This Grassroots JDM Car Show Made Northwest Arkansas Feel Like Tokyo
Making a JDM show feel authentic when you’re in the middle of the country ain’t easy, but somehow they pulled it off.
I'm from the Ozarks, about 10 miles north of the Missouri-Arkansas state line. As you can probably imagine, you're more likely to find a coal-rolling Cummins on the road than just about anything else. However, there's a booming JDM scene that has seriously grown since my high school days, and just last weekend, I attended a massive meet that not only filled up an entire 200-car parking garage but also overflowed to the streets of downtown Fayetteville. It was nuts, and it's called TougeCon.
I was fresh off a trip to Tokyo and Fuji Speedway, so I found it only fitting to continue the theme once I got back home. Now, let me remind you that this is not where you'd expect to find an R33 GT-R V-Spec, but that's what the crowd was ogling over when I first walked in. Then a guy with a controller in hand slid his RC drift car past me and my five-year-old son. This was way different from the car meets I grew up with.
If you're from this part of the country, you're used to teenagers in rusty Squarebody pickups blaring country music at the Sonic drive-in. I was one of them (but I had a clean OBS Ford, thank you very much). Instead of that, this was a legit drift culture event with different cars and vendors on each level of the parking garage. There was music bumping, lights flashing—the whole nine.
It's almost like enthusiasts came out of the woodwork to show their cars that I never expected to see anywhere close to home. They kind of did, really. I talked with Caleb Yam, one of the showrunners, and he said drivers from more than 15 states turned up. They were there at the show Friday night, and then on Saturday, there was a group drive event with four different routes ranging from 130 to 175 miles.
The Ozarks have at least one thing going for them when it comes to car culture, and that's the driving roads. Maybe the most popular is the Pig Trail Scenic Byway, a route that runs through the Boston Mountains and crosses the Mulberry River. It has Tail of the Dragon vibes without being quite so busy. In turn, it was perfect for the event that focuses on even more on mountain driving than track drifting.
Noah Spain, another one of the TougeCon organizers, told me that some 120 cars showed out for the Saturday stroll. The mix was great, too, from VIP-style Lexus sedans to road-racing R35 GT-Rs.
I get that this may sound normal to you if you're from either of the coasts. But here in the middle of the country, we aren't used to this. It was awesome assurance that diversity in the car scene is on the uptick. I love trucks as much as the next guy—trust me—but our particular corner of the automotive world needs TougeCon and events like it to stay healthy. No sideshows or takeovers, just genuine enthusiasm over the cars we grew up seeing online but never in person.
I might not have had anything to show this year, but you can bet I'm window-shopping Facebook Marketplace for a Nissan Hardbody.
Got a tip or question for the author? Contact them directly: caleb@thedrive.com
