TRACK-INSPIRED OR TRACKSPEC?
One of our really good customers invited us to participate in a car show he helped created years ago. From a shop called Weksos Industries, no longer running but which primarily focused on the sale of aftermarket car accessories, evolved one of the biggest and most well-known car shows in the nation: Wekfest, which is now hosted all over the map, including Hawaii, Long Beach, Japan, Chicago, Seattle, New York, and of course, San Jose.
But let's pause there for a second. Back in the day, when Jon still had his Integra, he had a Weksos sticker on it and it had accent marks:
....which indicated that it is properly pronounced WEEK-SOS. We've always knew it was pronounced this way but have heard other people say it another way. Well, we actually confirmed it with one of the founders of the event. Wekfest is pronounced WEEK-FEST, not weck-fest. Ahh, I feel better now that I got that off my chest.
Anyways, to be completely honest, we had a certain perception of the type of cars Wekfest's attendants wanted to see and we really doubted they would even be interested in us and the cars we had to offer at our booth. When we were invited, we did a brief scan of the cars in our shop, trying to imagine which cars we would take....don't get me wrong, we saw BEAUTIFUL cars...I mean, many people say walking into our shop is like a car show in itself. But let's just say there's no way any of our cars would win the award for No Rock Chips or Cleanest Car or anything like that.
So we thought, "Okay, it's possible we are going to stand out in this crowd. Might as well go all out." Jon decided we would stay loyal to our brand and do a track-themed booth. We displayed empty fuel jugs, our personal helmets and race suits, and our trackside scooter. We emptied Jon's very own tool cart, which he uses daily, and used it as our display case for our water bottles and Molecule. And lastly, all the cars we chose were track rats...cars that have gotten down and dirty on the racetrack.
Well, the experience went beyond what we expected to get out of it. We met so many amazing people, both attendants and other vendors. Not only did we receive amazing feedback (e.g. "thanks for bringing actual track cars"), but one of our cars even won an award!
Our customer, Jon Hurley, wins 2nd place for Best Mitsubishi.
Our mechanic, Son, waits patiently in line to place Project Cars.
We also invited the talented photographer, Trevor Ryan, who wrote an article about us for Speedhunters, hence the watermarked photos on this post.
“As you can see, this shop is one of the many who prep the cars which the so-called track-inspired crowd take their cues from. And that’s nothing against the people who don’t go to the track. Just like any other scene, it’s a lifestyle. A quality build requires hard work and dedication; plenty of show car owners put their all into a build and it really shines through when they do....Likewise, most track addicts practically dedicate their lives to getting seat time. They cancel plans, they eat cheap food, they save their pennies and dimes just to make sure the car is ready for the next track day.”
Our customer was nice enough to take time out of his hectic day and take us to the room at the top of the show, apparently called Eagle's Nest.
So, thank you Wekfest for having us! We had a blast. Thank you Trevor for the amazing shots and article. Thank you to our customers who brought their cars, to our friends who helped, to Tommy from Toasted Craft Sandwiches who supplied us delicious sandwiches. And thank you to those who stopped by our booth!
TRACK-INSPIRED OR TRACKSPEC?