Japan is an absolute hive of car culture. Few countries approach it so meticulously as Japan, and what it lacks in size it makes up for in diversity. If you can think of a car make – no matter how obscure – there will be a specialist for ‘em somewhere in Japan.
Tokyo is an obvious starting point. It’s the biggest and most congested city in the world, yet it’s entirely commonplace to see uber-rare supercars just trawling the streets at any time of the day. But to really get an understanding of Tokyo car culture, a short drive down to one of its surrounding districts will unearth all kinds of treasures.
One of those is established tuner Advance. Located in Yokohama – just south of Tokyo – Advance is one of the longest-running tuners specialising in a wide variety of both domestic and import car models including the Mazda RX7, Nissan Skyline and much more. There is one model which strikes a chord with ‘em more than others though; the Honda NSX.
Setup and still ran by Masa-san and Yagi-san, Advance has become renowned for their NSX tuning with Masa-san building, tuning and racing his own NA1 NSX as a shop demo car. Over the past decade it’s continued development has made it one of the fastest road-legal NSX in Japan, and despite the next-gen model boasting a twin-turbo & hybrid engine Masa has no plans of jumping ship anytime soon.
What makes the NSX so appealing to Advance? Handling. It really is as simple as that. While Masa-san and Yagi-san will happily build you a mega-horsepower monster, their passion lies in circuit racing and for Advance the NSX remains one of the best-handling cars ever to come from Japan.
Famously developed with legendary racing driver Ayrton Senna, the NSX is incredibly capable in standard form. So what happens when you apply modern suspension and tyre technology to a near 30-year-old platform? The answer is exactly what Advance love about tuning; they’re not trying to reinvent the wheel here, but continued improvement for the end goal of creating the fastest, best-handling experience possible.
BILSTEIN may be most synonymous with European and German tuning, but did you know we produce both OE and aftermarket suspension solutions for a wide range of Japanese performance cars? The NSX is no different, and the example pictured here has been equipped with our Clubsport 2-way dampers for optimum performance on track while remaining completely drivable on the road too.
It’s fantastic to see so many of Japan’s most established tuners turning to BILSTEIN for their suspension needs, and you can guarantee every car pictured here will perform just as well as they look. That’s an approach to car culture we’ll always embrace.
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