Behind the scenes Autogallery Yokohama Japan

Today we take you back to Japan to a little shop in the backblocks of Yokohama. A little shop by stature for sure, but one thing I have learnt in my many visits to Japan, don’t ever make any assumptions based upon size or outward appearance of the shop, as you can bet your bottom dollar a lot of these guys have been tuning Japanese performance cars for an awful long time. And Autogallery performance engineering most certainly fit into this category and, like a lot of tuning houses in Japan they specialise in one make and model. And the make and model they happen to specialize in is the legendary Skyline GTR.

There were quite a few GTRs packed into the shop for a wide variety of jobs ranging from to a basic service right through to a full race preparation with a 2.8 litre stroker engine. Autogallery are authorised HKS dealers and seem to use a lot of their components in their builds. Despite what people think, GTRs are not so common in Japan these days and in fact it would be much more commonplace to see one pass you in traffic in Australia than Japan, but the ones that are still in Japan are generally owned by enthusiasts and Autogallery appeared to have a strong client base.

 Now this is what we came to see. The Autogallery Time Attack R32 GTR. They told me this car has clocked Tsukuba circuit in 57 seconds meaning it is certainly no slouch. This car has been in a constant state of development for the past few years and has apparently been getting faster and faster and now sports a trick wide body kit. What I really love is how dedicated these guys are. This whole car is totally built in house and really showcases what these guys can do, and then when it goes to the track don’t go looking for a pro Super GT driver like many of the other tuning houses use, No way! This car is driven to these times by the workshop owner!! You can see the build pics here

 

 The engine is a full house 2.8 HKS deal with a T51R SPL and HKS V cam setup giving and output of close to 700ps. Check out the cool titanium cooler pipes made in the traditional “lobster-back” method the Japanese have become famous for.

 And what about the exhaust! Rule number one for turbocharged engines is get rid of the gas as soon as you can so these guys have bored a hole in the door and fed a big pipe and a waste gate screamer pipe straight out. Fantastic idea but don’t get any ideas of doing this in Australia as CAMS stipulates “the exhaust must exit rearward of the front door” No exceptions!

 

 The reason we were at Yokohama Autogallery was to try to coerce them to come to the World Time Attack Challenge in May 2010 and in fact they actually committed to come but several weeks later sadly they decided that is would be a bit too hard for them. In fact the reason they gave was that they could not close the shop for the week needed to come to Australia. And seeing as they have a staff of only two people I guess that is fair enough, but we can only hope that in 2011 we see a red hot Japanese Time Attack GTR make its way down under. And this one would be really sweet!

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