Melb Japanese Day, Feb 26th 2012

prince_skyline · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 3:23 am

Great pictures guys.

Like the rest of you, I was personally a little dissapointed in the day. A few things - Organisation could have been better. I think the major issue with the day was the lack of prior promotion of the event. It was pretty much up to the clubs to promote it amongst themselves, which we obviously did in the Nissan/Datsun/Prince and Toyota fraternities. The only real advertising i saw for the event was a flyer included with the AOMC Newsletter (which you would obviously only see if you get it) and an ad in the 'What's On' section of Friday's Cars Guide in the Herald-Sun.

Our main priority is to ensure the Japanese Classic Cars and Jap cars/bikes in general receive the support of recognised car shows/sponsors and events. As an enthusiast community we are no different to any other car community whether it be American, British cars or anything else. These type of events (Japanese) have been lacking for a long time in Victoria, so, accordingly the Nissan/Datsun/Prince community will show our faces/cars in force to ENSURE these events continue to happen. The Toyota Car Club of Australia (Victoria) (TCCAV) do the same and additionally did a fantastic classic Japan Show in November. It was certainly hopeful that the AOMC event would be the same. Lessons can certainly been learnt from todays event, but who was to know that Mazda's, Honda's, Bellett's, Misubushi's etc would only show up in very small numbers.

Clearly not much promotion happened amongst the motorbike communities either, although the Superbikes were on at Phillip Island.

Yes, catering could have been better, Trade displays we see at bigger events were lacking, and the 1 speaker commentary was near enough to pointless. Judging also, in my opinion was a bit dissapointing. However, hopefully it is a start! It can only improve and get better.
I love the idea of seeing a variety of Japanese cars/bikes 'cause that is where my interest is - like everyone else who attends these events or on this forum. Although the car show had its flaws, we need to continue to support the event to make sure it continues. Likewise the TCCAV event (which was awesome, and, i presume, bigger than they expected).

It is awesome that we now have two 'all Japanese' events on the calendar each year. Let's just keep them there. some feedback to the AOMC might be on the cards - not to be critical at all, but moreso to show our enthusiasm for the event to continue with some changes/better promotion etc.

[quote="rxfury"] The guy with the Hako couldn't even be bothered getting it off the tow truck.

Not that we couldn't be bothered at all bud - have you ever thought that there may have been other reasons why we left it on the truck? But hey, at least we 'bothered' to bring it.

Most of the Prince owners and numerous Nissan/Datsun owners bought multiple cars...which of course requires extra drivers etc.

Great to catch up with others from other clubs also....

See you all at the next 'All Jap' event.

Big kudos to Motiv8 for towing the hako and 1st Gen. :tu:

See you wednesday Shane? I'll see what i can find on the Pres for you!

shanec86 · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 3:30 am

Well it seems i wasnt the only one thinking this way about the event.
Bring on the next one, maybe ill try harder to get the president out (of course pending this damn race car haha)

Yep ill be at meeting on Wed, if you could find somthing on the president that'd be awesome

rxfury · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 3:31 am

There was only 11 cars on the Ausrotary cruise. Not really a massive amount to warrant the rest not to come.

Rotary cruises have been getting smaller and smaller every year though. Maybe the petrol prices turn people off driving them

silverra23 · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:46 am

Glad you all liked Classic Japan 2011 then, rest assured TCCAV is working hard to bring together a bigger and better Classic Japan 2012 for later in the year.

We worked the forums hard with our event, and we got very little in the way of Mazda turn out but a great response from most other marque, so I wonder what the secret is to getting those rotaries out!

Our own representation was not as good as it could have been. It was knocked around by

[*]Hanging Rock two weeks before - apparently some only get one leave pass a month
[*]Drift Matsuri on the same day at Winton
[*]All Japan Day in Adelaide where a number of our people went

I didn't even realise Bikes were invited - madness doing that on the same day as the Superbikes.

Still, it was great to have another Japanese oriented event. We are hoping to make ours a bit of a celebration of all things classic Japan - so there might be sushi, a cosplay event of some kind, what ever we can to make it "Jap". And we would really like to have some old school motorbikes there too.

Stay tuned we will let you know as soon as we have a bigger venue locked in.

