FOUR DOOR VERTEX: Car Make T&E Mark II Tribe event

November 25, 2014 11:59 am Published by

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I was at the 2014 1JZ Meeting when I was handed a flyer for an event called “Mark II Tribe” being held by Car Make T&E at Fuji Speedway’s Drift Course.

A Mark II-only event? I’m there!

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As I expected, not every car there was a Mark II, but there were more than enough other kinds of JZXs and other interesting cars to make up for it.

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This is the Car Make T&E demo car for their Vertex Ridge complete widebody kit.

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It was also fitted with an experimental high-mount Borg-Warner turbo setup that T&E are thinking about marketing.

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One of the names you’d associate with “JZX” is Tsuyoshi Tezuka. He brought along his D1GP Mark II and a few sets of Goodyear Eagle Sport RS tyres.

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He took advantage of the Fuji Speedway Drift Course’s simple layout to practice driving at the angle limits of the car.

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Stock Mark II Tourer V on the right, bolt-on fenders on the left.

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The Vertex Ridge kit is fairly subtle despite being quite wide.

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Team Fool leader Okajima’s Verossa. Watch it in action at Tsukuba Circuit on this video.

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I noticed the calipers had a bit of a funny colour. It turns out he tried painting them with glow-in-the-dark paint to see how they looked at night. According to him, it turns out that it didn’t work so well!

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It’s a street-drifting car, so it has a street interior.

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Speaking of Verossas, here’s the original Verossa drifter Hirota’s current D1GP car, a JZX110 Mark II.

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It looks good and goes hard.

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T04Z and NOS. Engine response should be pretty good with this setup.

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JZX81 Cresta pics coming up, because some of you dig them.

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I dig them too. Love that long sedan shape.

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This Chaser was nice and neat from the front.

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The aero on the rear was a little rough though. Red seems to suit the shape quite well.

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Unlike boxy ’80s interiors, bland ’90s interiors (this is from ’89 if you want to nitpick) have aged a lot better.

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The X81 shape is definitely a lot more popular overseas than it is in Japan, simply because there aren’t a whole lot of them left!

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Waiting to get up to no good.

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One again, the Gazelle Punch Audi.

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I mean, Mark II!

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One of my favourite street JZXs, belonging to Kaneda-san from Nagano.

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If you want to get into the budget JZX game in Japan, this kind of JZX90 Mark II would be the sort of car you’d end up with.

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Remember Manabu Mitsumori’s JZX100 Chaser before he changed over to the Corolla world? It’s still kicking around.

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It still has the same setup as before.

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Those thermowrapped blast pipes and Hakosuka wing make it.

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There were AE86s there too, because why not?

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Some guy’s sticker.

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Some guy in his Cresta.

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I think he’s a bit lost, because this isn’t an industrial area in Tokyo somewhere.

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I’ll take a closer look at this Mark II wagon with a 1JZ-GTE in another post.

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Remember the LeSeyde I posted a while back? It’s been painted gold.

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Beep beep. Get out of the way, I’m a LeSeyde.

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A semi trailer somewhere is missing its tail lights.

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The fact it’s based on an S15 Silvia chassis is really obvious once you look inside.

It even has a Nismo dash!

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This SR20-powered FD has been around for a while.

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Enough weirdness. Let’s get back to the JZXs.

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This is the Mark X that was driven to the top of the 2014 D1GP championship by Takahashi Kuniyaki.

Actually it’s not. It’s just a regular Mark II stickered up to look like the real thing.

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This makes it easy to see how wide the Vertex Ridge kit really is.

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My Mark II currently wears aero by Missile, similar to this one being driven by Missile K&M’s boss Miyamoto.

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I couldn’t quite catch it blowing flames when shooting from the rear.

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I wonder who makes this front bumper with the Murcielago scoops?

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Love that hunched up sedan shape.

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Time for some trains!

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They were doing this consistently for an entire session.

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I need to get my Mark II up and running again soon. Seriously.

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This post was written by Alexi

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