Autofashion USA’s 7th Annual VIP Festival [Part One]

Words by Tim Wong

The annual VIP Festival by Autofashion takes place every year after the SEMA Show in Las Vegas which makes it easy for many of the Japanese built cars at SEMA to also attend this event making this best VIP gathering in Southern California. This year the event had to be moved to HRE Wheels since the new location of Autofashion would be impossible to host an event of this size. The VIP car scene here is by no means a small movement and consistently growing. Not everyone can appreciate the type of cars built in this culture, as it mostly consists of show builds rather than performance and engineering, but I like to think of it as a classier Japanese version of the DUB scene. It consists of dumping tons of money into building a car of pure luxury and style with highly expensive modifications like air suspension, custom wheels, and rare body kits. Most of the vehicles of choice usually fall under the large Japanese sedans like Lexus, Infiniti, and occasionally Acura.

Job Design Lexus LS460L brought over from Japan for SEMA. The car arrived one the very last day of SEMA due from what I’ve heard issues at customs, but it made it to SEMA and VIP Festival. This car is a good example of the extreme VIP builds from Japan with the extensive customization throughout the whole car.

I wouldn’t say I’m a fan of this particular car because I like to think of a more traditional VIP build with a much more subtle approach. This car definitely stands out in every way which makes it a good promotional vehicle.

The deep dish wheels have so much customization with the colors along with the brake kits are things I usually pay attention to when it comes to these types of cars.

This Nissan Quest converted to an Elgrand was another car that came from SEMA.

The Solar Eclipse Tint Lexus GS

This Infiniti Q45 was catching everyone’s attention due to the mad wheel and tire setup.

James Oliver’s latest build, a VIP Lexus LS400. The latest change to the car since I last saw it is the red dash cover for the front and rear. We briefly had a chat about the recent amusing article from Jalopnik regarding the “So you think you can stance” event from two years around which used a GIF of his old Prelude. Typical Jalopnik, always late to the game. Most people don’t get that it was most a joke for a good time anyways, but they are also probably the same people too busy talking trash to people over the internet.