1600GT · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:57 am

agreed about the bikes factor silverra.
i own a 1980 honda that i've only just finished a full rebuild of into a cafe racer styled sort of racebike thing...
had it cruising around at the Superbikes on Fri and Sat too. came back Sat nite for the AJD today, but left the bike home.
should have brought the damn thing, as it created quite a stir at Super's, so would have been great there too.
will bring it to the TCCA day tho, mounted on the back of the green Wasp to boot!
cheers mate, and let me know if we Bellett guys can help in the future too.

1600GT · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:59 am

oh, and my junior is a bit of a gun karate student too....
only 10yo and blue belt going for green already.
maybe a katate demo by some kids from a martial arts school could be another "Jap" thing for further interest?

silverra23 · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 5:02 am

the karate is an awesome idea!

i will put it up for discussion

Motiv8 · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 5:08 am

rxfury wrote:

The guy with the Hako couldn't even be bothered getting it off the tow truck.

rxfury, the Hako wasn't taken off the truck for one main reason as the owner of the car lives in another state and didn't really want it there but the guys who are looking after it for him asked if it could be taken along for the day and displayed on the back of the truck. It certainly did generate a lot of interest for the day and many comments just the same as yours.

Now for the main reason of the truck being there was as a trade display - and dont know why Shannons and I were out that far away and had to pay for the privilege. My wife and I are big supporters of the Japanese car movement as we have got quite a few ourselves. If the Hako wasnt on the back of the truck one of our other ones may have been but it was just great to see one there, otherwise there may have been none.

So hopefully this has answered a few questions as to why the Hako wasn't off the back of the truck as it was not because the owner couldn't be bothered, too lazy or any of the other comments that I overheard on the day it was simply part of a trade display and having the opportunity to take one of these cars along.

It is just unfortunate that the turn out of the day was not what we all thought that it should have been but I think as has been mentioned before that the advertising campaign by the AOMC could have been a little better.

Cheers
Sean

rxfury · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 1:25 pm

Yes. I know that NOW.

Go Baby Go · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 4:12 pm

I think there's always going to be issues with the first one run by (as mentioned) people who aren't as enthusiastic about JNC's as we are. So, they go away with plenty of work to do.
The Nissan/Datsun's filled up the allocated space earlier than what they thought, and despite my asking for another row, we got squished in. But, the bigger picture is the guys and gals still turned up, they gave their cars a clean and stayed along. It also finished real early by 12:45 all cars were gone- I ended up being the last to leave as Motiv8 had to take the Hako and barn find prince then come back and get more cars (mine being one of them after i left it on accessories and fried my coil). Without a word of a lie there were cars every 1 or 2 mins coming in, turning around and driving away. 19 of them drove over and asked me where the jap car show was.
So, are things they need to improve? Hell yeah. But rather than coming home and thinking of all he crap things (ie food, parking , lack of makes) think of some of the cars you got to see that you hadn't seen before. I got to catch up with people I hadn't seen for ages, (although silverra23 we kept getting caught up and spoke for all of 5 seconds!) and the fact that at least 150 cars came along. The old fella that won best commercial with his Mazda ute from the farm-what a top bloke! There were many cars there from people who aren't on forums or in clubs, and saw it in the paper- there's cars like that you simply don't see.
Don't get me wrong, there's plenty to be improved on - PLENTY, but at least the day happened. Good bad or otherwise they went to the effort of putting the day on......

And kudos to the mighty boys group. They got there early, looked awesome all lined up and who would've thought there were so many good examples in one place.......

silverra23 · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 5:44 pm

We learned a couple of those same lessons from our show

1. Must put start and finish time in the paper, as a number of people turned up as we were finishing up and were disappointed. No doubt there were more that turned up when we had all left and found nothing. Same as yesterday by the sounds of it.

2. The "What's on" Section of the Herald Sun was probably the most powerful tool for getting the obscure cars and non-club people to the event. I asked a lot of people over the day at Classic Japan how they heard about the show, and it was mostly through the paper. That included the Mighty Boys who were a stand out at our show too.

So next question - can Melbourne handle two shows? Or three even - as I know the guys who run the All Jap Days in Sydney and Adelaide would like to run one in Melbourne too. AOMC said they were interested in talking to TCCA to combine our strengths, I just wonder whether there is merit in that or we should carry on down our own path.

Motiv8 · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 6:38 pm

silverra23 wrote:

So next question - can Melbourne handle two shows? Or three even - as I know the guys who run the All Jap Days in Sydney and Adelaide would like to run one in Melbourne too. AOMC said they were interested in talking to TCCA to combine our strengths, I just wonder whether there is merit in that or we should carry on down our own path.

