Nisei Week Show Off: Part One

Nisei Week Show Off has been a very well known import dominated car show that takes place during the Nisei Festival in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles. Every year a small parking lot in the district is filled with amazing builds and amazing cars. This was the ORIGINAL import show way before I even picked up a camera. The thing about this show that I found much different from most other shows is that is brings the quality without the vendors. And what I mean by that is that people bring out the best of the automotive community even though there are no big vendors sponsoring the show. Show Off has been a smaller show which I’ve been happy just pay a cover charge just to support the show. Matt and I usually go for media passes at bigger events mostly because it wouldn’t be financially feasible afford to pay for tickets at every single event we went to.

This year Nisei was slightly lower in attendance than last year’s, but I’ve been noticing the decrease in cars each year I’ve been attending. The first time I went was the first “Last Nisei ever” which was amazing. It had the lot filled to the brim full of cars. Since then, they’ve been announcing it as the “Last Nisei ever” every year due to the property owner delaying development of the lot. So every year since the first has been kind of a gift.

Honestly, I wasn’t blown away as this year Nisei. Not because the quality of cars were low or anything that had to do with the show, but because I had seen most of these cars last week at Spocom. So I was kind of going in the show already “blown.” I was suffering from “Car Show Syndrome” which is the case where you see cars multiple times or multiple similar cars and you don’t find them as interesting as you would if you saw them else where (i.e: the freeway, parked on the street…).

Anyways, let’s get this going. So after Cars and Coffee in Irvine, Sami and I rolled over to Little Tokyo. We got there pretty early so we had a couple hours to spare before the show. We were pretty hungry so we walked around the historical district of Little Tokyo checking out the shops and stands.

Croquette and Coke at the Yamazaki Bakery

Streets had nice cars all over the place. I always found looking at cars outside a car show pretty interesting.

Walking in to the show, there already two white NSXs sitting up front.

A Lamborghini pair up front also

A bagged Prius sitting next to the AE86 line up at every Nisei show. They are usually on the opposite site of the lot though.

JDM converted Civic with some serious carbon fiber

I was not expecting to see a Toyota 2000GT since they are rather rare cars and usually only see them at Toyotafest/TORC.

There were quite a bit of classics at the show this year.

Couple of Miatas

Loving this Integra. Nice and simple. JDM front end lowered on some Enkei RPF1s. JDM or USDM, I’ve always liked Integras. One of Honda’s best designed cars of all time.