I promised myself I'd launch this coverage within a month of the event but here we are a week later. Better late than never though! That said, I've been focusing creative energy on the recently launched Car Life podcast by Kotodama and the associated setup and editing to accompany it. Between that, work, and diving headlong into drifting this year, I've been eating up my free time while poorly balancing what time I have left. With things picking up again, I have a newly refreshed drive to create and hope to succeed in channeling that into this site and the podcast and have a few additional write ups in the works and some podcast guests on hold for the coming weeks so watch this space!
Prime NYC hosts one of the annual events I look forward to the most in my calendar, the New York guerrilla-style 7's Day; a celebration of all things RX7 and rotary. For the past four years following their first event, we've waited with bated breath for them to announce the 7/7 celebration in the weeks leading up and hope to get the invite. This year especially was an anxious wait if the event was even going to happen. Fortunately, a lot of the event is spent in your car and the rest outside in open air, and Prime deemed it safe enough to host a couple weeks leading up, and the Boston based people scrambled to make arrangements.
Jason Yung and I met up at Starbucks to begin our trip the day of the event since festivities didn't kick off until later, giving us time to sleep in...er...prepare...and tackle the 4 hour drive to New Jersey at the meet up spot.
Not before picking up our token rotary boy Jared Cabral in Rhode Island first!
And to think he wants to sell this incredible machine...
After an uneventful blitz down 95 south, we linked up with the Tough Club homies and a few more Boston friends at Mitsuwa market for food and to catch up before the melee of car culture later on. I got a delicious chicken cutlet curry and my shoe got to taste some too.
Nainglin Myint brought out his GP Sports kouki S14 for the occasion. His new carbon hood hides a recently upgraded SR20DET like God intended.
A proper drift car shouldn't look out of place in a show setting. Paulo's genuine 180SX gets driven hard but maintains pristine with its HotRoad aero and JDM showcase interior.
Caught Henry in a truly rare moment with his hood down, but only to clean it. Honestly, I would have my hood up too if it had a 500whp 1JZGTE underneath. It certainly puts those fat tires, for this occasion wrapped around Regamasters, to work.
I never feel like I have enough photos of Kevin Espinoza's FRS because every time I see it, it's an entirely different car.
The latest look features kouki JDM TRD body aero, a more upright stance on OG TE37s, and an OEM Brembo BBK color matched to the car with Project Mu two piece rotors. Also make note of that super rare Carbing C pillar brace in the rear window. Don't get too attached to this look though, he's already talking about switching it up drastically.
I love the body lines on Jared's FD3S. It has that "looks fast while sitting still" feel to it.
Johnny King linked up with us from Connecticut in his RB26 Silvia running a new wheel setup from previous years. Originally his S13 was much lower on SSR MK3s but has since been raised to run these much larger TE37s.
We cruised off a couple hours later to the first meet spot about 20 minutes north where we'd all convene before heading into NYC.
I like this part of the event a lot because it's the most mellow and gives us time to walk around at our leisure and pore over the wild cars that attend.
Although there ended up being a ton of FK8s at the end of the event, this was one of only a few at the first meet spot. Most of Mugen's aero options were present with their skirts, lip, diffuser, foglight grille garnishes, and visors. CE28s were also a nice break from the typical Gram Lights/TE37s you see on most FK8s.
This was my first time seeing a Futago Line kit for the FRS/BRZ in the real world. I wasn't sure about it in pictures but in person it looks much better.
If I were to take home one rotary from that event, it'd probably be this Japanese import FD3S. That C West front end has to be one of my favorites for the chassis and mag blue TE37s is another favorite.
Seeing either of Ray Delgado's Spoon themed Hondas is always exciting, especially his thoroughly worked over S2000.
Prime and event cofounder Edwin Reyes recently completed the exterior of his S14 with a perfect combination of Vertex Lang aero, Car Modify Wonder hood, and Varis low mount GT wing.
