A Quick Hit of JDM Car Culture in Portland.
Our drive back to Canada from Recollection Auto Fashion in Northern California had one more exciting stop before reaching the border—Portland, Oregon. Our friends Alec and AJ were in the middle of moving house and relocating their shop to a new property but still took the time to show us some hospitality as it had been too long since we’d caught up in person.
Alec had lived in Washington for years, and we’d visited her often for various car-related adventures around the Seattle area. This was our first time seeing her since her move to Oregon. On the other hand, AJ has lived all over —Tucson, Chicago —but ultimately decided that Portland suited him best. The climate, the lifestyle, and the car culture were the right fit.
For many of us at Checkpoint, AJ has been a familiar name in the automotive world for over a decade. He’s owned his red, 1JZ-swapped Lexus IS300 for eighteen years, and the car has been through countless iterations. Seeing it in person—after years of following its journey on YouTube and later Instagram—was both surreal and exciting. Getting the chance to photograph it felt like a full-circle moment.
After catching up at their shop, we took AJ’s JZX100 Cresta and Alec’s newly acquired FD3S RX-7 into downtown Portland, where they had a perfect shoot location lined up. The city backdrop along the water was ideal, and shooting both cars together marked the perfect way to wrap up this stop on the trip.
A few days after returning home, it was time to finally take my Honda Beat to Aki’s shop. He was going to fine-tune the fitment of the fibreglass front lip and side skirts before paint-matching them to the car. We drove the Beat out to Richmond, where the most unexpected moment of the day happened—Dylan managed to throw his phone out of a moving car… with no consequences. Somehow, it survived unscathed.
With the Beat left in Aki’s capable hands, we headed back to our shop. The night ended with some much-needed garage time—spinning the Supra on the lift and watching Jake fire up his JZX90 for the first time since converting it to a single-turbo setup with a standalone ECU. Hearing it roar back to life was a proper way to cap off a week filled with great cars, road trip memories, and catching up with friends.
