A visit to Kazumasa Hirota’s Workshop

After spending a few rainy days down on the Izu Peninsula – Japan’s surf capital – I jumped on a train to Hiratsuka to visit Kazumasa after we met at the JCCA event last month. This was the view I was greeted to as I arrived – not bad! He builds race car chassis for a living, and is working on an s12 Silvia at present

Please forgive the phone pictures, my Canon had run out of battery power. Kazumasa’s pit bike, with matching paint job

This is Mai Hirota, Kazumasa’s daughter, with their dog Weber. Their next two dogs will be called Dellorto and Solex! At 13 years of age, Mai was a Japanese go-kart champion, and there is a wall full of trophies in the office. She showed me a picture of her, a tiny girl, standing on the podium inbetween two fully grown men! She has raced a TS Cup KP61 Starlet before, and will be taking over driving duties from her father when he hangs up the boots – the car is in safe hands

I am a lucky boy – Kazumasa gave me a model of his sunny so I’ll bring you updates as I put it together

He also gave me a copy of a 1982 copy of Auto Technic magazine

This is just a taste, but I’ll be bringing you some content from it’s pages