I’m going to start this off with all the photos that somehow relate to ZCG and what we do here.  The next set of photos after the “read more” are going to be of other cool and not so cool things that were seen.

The show seemed to be smaller this year but maybe it was just the sense of imminent doom in the auto industry.  Spectator turnout was lower than normal for the weekend but Saturday afternoon was absolutely packed, maybe everyone carpooled?

Overall the event was a great sucess for us.  All of the stickers and most of the flyers would dissappear everytime we bent back to check on the cars.  We are spreading the word of the Z.  Thanks again to all the owners who loaned us their beautiful cars.

Click below for way more pics

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Now that the auto show is over we are getting back to the usual work around the shop.  There are a ton of cars here now so I got on the roof this morning to take a couple of pictures.  Also, we’ve had a couple new customers come in and we certainly welcome the work and the new challenges they bring.  It’s always nice to be able to solve problems on a car that has been to a couple other shops before us and then to see the smile on the owners face when they drive the car for the first time after we are done.

We also had another GT-R stop in on Friday for a rear tire repair.  There were four nails in his rear tire so we just ordered a new one.  Luckily the car has low enough miles that we were able to replace just the one tire instead of all four.

I’m also going to sort out the rest of the Silicon Valley Auto Show pictures and post them for you in the next day or so.

This car belongs to one of our good friends.  The accident happened this last weekend while out for a normal drive.  The owner stated that the back end just stepped out on a freeway on ramp.  The car then ended up rolling over and hitting a tree which caused the main damage to the roof and C-pillar on the driver side. The side curtain airbag did deploy and probably prevented more serious injuries.  Thank you technology.

I just want to note that the owner of this car is a very experienced driver and has years of track time under his belt and was not driving irresponsibly when this occurred.

We are all very thankful that our friend came out of this uninjured.  Hopefully he will pursue a new car in the future that he will allow us to modify for him.  There are more pictures after the “read more.”  Drive safely

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We had this beautiful twin-turbo 350z leaving today and the rain was nice enough to stop for a few minutes so that I could get a few pictures.  This car features an APS twin turbo kit with JWT cams and a custom 3″ down-pipes made by us.  It has full Tein coil-overs, Stop-Tech big brake kit up front, and beautiful Volk Racing TE37 wheels.  On street fuel (91 octane here in CA) this car makes over 450hp to the rear wheels.  Awesome.

At Motoring J Style earlier this year we were lucky enough to be pulled aside by a writer (Telly Sahara) and photographer (Akio Hirano) for Vintage Auto magazine published by Lightning.  They were very interested in shooting both the ZCG RB 240z and 510.  We were happy to oblige and a meeting time for the next day was set!

When we met the next morning they began to take shots of the entire shop along with some of the other vintage cars that we store for ourselves and customers.  We then set out on a mission to find a few suitable locations to shoot the two “Go Green” Datsuns.  They wanted to keep to the green theme and luckily I knew where we could find the most well manicured grass this side of a Montecito golf course.  The only thing stopping us from shooting there were three large concrete pylons made to prevent this exact thing.  Lucky for us, Datsuns are extremely skinny vehicles!  Picture SUCCESS!

Next we went to a nearby condominium complex that has a nice round-about.  We were able to jam up traffic for the next few hours while we positioned the cars in every position possible.  The photos that came out of this set look great and were well worth the effort.

After returning to the shop the photographer asked Rob if he could drive the 510.  Wow, he has more courage than I do.  Rob never lets anyone drive his 510 (usually only shop employees), but he felt in his huge Datsun heart that it was the right thing to do.  And it turns out that he owns a high horsepower N/A SR20 510 in Japan that he uses for drifting.  They came back about twenty minutes later with huge smiles on their faces.

Good times were had by all on this day, and it was well worth the trip from Japan.

Sorry but I couldn’t find any links for an offfical site for Vintage Auto.  Your best bet to find this issue is to go to your local Japanese book store.  Happy hunting.