the Mugen RR so we could check it out.

With only 18,000km (11,800 miles) this car was nearly brand new. The sticker price was $56,000 USD which is a little less than what this limited production car would go for new. If I recall correctly, this car was 60 of the 300 made.

As we were checking out the RR a customer pulled up in his DC2 to have it serviced. I decided to walk around the lot and check out what other cars were hidden around the lot.

This was a nice 6th generation Honda Accord with a blue AP1 S2000.

This nice Ep3 Type-R was parked off in the back.

A good looking Euro-R Accord was spotted near the service area.

More Kei cars parked out behind the dealership.

We wondered up to this S2000 Type-S which was nicely modded with a set of BBS wheels and Öhlins coilovers.

It was also equipped with a set of leather Recaro seats and a circuit meter. I think this car only had 30,000kms on the clock.

Check out these two Honda Today’s. Both on Work Wheels and a few mods. These thing were so small… not much larger than a classic Mini Cooper.

Cool woodgrain steering wheel and Work Emotion CR Kai wheels in white.

This one had a set of Work Equip 03′s and some other interesting mods.

Sticker bombed center console… looked like all of them were US based companies too.

To put it into perspective how tiny this car was, we had Tim stand proudly next to it. There is about a 0.1384% chance I would even be able to get through those little ass doors. haha

Black CR-Z hiding out amongst all of the other uninteresting cars.

DC2 Type R was parked along the side, waiting for service I guess.

This Integra DC2 Type-R was nice, not sure what wheels were on this car but they said “DHS” along the rim.

An actual new drivers badged being used correctly on this Honda Diva.

I spotted this CL9 sporting the Acura TSX emblems as well as a BILSTIEN dampers badge. If you look closely you can see the 5Zigen exhaust system.

I don’t know if it was the time of the day, or what, but I didn’t see a single person in the service area, or walking around outside in the lot. The only person we spoke to was the salesman which grabbed the keys to the cars that were locked. As a matter of fact, most of the cars on the lot were unlocked with the keys in them. Not sure what the reason was for that, but we opened many of them up to check out the insides.

Around back behind the service area I saw another AP1 S2000 and DC5.

A closer look at the S2000 and you can see that it looks like an AP1 with the AP2 front bumper and Type-S (CR) front lip.

This facelift Integra DC5 Type-R looked perfect on these gold Volk CE28Ns.

Another facelift DC5 Type-R. I guess all facelift DC5s have the notorious leaky tail light seals. The lenses on this car were filled with water.

Walking back to the front, I saw yet another DC5 Type-R on white EP3 Type-R wheels. I don’t think it looks all that good, I would personally prefer the OE silver wheels.

Car was unlocked so I checked it out. What do you know, the OE wheels were in bags in the back of this car.

I left an HR flyer for the new owner. ^_^

This thing had a weird bench seat in the front. Serious people carrier.

Honda Edix.

I was intrigued by this Honda Crossroad. It was literally a cross between an Element and a CRV.

The inside of this thing was really nice, and like all other cars, it has a nice factory in dash nav screen.

It was also weird to see this thing powered by the R18.

This was a pretty rare car as well. Honda Civic EM2 Hybrid… most cars of this generation were hatchback versions. (EP3 2 & 4dr models)

Honda Inspire, AKA 7th gen Honda Accord in the USA.

Back to the EK9 we saw earlier… This car was not unlocked, so the guy grabbed the keys for us so we could check it out.

The C-West front bumper was nice, but I feel it would look perfect with the stock one back on it. The car had a Muegn air box and a grounding kit.

Almost all of the modded Honda’s I personally saw in Japan ran Mugen air boxes. It was really interesting.

The famous B16B with the factory “LSD” stamp on the housing.

Over the last 13 years this EK9 has accumulated only 69,486 kms (43,176 miles.) That is less than 3,500 miles a year which is a fraction of the US average. In the last few years, I have never seen an EK with mileage like this… not in the USA at least.

Even though this car came with the 15×8 inch bronze Volk TE37s, the factory champ white EK9 wheels were also included. I offered to buy the TE37s but the dealer wouldn’t sell them. ^_^ You could however own the car and both sets of wheels for around $12,000 USD. Given the condition AND the low mileage this car was worth every single penny… or… yen.

By this time, the sun was coming out and we were headed off to Nagoya. We were still hours away from Tokyo, but we still had another stop to make.

This was a really cool adventure and it’s not something that we could have planned. It took us getting into a car and literally just aimlessly driving around the streets of Suzuka to discover this stuff. It is also convenient that Honda has a world class circuit only minutes away from their oldest manufacturing and engineering plants. Maybe Honda should blow the dust off their keys to the racetrack and get back out there instead of working so hard on green cars. Check out next week when we reach another world famous tuner shop, Backyard Special!

Thanks for looking!

David

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