Silverra23

I think that if there were a few (yep only 2 or 3) people who went to the AOMC together to offer their thoughts of how they thought the show was and what could be done to improve it could be the way to go. I know that for this show, being the first there was a little hesitation to take on help from 'outsiders' and was declined by them but I am sure if they had some constructive feedback it could turn out to be a cracker of an event to goto.

I can understand why the didnt have it at Flemington as there is a HUGE cost associated with 'using' the car park but most of it comes down to the promotion of the event and especially for the first one this is the most important thing to get right.

Cheers
Sean

Go Baby Go · **Posted:** Sun Feb 26, 2012 6:42 pm

Well you can use the best of both. AOMC can 'underwrote the day' (ie use their insurance for public liability etc) but you have a sub c'tee for this event- one of them will have to be on it),and you report to them what you are doing. You've got your blue print so i guess it is up to you.

And.... it cost $7500 to get the birdcage carpark at flemington. so yep the first event was never going to be there- like most they have started elsewhere and gotten bigger.

Could we have two events? Yup, but they would need to be a fair whack apart time wise.

To digress, here's the most important pic of the day - global following of JNC!!!!

Alfadog · **Posted:** Mon Feb 27, 2012 12:46 am

Slightly disappointing in terms of turnout - I wonder how many people actually visited without having a car on display? :oops:

My pics are here - http://s267.photobucket.com/albums/ii288/lidm/2012jccs/

Some of my favs of the show ...

Here's to next year! :mrgreen:

silverra23 · **Posted:** Mon Feb 27, 2012 3:58 am

great photos alfadog!

we were originally thinking sandown - but it was going to be $5000 just for a carpark.... so we looked for another venue that would suit our budget better... hence yarra bend.

But they won't budge on their "no more than 120 cars" rule, and spectator parking was chaos, so we need to find some where else.

GT-R380 · **Posted:** Fri Mar 02, 2012 7:57 am

if I coulda been there, I woulda been there!
I can only speak of the enthusiasm with which the Prince & Skyline community in Vic. approached this event. You only have to check back through GeeBeeGo's posts to see what I mean. You want it to work for your chosen marque and the greater JNC community? ...then get involved in any capacity you feel you can manage and run with it. In the past I've been lucky enough to drive the Hako from Sydney to Qld three times for events, Vic twice. I've now relocated to Country W.A. and as much as i would love to have the hako with me, I know I couldn't enjoy it as I have in the past, so for the time being it will reside in the care of the Prince Register. From this base there will be greater opportunity to get it along to events such as the Melbourne Japanese Day for it to be enjoyed/viewed/whatever by other enthusiasts of older Japanese performance steel !
Many thanks to the Prince Mafia and Concourse Prestige Towing for all their work in getting it along for the day...and despite what Sean was led to believe I could not have been happier for the car to be on show. To my way of thinking it,s one of the main reasons i enjoy owning an interesting car.....to get it out and share with like minded gearheads! :wink:

I just wish it could have been driven in (wish I could've driven it in) so you could hear it! :mrgreen:

So please understand that, if those who now are charged with the care of my car feel it is better to err on the side of caution (gawd knows I wouldn't...but that's me, a bit excitable when I'm with me precious :oops:

) then so be it. These things (our old cars) aren't easily replaced so responsibility can weigh heavy and given the situation I will always defer to their judgement. I hope this clears up a few misconceptions.
One of the best things to come out of an event that proved to be lacking is the focus and discussion that will be generated to point the way to improvement. Like anything worthwhile it's gotta grow.
On the subject of events there is an interesting one on Sunday 4th March in Esperence called "OUTTA THE SHED" car & bike showhttp://www.loveofcars.com.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=89&Itemid=99&seq=413
I'm too far away but if you can get there? looks good. :tu:

Enough from me.
Cheers,
Jim. :tu:

RT112 · **Posted:** Tue Mar 13, 2012 9:49 pm

RdS wrote:

i think someone here owns this. I love pillarless.. anything!

done.

RdS, that's my pillarless Corona. That's actually me in the red cap standing in front of it.

I was drooling all over your AW11. It made me keen to clean my own scruffy AW11 up!

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Melb Japanese Day, Feb 26th 2012

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