A Reunion of 4AG Nuts and Bolts

For those of you not interested in AE86's, please feel free to skip on down to the pretty pretty pictures.

For those of you that ARE interested in AE86's, fair warning, there will be plenty of name dropping coming up. Some peeps you may know, some you may not.

Of course Moto Miwa, the founder of Club4ag, had already been scheming on putting together a reunion day when I approached him at JCCS last year, so I can't take any credit for the idea :) Wes Hamachi had already been thinking about something as well and was super stoked about it. I guess us old AE86 nerds all think alike :-)

Last Sunday was the day! The Club4AG 25th anniversary track day at Willow Springs! Most of us old Club4AG guys didn't have running AE86's for the event because....pick an excuse, we've all got plenty! Didn't matter a bit. The event was much more about the people than the cars.

So many cool cars were "brung". I think about 6 AE86's, ton's of GT86's, GR86's, a few Skylines, a Nissan Cube, and of course, the obligatory Teslas came to show us all how slow we were. In my particular case, I had the option of bringing our test mule FRS or my 2006 JCW R53 Mini. The Mini is the first FWD car I've ever built, so I really wanted to see what driving FWD on the track was like. On my mountain roads I just kept asking for more and it always seemed to have more lively turn-in to give.

I really didn't have much faith that the Mini would make it to the track and back without breaking. I've built it the best I can, but it is still a Mini, and they are kinda the penultimate last fun "shitbox" ever produced. I'm not sure we will see anything as light and crude as the R53 Mini made in the future. I really wanted to press my luck and do it oldschool. For me, loading the car, driving 6 hours to the track, racing, and driving back is a bit of nostalgia. The grownup in me tries to cover all contingencies, so I usually trailer a car to the track. I wanted that thrill, that risk, that little bit of pushing my luck by trying to get there and back in one piece. Something is freeing about not having to load a truck and trailer. It really makes the whole process much less of a commitment in time. Makes hitting the track easier.

So....I put everything in the car, tried to distribute the weight evenly for the trip and looked through the back towards the Sparco seats and damn was I hit in the feels. Since this story really isn't about the Mini, I'll tell you it made it there, it raced, it made it back in one piece. It had zero bad habits, could drive through the limit and back, and was incredibly rewarding to work around the Streets of Willow. I've still got plenty to learn about FWD, but in a Mini it's pretty darn easy. What a great car! and no...I still don't trust it to stay in one piece.

We arrived at Willow Springs right around 8am and all the usual suspects were already there. Moto, Taka Aono, Yoshie Shuyama, Koji Mori, John Russakoff from JSP Fab, Alex Pfeiffer of BattleVersion, Andy Yen, Calvin Wan, Shelby (who used to help out so much with the DriftDay events), my good friend Scott Herrick (EnderDI on Club4ag), Ching Luong (who happened to part of our 13 driver group when we got caught racing in the mountains nearly 20 years ago), the Hamachi bros, Cedu Ocson, Feras Faraj and so many more!

You know on Instagram how people can post pics of an event that makes it look so much better than it actually was? This was just the opposite. This was an event that I would forever regret having missed. On top of that, it was one of the most low key, chill events I have ever been too. Go figure…we are all getting old and mellow ;) sorry to all you suckas’ that didn’t make it, don’t mean to inspire FOMO. Look at the pretty pics and make it out next time!

One very special moment for me happened around 3pm. We were just starting to wrap up and pack up when I see none other than Al Lagura walk by. Al was our Formula D driver nearly 20 years ago. He’s moved away from cars and his current passion is Jui Jitsu, setting up schools and competitions. I love seeing friends get to turn their passion into success, and getting to find so much joy in their life. It was so awesome that he stopped by to hang out with us.

It was also pretty awesome getting to hang out with both John from JSP, and Alex Pfeiffer. We are just three dudes that turned making car parts and driving into their way of life. Each of us goes at our own way, but we have so much in common it’s ridiculous.

I think most of you know who Alex Pfeiffer is, but for those that don’t, Alex was the very first person I know of in the USA to start making performance products for the AE86 by founding the company BattleVersion. He was there at the beginning with the mountain running crews BattleSwing and SwingBattle. He was instrumental in getting the DriftDay events off the ground and promoting drifting in the USA. He’s been an instructor, raced in D1 events, Drift Showoffs and campaigned a car for RSR in Formula D. He even went on to be a judge for FD. He was there when FD still had the David vs Goliath races when an 86 could fight against a Viper. He’s run a shop and worked on countless AE86's, fabricated his own mods to his Formula D cars, worked all night, then raced the next morning at crazy tracks like the Long Beach FD.

For the Club4AG reunion, Alex had driven all the way down from Sonora the night before the event and slept rough at the track so we invited him to crash with us at our AirBnB after the event. We were up till 1AM enjoying stories of all his adventures and shenanigans. The 86 is still his favorite car of all time.

In talking to Alex, it became apparent that he had no idea of the legendary status he and BattleVersion had acquired in the mind of 86ers. He’s not active on social media or forums, so was not at all cognizant that every new generation of 86 drivers had heard stories of him and the status he had attained in all of our minds. He’s been keeping his head down making parts all these years and didn’t know how much of a cult classic status the name BattleVersion had become. I could see his eyes get a little bigger when I explained to him exactly how epic and special the name BattleVersion and Alex Pfeiffer had become. What an amazingly fun night for us.

BattleVersion is still making parts for a ton of cars, so if you want to support a legend, check out his site at BattleVersion.com or just drop him an email at info@battleversion.com to let him know what the name means to you. Damn that’s a cool logo.

I sure hope Moto decides to make this event an annual thing. I think it would really encourage a lot of us old 86 guys to pull our cars outa mothball status and get em back on the track.

And... if you are gonna race at Willow Springs, bring sunblock and watch out for fire ants. Those little bastards left their mark on me.

Word by Gabriel Tyler

Pics by Kevin Guevara