Scenes From Make Hirota
Make Hirota is a small tuning shop located close to Hadashi Tengoku in the Yanai countryside. During our last trip to Japan we decided to stop by and say hi to the owner (Ryuhei Hirota) and take a look at the shop and the cars he was working on. This post isn't a shop tour, but just some scenes from that visit. We're planning on doing a shop tour and some car features very soon.
As you can tell, Hirota is very into US hot rod styling. You'll find hand pinstriping not just on the shop, but on many of the cars he builds. And when I say build, I mean from the ground up. They do everything from custom fab, tuning and paint and body work. Cowboy Charlie deemed this door the "coolest door in Japan".
As you'd expect with a Japanese shop, there were plenty of cars lurking around in various states of repair. Iwai's D1 Daihatsu Charmant was sitting there and we got a chance to give it a good look. We absolutely love this car.
Yes, that's an S14 SR20DET under the hood. Iwai and Hirota have a long relationship and he has been involved in all of his builds from this Charmant to his D1 Starlet and his newest rotary powered Eunos Roadster.
More of that hand pin-striping Hirota is known for on the custom dash they built for the Charmant. The cage was fabbed by them as well.
There are a number of buildings in the Hirota "complex", and every one of them seemed to have something cool inside like this absolutely awesome AE86.
Sitting right next to the Hachi was a pair of unicorns.. 18x10.5 Regamasters. These are the wheels Hirota runs on his S15.
During our visit Matsuda was there working with Hirota on getting his crazy 240SX ready for Offset Kings, or some show like that. If you aren't familiar with this car it's an actual LHD 240SX that was imported into Japan and one of the few Rocket Bunny equipped cars that I like.