Cultural Exchange – The 30th Anniversary Mooneyes Hot Rod and Custom Show
Lead Image: The event never fails to impress with the custom paint work found mostly on the show’s custom cars. Kracker Jack Kustoms in Tajimi, Japan, is a sign and auto paint shop and had the talent to win Best Kustom at this year’s show with this highly ’striped ’57 Ford wagon
If you’ve been to a few car shows in your time, then imagine walking into an event where 80 percent of what is presented you’ve never seen or heard of before. What’s more, the quality and creativity is as good or better than anything you’ve ever experienced. Such is the case when you enter the Pacifico Convention Center in Yokohama, Japan, for the Mooneyes Hot Rod and Custom Show.
The floor of the Yokohama Convention Center is about the size of nine American football fields, filled with roughly 500 motorcycles, 300 cars, and 250 vendors for the one-day show.
Spread across a space of about nine American football fields is the best Japan has to offer on their take on a purely American invention: hot rodding. In the early days (only a few decades ago) a good portion of the vehicles on display at this show had been built in the US and shipped to Japan by auto enthusiasts, but nowadays there’s quite a well-honed faction in Japan building and creating their own rides, which can fall into many style categories.
Recently featured in The Rodder’s Journal magazine, Masatoshi Tsutsui’s ’62 Pontiac Gran Prix is typical of the excellence Japanese builders have. Brought into the country in 1997, the car eventually was customized in the best standards with only minor adjustments (shaved handles, etc.) or the moving of certain peaks in the body to change the car’s mood.
The Oily Boys is a Japanese car club that leans heavily into the traditional hot rod scene and they had a handful of cars displayed together including this sky-high ’31 Ford roadster affectionately called the Nuts Art Works Special.
This is a real-deal survivor hot rod having been built in Los Angeles in 1950 by JJ Lundrigan, and it still wears its original paint, upholstery, and dash configuration (though the Cragar two-port B motor had been rebuilt by H&H’s Max Herman). It is now lives in Japan and is owned by Atsushi Yasui.
There is a good representation of traditional-style hot rods, where no part on the car (other than maybe the tires) is newer than 1950, while another faction is comfortable in the well-known ’60s-’70s hot rod styling but void of any trendy parts that wouldn’t fit the era. Street Rods with billet wheels are represented but there was a larger amount of more traditional-inspired hot rods (with narrow powder-coated wire wheels) at this year’s show. Add to this a significant number of vehicles that are only available in the Japanese market and customized here: the Silvias, Toyopets, Crowns, and Toyota Hiace vans.
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- Andy’s Rod Works in Japan builds some very nice street rods, and Akinori Tanaka’s Brookville ’32 roadster sits on a Deuce Factory frame, runs a 350c.i. Chevy with a quad-IDA Weber induction, and is covered in Pen’s Green Gray paint by Tanapen.
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- The Corsairs is a very active club in Japan and full of great cars including Tomohisa Ishitsu’s ’32 Ford pickup that has a 6-inch chop and a 2-inch channel. But the interior on this ride is all riveted aluminum with a chain-driven steering mechanism and what looks like a chain-operated parking brake around the shifter.
This clever car hauler (that’s a road-race-ready ’69 Datsun 2000 Fairlady roadster out back) was made up in ’60s-era BRE racing colors (So-Cal’s Brock Racing Enterprises headed up by designer Pete Brock – best known for the Shelby Daytona Coupe). Though BRE did do extensive racing in the ’60s around the world, this was not one of their transports, but it sure looks the part!
Old SoCal drag racers might remember the record-setting I/Gas racer out of EMPI in Riverside called the Inch Pincher Too. The Molly-painted racer no longer exists, so Flat 4 owner Nao Fujita painstakingly recreated the vehicle by studying as many vintage photos as he could. It’s a chopped ’54 oval window, with a 2-liter motor topped with a pair of 48 IDA Weber carbs – standard equipment when the original ran the ’strip back in the mid ‘60s.
Customs and custom rods are popular, too, with traditional chopped Mercs or early ’50s Chevys parked alongside some fantastic futuristic takes on the genre. And the show’s full span from traditional to high-tech is no better displayed than in the 500 or so motorcycles in attendance. A dozen of the earliest Knucklehead Harleys in all their greasy splendor are parked near modern Tron-inspired rides that push the envelope of what a motorcycle can look like.
Seeing such a big American car in Japan is a bit rare, but if you’re gonna do “big,” why not a ’49 Cadillac? Radically lowered, this Japan-built custom offered a mix of ideas, with some of the trim and door handles shaved with other accent pieces left intact so it didn’t look like a too-smooth gumdrop.
You see a lot of customized ’53 Chevys, but not too many made into a pickup truck. This ride wasn’t finished yet, but many of the top cars in the show were in this condition just a few years earlier, so we know it’ll be a show-stopper soon.
Most folks like the earlier split-window VW Buses, but we’ve never seen a Bay Window done to this high level. The owner of this right-hand-drive ’72 crafted what looked a P-51 warplane interior, and then somehow stuffed a massive Subaru WRX motor in the back, set into a raised framework so the Bus could have only a couple of inches of ground clearance.
Out in the middle of the gigantic hall is International Alley that has dozens of booths set up highlighting either pinstripers from around the world (from Estonia to Bangkok) displaying their unique artwork, or different street rod organizations promoting their own shows, while on stage several live music bands perform throughout the day.
For the past eight or so years Mooneyes has collaborated with VANS shoe company to release a show-only design to those in attendance, and they’re very popular with collectors.
Takahiko Izawa is an artist and painter who runs Rohan in Japan and used his talents on this ’58 Chevy to make every surface appear as if the car went through a bead roller. The effect was done with high-build primer and miles of pinstripers tape and followed up with engraved areas that give a tattooed appearance. It’s mind-blowing to grasp the patience and attention to detail involved.
Back in 2017 this custom bike hauler was shown in mid-construction metal, and now it’s just a fantastic piece of creativity and engineering. The dual-cockpit roof operates hydraulically (as do the scissor doors) and a single ramp folds down in the rear so a motorcycle can roll up and be secured. Not sure if the headlight lenses are milled acrylic, but they glow bright when they’re on.
Shige Suganuma founded Mooneyes in 1987 and soon introduced American hot rods to the Japanese-only car show scene – first in 1987 with the Street Car Nationals (an outdoor car show still being produced some 30 years later) and then creating the Hot Rod and Custom Show in Yokohama in 1992 (the same year Mooneyes USA was formed).
Each year the show has featured makes that are showcased in specific areas. Willys was one of those makes this year, and there were many examples that looked like they could have just rolled out of the staging lanes of a ’60s-era drag race or a modern rod run in the US.
The Mooneyes Hot Rod and Custom Show has become a hybrid of American and Japanese style and sensibilities and offers the tens of thousands of spectators who flow through the doors for the 10-hour, one-day event the opportunity to see the very best in rolling motorcycle and automotive art.
Mopars were the other featured vehicles, and there was a good dose of ’60s muscle and Hemi engines to represent the Dodge and Plymouth brands.
2022 Mooneyes Hot Rod and Custom Show Photo Extra!
Photos by Eric Geisert