I think my favorite aspect of the build right now are those Advan TC IIs! Early Advans are for sure a weakness of mine. Edwin says the car is far from done and I can't wait to see how it evolves from here!
It wouldn't be a 7's Day celebration without some classic rotaries and this Mazda RX2 represented well.
Even better were the SSR Star Sharks it was wearing!
I don't know what it is about Volk's TE37 and New Yorkers. Something about those wheels transcends car cultures in NYC.
Seriously! I'm not saying TE37s are the best wheel for every car, but no car looks bad on TE37s.
While having the highest amount of TE37s per capita, New York also rivals for the highest population of BNR34s stateside. In years past, there's been a few more than this year's sole R34 GTR, but it more than made up for it being a Millennium Jade example...also on TE37s of course...
Keeping with JDM forbidden fruit, there were a few S15 Silvia's in attendance but I think Bravo's OEM aero example was my favorite of the event.
7's Day had to be bordering on 50/50 USDM and Japanese imports.
This EF was in my top 3 from the event. Visually the mods were simple but effective the most stand out being the super dope Car Craft BOON wing and Mugen CF48s.
Some people's daily drivers are cooler than most people's weekend cars and Joe Tobias is one of those people. Even when his STI is at home, he's still flexing all over everyone in his daily SG Forester.
I'm not going to lie, there were less rotaries there this year than usual due to some nonsense I won't get into and I did a pretty poor job of cataloguing all the ones that were there.
I did a pretty great job of finding all the Hondas though. Spoon SW388s complete the monochromatic look on this EK4 SiR perfectly.
Accompanying the EK4 were the perfect pairing of Spoon themed DC2s and a tough looking EG hatch.
Apparently Toyota made a wagon version of the S130 Crown and it was insane in VIP guise.
From Jersey we left a few minutes early and swung into Harlem for meet spot number two and within minutes it was packed tight.
The Harlem meetup is the beginning of the mayhem. Endless cars poured onto the short stretch of street under Harlem's famous viaduct.
Erin Cabildo came through in his all white Evo representing team Ronin. His Evo is one of the best sounding 4G63s I've heard in person.
Tucked behind rows of double parked cars was Vic Morales strange and wonderful match up of a Yas Marina Blue F80 M3 and Volk GTCs.
Representing the function camp, this GTA S2000 looked serious while also looking good too, proving function and form can absolutely coexist.
The viaduct creates such a cool backdrop for photos. There's something so picturesque New York about it.
New York has this certain style with how they build cars. There's a heavy focus on genuine parts from Japanese manufacturers and stylistically lean more towards a function-forwards aesthetic. Whether the car is actually used on track or not, it's usually without a doubt capable.
Of course, within that build ideology, there's more than one direction to take. Some go with a more OEM look with simple aero like most of the Hondas present that evening.
Others go for a louder, more aero heavy look while still maintaining streetability.
As the sun was setting it got darker, the street really started to fill up with only a narrow path between the two sides of parked cars for traffic to pass through.
As the day ended, my coverage of the event kind of ended as well. It's hard capturing all of an event while also participating in it, especially an event like this. The park and Harlem are a lot of idle time parked up so there's lots of opportunity to walk around a photograph stuff, but once you move towards Times Square, it's drive or photograph. Doing both is almost impossible.
From Harlem we moved through NYC to Times Square where we were greeted with a police roadblock and a closed off Time Square. With Time Square out of the equation, everyone reconvened at the final meet spot on a quiet side street.
About 15 minutes after I arrived, the street was already overflowing and police were on site. Rather than wait around and see what the cops wanted, or deal with the mass of traffic leaving if they kicked us out, a bunch of us took off to Queens for some late night sandwiches before heading to our hotel in Greenwich.
Even without passing through Time Square, this is still the most unique and exciting event of the year. The guerrilla nature of an event like this is exciting and suspenseful given there is no guarantee everything will work out and everything will go smoothly. The ability to conduct hundreds of cars through New York City. It's an organic, living entity flowing throughout the city streets.
This is a once in a lifetime experience that happens once a year.
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