While in Yokohama, I stopped by the legendary car shop WELD to pick up some parts for the SK15SPL Silvia. I had the chance to meet the owner, Ito-san, in person for the first time after following each other on Instagram for a while. If you didn’t know, Ito-san is the mastermind behind the creativity of WELD’s demo cars, including the infamous blue S14, the blue JZX100 Mark II, and many other outlandish builds. Ito-san was also a big fan of the SK15SPL Silvia, which was such a huge compliment coming from someone of his caliber. He remarked that it has an old Kanto style, exactly what I was aiming for.
Unfortunately, we were short on time, but Ito-san gave us a tour of the shop, showing us the current WELD JZX100 Mark II D1 car, which is now stripped down to a bare shell for a rebuild ahead of the next season. There was also a custom JZX100 Cresta, built by WELD, which is currently for sale. If you’re serious about it, send @weld_overdose a message for more information.
I’ll be working with Ito-san next time I’m in Japan to dive deeper into preserving the history of WELD and uncovering stories behind their old builds. Ito-san even asked me how I had all the old photos of WELD cars, as he no longer had them himself. After over 20 years of saving photos from the internet, I guess it finally paid off—haha. A big thank you to Ito-san for sharing your incredible space. I look forward to working on an in-depth story about the history of WELD.
Garage Sokudo 
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