The Tokyo Auto Salon assaults your senses while packing you into a sardine can, It’s a Hyper Rev in physical form. Everything that you know, and even stuff you forgot existed, is there, and it’s impossible to see and do everything, The Japanese word sonohoka means “the rest,” akin to “odds and ends” or “et cetera“. Here’s some TAS 2026 sonohoka that we saw briefly but didn’t have a chance to go in depth on.
The car that set the web alight this year was the Pandem superdeformed R32. We didn’t focus too much on it because everyone and their mother had already seen it online. The car was a collaboration between TRA Kyoto and Hardcore Tokyo and based on a Suzuki Twin kei car.
Using TRA Kyoto’s body kit know-how, they 3D scanned the car and designed the kit in CAD, then CNC’d the body like any number of widebody kits bearing the Pandem name. It keeps the Twin’s 660cc 3-cylinder and 3-speed automatic, but the team plans to swap in more powerful motor and convert it from FF to FR, and perhaps bring it to SEMA.
Another headline making story from this year’s Auto Salon is Top Secret. Along with a row of golden GT-Rs, the iconic Japanese tuner showed its first-ever joint car with another titan of tuning, RE-Amemiya. The Mazda RX-7 was actually created by a Thai collector of JDM cars and is powered by an Amemiya-built rotary with an ideal street tune of 320ps. The exterior merges Amemiya’s D1 widebody CF kit and Top Secret’s OZ34GT-R Extrema wheels with graphics by Manabu Suzuki that were inspired by those of D1GP racers.
Speaking of RE-Amemiya, the headline was the revival of the GReddy IV, which originally debuted at the 1993 Tokyo Auto Salon. The FC convertible with a 300ps 3-rotor and scissor doors won that year’s Excellence Award for a complete car but in the 30 year since it’s sat around. Now it’s been restored and repainted from its original green to Mazda’s Soul Red.
The GReddy IV is an important piece of tuning history, but we absolutely loved the replica of the famed white Takeyari FC time attack car. The original won the Grand Prix of the 2002 Tokyo Auto Salon in the tuning category and ran Tsukuba Circuit in 58.890 seconds. The GT22 wing and Panspeed fenders make it look like something out of Tokyo Xtreme Racer, capturing the essence of 90s Japan.
For a change of pace, the Toyota Automobile College showed two completed projects. The moss green 1974 RA21 Celica was restored last year and wears custom coilovers attached to 14-inch Work Equip 01s in Yokohama HF Type-D tires.
The 1978 KP39P Publica pickup is an extremely rare ute that students at the school restored last year. This time around, they fitted it with a widebody fenders and air dam to make it resemble a work-style racer. The original 4K-J engine has been overhauled and it wears Plasma Orange paint from an A90 Supra contrasted with black 14-inch RS-Watanabes.
The Endless Brakes booth always uses interesting cars Showa Era cars at its booth. Past examples have included a Hino Contessa, BLSID3 Prince Skyline, and Toyota Sports 800. This year an S30 Toyota Crown showcased its custom brake applications, with an clever back-lit Enkei 92 to highlight the hardware.
OS Giken showed off its TC24-B1Z both inside and outside of a Nissan Fairlady Z. A video of the car in action was revealed for the first time, and it was glorious.
The Rocky Auto booth showed both versions — fixed and open top — of its 2000GT replica. The creation of these cars was supervised by ex Toyota driver Shihomi Hosoya, who raced the 2000GT in period. These can be had with either 2.0 or 3.0-liter inline-six engines, the former qualifying for 5-number license plates that are more true to the original.
The Car Make T&E booth celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Vertex Toyota Soarer, which founder Takahiro Ueno made famous in the D1GP. Showing a street-tuned Z30 Soarer and RPS13 in Vertex’s body kits and signature red, the booth brought back memories of the early days of when drifting first came stateside.
G-Works magazine displayed their VC10 Skyline Van restomod. The 1972 Hakosuka 1500 was a project car for the publication, featuring tons of fabricated parts in the suspension, interior, and crossmembers. It also borrows heavily from other cars, like Silvias and the Y33 Cedric/Gloria, from which the VQ25DE V6 is sourced.
The BRE livery is alive and well, and even looks surprisingly good on a shoe-shaped Nissan NV200 that’s been slammed to floor.
You’ve seen the creations from students of the Nihon Automotive Technical School before, including a beautifully restored bone stock Honda Life at this year’s Auto Salon. On the opposite end of the stock-modified spectrum was their 1969 HA30 Gloria lowrider. It’s more than just a Tateguro slammed on a Skipper hydraulic system; students extended the trunk area by 23cm to give it that extra low and long look. That changes the dimensions so that it must now be registered with a 3-number plate instead of a 5-number plate. Also, the multi-layer paint is gorgeous.
Last but not least, we close out with the Cusco booth, which featured a beautiful GC8 Subaru Impreza WRX STi Type R. You can almost feel Bunta Fujiwara’s aura emanating from this machine. We wouldn’t want to see it looming in our rear view as we leave the 2026 Tokyo Auto Salon.
Very nice pictures, and concise yet informative writeup to go with it. Nice way to wrap up the week!