It’s time to announce the Tokyo Auto Salon parking lot’s most popular cars of 2022
In reality, it’s minivans or kei cars of course, but for the sake of this story, let’s dive back into our fantasy land where performance always trumps practicality.
In this case, without a shadow of doubt the most abundant high performance vehicles I spotted over the two days I walked the aisles of the Makuhari Messe car park was the Supra and the GT-R. I’ll let you decide which is king and which is queen.
Note; I wasn’t sure what my story angle would be when shooting this and my first TAS 2022 car park post, so after the 5th Supra spotting I stopped photographing them. But I counted over 10 MK4 and just as many A90 as I did my rounds.
The GT-R, both in Skyline and R35 form, was another car I got tired of snapping (not a bad problem to have, I know). Given their values, I began wondering why there were so many of them knocking around a carpark with family cars and grocery-getters…
Aside from the obvious – this is the TAS carpark, and people just love driving these things – I think it’s pretty safe to say that the risk of damage to your ride is much lower in Japan than elsewhere. For a country where most people have a garden the size of a single bed, parking spaces tend to be pretty big, and usually have double wide lines between each space, meaning that door dings are somewhat rare. And the Japanese are quite cautious drivers too; I’ve only seen two accidents over the past two years of daily driving.
Of course, it wasn’t all GT-Rs and Supras, there were plenty of other Japanese performance icons parked up too.
Something else I noticed was that the majority of cars were in really great condition, and mostly just lightly tuned.
There also wasn’t an abundance of crazy wide body kits, vinyl wraps, outrageous wings or wheel spacers as thick as a can of spam, as we’ve seen in the past. I’m not sure if this means that people’s tastes are changing, or the owners of those sorts of cars simply stayed away or brought their daily drivers along instead this year.
Regardless, I hope you’ve enjoyed the great outdoors at Tokyo Auto Salon 2022. Stay tuned for my next post – Japan’s biggest tuning show through the eyes of a TAS first-timer.
Toby ThyerInstagram _tobinsta_
tobythyer.co.uk
Keyword: GT-R vs Supra (& More) In The TAS Car Park