Long-time drift acquaintance Ivan Jaramillo from HJCG shot us an email a few weeks ago telling us how he was going to be holding the largest gathering of pre-1986 Nissan Skylines ever in the United States. “Say no more” we said, “We’ll be there. Oh and one more thing… where is it?”

As luck would have it the venue was only a few minutes away, convienintly located in the San Leandro Marina between my house and Bohan’s.

The show didn’t only consist of Skylines, but all sorts of awesome pre-1986 Japanese cars.

The Skylines that were in attendance were both plentiful and beautiful. I certainly have never seen a larger collection of immaculate Kenmeris, Hakosukas, and DR30s before ever.

In the non-Skyline category, I’d have to choose this Datsun 510 as my personal favorite of the show. Simple, relatively clean, lots of little home-made racing bits, and most importantly extremely low. Why do I love low cars? I have no idea. I know it’s impractical, but driving a car so low it makes sparks when you hit bumps makes me tingly in my manly-bits.

The kids selling raffle tickets told us that the tickets were $1, and this dead bird was free. I think I’ll take a raffle ticket please, thank you.

This Skyline DR30 was brought over by the JDM Legends crew all the way from Utah.

The Fatlace guys brought out three cars, the aggressive looking Fatlace Hakosuka and Kenmeri, and a personal project, a Datsun 1200 roadster.

Who needs a stereo when you have a six trumpet symphony under the hood?

Before this day I had never seen a four door Skyline of this vintage, but now they are surely my favorite. I like the subtlety of the body lines.

The Hachiroku scene was in full effect for this meet, featuring everything from pristine stock examples…

…to this gem. Our good friend Chris Litonjua has been building this beauty for the past few months. Chris has been a well-known Corolla drifter since the early twenty first century and is one of the founding members of the old-school Hachi crew called Battle Swing. This car is a 20-valve masterpiece!

No vintage car show could be complete without the king of Vintage Toyotas, Joey Gauthier from Performance Options. This TE27 Corolla is one of my favorite cars ever. It handles the track like a true race car, looks great, and drifts when you want it to.

Another attraction at the event was Mary from the original Ken & Mary Skyline commercials! If you didn’t know, the Kenmeri (or C110 Skyline) got its nickname from the early 1970′s Nissan ad campaign in which a young couple (Ken and Mary) relaxed and enjoyed the countryside in their Skyline. She even signed this photo for me, how nice!

For a first event, I think Ivan and his cohorts with the Historic Japanese Car Gathering had a great turnout, and did a fantastic job. I would definitely go to one in the future, maybe I’ll bring my RT43 Corona to the next one.

-G

Photos by Bohan and Pitts.

Funny side-story: Bohan had to leave for Southern California the same day as this show, so we arrived promptly at the start of the show and shot for approximately half an hour. How’s that for efficient journalism? See you next time, blasters!

Tags: 510, ae86, C110, california, car, car show, corolla, datsun, dr30, gathering, gtr, hachiroku, hakosuka, historic, hjcg, japanese, kenmeri, marina, nissan, photo, san leandro, skyline, swap meet, te27, toyota, vintage