JNCM Houston 2019

Japanese Nostalgic Car Meet was a massive success this year in Houston. Good weather, a great venue (with excellent in-house beer!), a long holiday weekend, and one of the best car scenes in America conspired together to deliver an unforgettable event.

However, I had to begin my Sunday morning like I begin most Sunday mornings - at Catalina Coffee, the closest thing a car enthusiast in Houston can get to a regular automotive Divine Liturgy service.

After mingling and finishing our lattes we all trickled over to Sigma Brewing, the host of this year’s JNCM meet, and hoped to find remotely anywhere to park. The event began at noon, but if you weren’t there by 11:30, the main lot was basically already full. The enthusiasm was obvious immediately.

yours truly hard parkin’ his mustard with his buddy’s ketchup

The event is run by a local shop and collective of automotive enthusiasts known as the Best Friends Garage. Even the name helps clarify what kind of event they hoped to run. This was not a classic car show, in either name or attitude. Merriam-Webster defines the adjective classic as meaning “serving as a standard of excellence: of recognized value". A classic car show is one where all the cars have an agreed-upon, standardized rubric of success, rarity, or beauty that they need to have met to be allowed entrance.

This is not to say that there were no cars that were not objectively classics in attendance. Mint examples of iconic vehicles that stood the test of time abounded, and it was a joy to see them in factory fresh glory. There are plenty of Japanese cars that have earned the title of “classic”, and this was definitely the best gathering of them that I’ve been to all year.

However, a nostalgic car is a very different category than a classic car. Nostalgia, as per Merriam-Webster, is “a wistful … yearning for return to … some past period”. A nostalgic car does not need to be a concours restoration to evoke feelings of joy and happy memories. Everyone has a unique take on the periods in their life that helped shape them as a car enthusiast and a person.

Congratulations, you have won the MUGEN MOTUL CIVIC Si Race Car '87 — Congratulations, you have won the **MUGEN MOTUL CIVIC Si Race Car '87**

Many people in my generation experience nostalgia for things we never lived through directly ourselves. For some of us, maybe a video game made us fall in love with a car that was new before we were born.

Maybe a movie or TV show inspired us to adore a certain aesthetic.

Yes, I am the person who gets excited for a mint SC, and forgets to shoot the NSX next to it.

Maybe our best friend’s dad had a car just like that one.

I had quite a few GT-R posters myself growing up.

Maybe there was a poster of one just like this on our bedroom wall.

And for many others, including myself, there is a general sense that we simply missed out. The products of the era were more fun, and quirky, and charming. They probably won’t live up to our imagined ideals - who really thinks that vinyl LP sounds more accurate than a CD? - but the imperfections add character, because the rose-colored glasses of nostalgia turn flaws into personality. I certainly don’t imagine 80s cars are better than modern ones; I drive one daily - it is absolutely not, in terms of any metric that can be measured on paper. That said, I still choose to drive one daily, because there is some non-quantifiable quality to my 31 year old Honda that a modern car simply lacks in. Call it nostalgia.

As I perused the show and shot pictures of what I thought was visually interesting, I was very unsure of what I would make my event coverage about. Then I met two generations of car enthusiasts who gave me my inspiration. This entire family had roadtripped to Houston from three hours away specifically to come to this meet. The father and mother had driven in with a 1980 Toyota Celica Supra MK1 with a JDM 6MGE motor swap, and the son had come in with his partner in her 1985 Toyota Celica. The ‘85 had unfortunately had a fuel pump slowly fail in the final leg of the journey and had barely limped into the parking lot without stalling out completely. Three hours into the show, and the Celica had the tank on the ground with a new pump in.

I attempted as best I could for a while to assist a fellow struggling 80’s Toyota enthusiast, and from underneath the fuel tank as we worked to guide the filler neck up to its correct position, I realized this was what I wanted to write about. A fuel pump failing three hours from home is, on its face, miserable. Meeting an entire family of enthusiasts, rolling around in the dirt to help get an old car back on the road, making new friends in unforgettable circumstances; these are the situations that fond memories and future nostalgia are created in.

More images will be coming soon to Prime Excel’s gallery.

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