2018 is finally upon us. Beside recovering from the blues that is the first week of work, I’ve been glued to various social media feeds in an attempt to get the latest scoop on what’s going down at Tokyo Auto Salon, which is currently taking place in Japan. The bombshell from this year’s TAS has to be the unveiling of Kato-san’s latest creation – the Liberty Walk Lamborghini Miura. For obvious reasons, the LB-Miura has arrived with divided opinions and caused controversy in the motoring world but I love every bit of it. Purist need not worry as Kato-san’s base car was a GT40 replica chassis as it’d probably hurt too much to cut up a AUD $2,000,000 real McCoy example. Nevertheless, the car drew plenty of attention at TAS and across the internet – perfect as that was the LB-Miura’s exact mission.

As if the feeling of blues from returning to work was not enough, it was now being amplified as I reminisced that this time last year, I was in Japan for Tokyo Auto Salon 2017. In an attempt to cure my blues, I headed down to the Adelaide Showground where local group Slowlife was holding their first event for 2018. After the success of their inaugural SlowCase event last year, the Slowlife team delivered a sequel – SlowCase #2.

As I paid my gold coin entry and proceeded to the main area of the show, I was immediately stopped in my trek by the white four-door Subaru below.

Looking as if the car has been rigorously working its lat muscles at the gym over the summer holidays, Vinh’s WRX is definitely one of the current benchmark show cars here in Adelaide. Wearing incredibly wide 18-inch Meister S1 3P shoes from Work, the WRX’s carbon fibre front lip and Voltex rear diffuser can kiss the ground at a moments notice thanks to its Air Lift Performance airbag suspension.

Readers from overseas as well as eastern state cities such as Sydney and Melbourne will probably ask what’s so special about this particular WRX as they’re used to seeing modified cars executed to this calibre in their scene. The death of car shows such as Auto Salon and Small Car Sunday killed off the whole show car culture in Adelaide. Although there has been a handful of highly executed builds over the years since the death of these shows, immaculately presented show cars – like Vinh’s WRX – are unfortunately no where near as common in Adelaide relative to other states in Australia. So when builds such as Vinh’s WRX appear at events, it easily drops most people’s jaws.

Some familiar as well as new entrant vehicles were on display for SlowCase #2.

A rare convertible Z32 300ZX sat close to a turbocharged-ZN6 86.

While the S14 below was powered by an engine from its own bloodline, the S15 and S13 begged to differ, opting for a Toyota heart. The S13’s firewall was cut, presumably to improve the chassis’ weight distribution by moving the engine back a few inches.

Nicely modified RPS13 Type X with a BNR34 Z-Tune style bonnet, wider fenders and slammed on red Volk Racing TE37 RT rims.

I regularly saw Matt W’s JZA80 Supra at car shows in the past. It was N/A and had the factory silver hue back then. I remember reading on forums such as nissansilvia.com about Matt’s dream to turn his Supra into a quality show-spec example one day; this was probably around thirteen years ago in 2005. It’s been over a decade since I last saw this Supra, so I was rather surprised and joyful that it’s now sporting a full candy apple red respray, interior upgrades and a custom boot install – the latter was unfortunately not displayed in all its glory as the boot was closed. There was also some polished bits peering through the Top Secret style bonnet, but it was the shiny front-mounted-intercooler that gave away that the car is now turbocharged, presumably with a 2JZ-GTE engine swap. Although this Supra may not be to everyone’s taste in 2018, it reminded me of fond times in Adelaide’s modified car scene. Lots of respect to you Matt for keeping the car this entire time (I thought it was sold or written off) and building it with same vision you had when you first owned it.

Vinh’s WRX, Matt’s Supra and this particular AE86 Levin below were my highlights from SlowCase #2.

It’s always nice to see manufactures supporting these community events. For SlowCase #2, Mercedes-Benz brought out three different variants of the C63 AMG; a sedan, coupe and estate.

A huge thanks to Slowlife for putting on this event. As always, the meet was filled with a laid back atmosphere and chilled vibes; the best type of environment to spend your Saturday night. It’s always therapeutic to hang out with friends to see some cool cars, and was the exact antidote I needed to cure my back-to-work and Japan holiday blues.