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Lets get back into the swing of things. Sorry for the delay on part 2 of our Toronto trip! Now then, where were we? Ah yes, part 2, IMPORTFEST!

Saturday morning arrives. Running on barely any sleep, a standard situation when comes to car life. It was time to hit up IMPORTFEST! I have small confession. All this time, I agreed to hit up Toronto, but honestly I had no idea what IMPORTFEST was. Obviously I knew it was a show, just didn’t know the vibe or scale of it. I heard a few things from different folks but as usual, I’d rather formulate my own opinion after I experience it for myself. In it’s 14th year, IMPORTFEST is one of Toronto’s biggest car lifestyle events. The show takes place in the middle of downtown at the Toronto convention center, right next to the CN Tower and runs from 12pm – 12am. No, you did not read that wrong! It’s a long event that’s for sure, even longer for competitors and vendors who have to set up the day before. Upon arriving to the convention center, we found that the event is actually on the 2nd floor, which is pretty interesting for “Southerners” like us who have never seen a set up like this. The show’s vibe is mixed. I found old HIN elements like random head/tail light conversions, lambo doors, crazy paint, etc. These styles were actually interesting to see again. However, you know me by now, I love me some JDM, and IMPORTFEST had some of the nicest JDM builds I’ve seen all year. This is the big wang show for sure. LEVEL ONE and NEXTMOD came through proper! Also found a couple of randoms that stood out like the Rocketbunny R35 and FD. Tim and I explored the show a bit. I snapped a few shots with his Nikon since my Canon hated life in this environment. These are some of our favorites from the show.

Gotta love a clean NSX.

NEXTMOD Crew. Stunning builds.

Love this! R32 with full Bee-R wide body R34 conversion kit. Never saw one outside of Japan. Dope!

Purrari? Some ricer DJ owns this. Aliveratfive or something like that…

Beautiful GC8!

Focalpoint concepts! These guys came all the way to Honda Day Etown a couple years ago. Great to see them here.

This happened.

Couple more shots of the Rocketbunny FD. This car also had Carshopglow taillights. Nice build!

So all in all, Importfest was good times for me. Loved checking out the Toronto/Canada car scene and making a few new friends at the event while doing so. There was also a massive bikini contest in which Chicago SNTRL Fam Lauren Murata and her partner in crime, Brittany Murata entered. Later they’d hit us up letting us know Brittany took 1st place, nice! No photos of that fun since since we were out at this crazy Izakaya with the LEVEL ONE and FITTED Lifestyle crew (More on this later!).

Good times were had on this day but the trip was not over. Stay tuned for a couple more posts. We tour the streets of Toronto with David Soo. We also had a private photo session with LEVEL ONE.

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About the author

Co-Founder/Creative Director, Edwin has been applying his years of experience in the graphic/web design + development to SNTRL since day one. Highly interested in all forms of sub-culture, especially JDM cars, fighting games, street art, street wear, and the fascinating world of Dubstep. Follow @yo_edo to keep up with his quirky tweets about daily life in NYC.