If you’re into drifting you will have no doubt heard of Car Make T&E. Founded by D1GP driver Takahiro Ueno in 1996, T&E has gone on to become one of the most sucessful companies in the aftermarket styling business, providing aerokits and other styling parts for most popular types of drift cars – in fact even the Driftworks S15 runs a full Vertex Ridge kit!
What started out as a way to fund a hobby has become a very sucessful business venture for Ueno, and he now has official outlets in various parts of the world selling his creations. On the second day of the Outsiders tour we were in the area of one of the shops, so it would have been rude not to check it out.
The T&E Suivax workshop ended up being a little confusing to find, it’s tucked away in amongst a bunch of houses and buildings on a really tiny street, but we eventually found it. Outside sitting in the rain was the rather posh Vertex JZX100 Chaser and an even posher Porsche Cayenne, which I’m guessing belonged to one of the staff or Ueno himself.
I was still adjusting to the whole, being in Japan, seeing random D1 cars lying about thing. So I was pretty excited to see Daisuke Hasegawa’s Vertex Lang S14 Silvia just sitting there.
Sadly Ueno was away at the time, but the shop staff kindly let us have a little look around. For some reason I was expecting a much bigger workshop, but it turned out to be quite a snug place. That might have something to do with the fact it was jam-packed with bodykits, boxes of wheels, tyres, and parts.
Suivax is where customers can get basic maintenance and parts fitted to their cars. This customer’s Toyota Soarer had some quite unusual styling going on. Pin-striping seems to have gotten popular recently in Japan!
Okay, so that’s another D1 car just casually sitting around. This is Daisuke Hasegawa’s 2011 D1GP car.
Running (obviously) the full Vertex aero selection and a tough set of Advan RS wheels. I’ve always been fascinated by the outlandish and intricate graphics you see on D1 cars – the design on this S14 was exactly that.
Inside the engine bay sits a beautifully prepared SR20DET pushing out around 600PS!
We couldn’t hang around too long, but it was great to finally visit such a well known shop such as this. However, we weren’t quite done yet. One of the staff members took us for a little walk in the rain down the road to check out something I wasn’t expecting…
– Daniel Bridle
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awesome! did you guys check out the vertex graveyard too?
[…] I mentioned in my previous Car Make T&E post, we got to see something during our visit that I wasn’t quite expecting. The weather in […]