Toyotafest 2013

Words by Tim Wong

It’s another year at the annual Toyotafest/TORC car show at the iconic Queen Mary location. As with every year, the whole venue is covered with an assortment of Toyotas ranging from historic classics to heavily modified FR-Ss. The event is free to the public aside from the expensive parking fees at the Queen Mary, but many people come out to see the cars especially when some of the rare ones only see daylight some many times year.

This recently debuted Toyota Previa making a good impact in the Southern California scene. It has been a while since I’ve seen a modified Previa with such attention to detail around.

There was quite a few more vintage trucks and SUVs this year.

Lexus had a couple display cars out front like this ISF that was running the Long Beach Grand Prix track a couple weeks ago.

Several of the vendors had nice display vehicles.

Toyota 2000GT used to be the highlight of the show for me, but there has become less and less of them every year and instead replaced with Scions which is a shame.

This won 1st AE86 this year at the show.

The 2JZ Toyota Hilux was present again this year. I didn’t see any change from last year, but that’s no comment on how amazing the build already is.

Some of my favorites at the show are the classic Celicas because back then Japan had a lot of design influence from old muscle cars.

David brought his Corolla wagon again this year and won second place.

Armand’s MR2 was one of the many MR2s this year. Some of them came out all the way from the Northwest like Oregon, Washington, and even British Columbia.