Import Alliance Spring Coverage 2012 Atlanta, GA
Weeks after we finally get around to our photo set of Import Alliance Spring meet in Atlanta, GA our hometown. Some of our coverage was donated over to Stickydiljoe here, if you did not see it last week but we have a few more to share with you all.
Import Alliance has always been a big event for us in Atlanta, within the last few years it has almost tripled in size with people coming from as far as New York for the one day event. To me the event was a success for what its meant to be…a car meet. Some people try to make it out to be more than it truly is, but in reality its a place were people come and park in a parking lot and look at each others cars, so that is what I go to Import Alliance to do. I was curious how the whole turner field lot was going to work when mixed in with the Atlanta traffic, but to me my surprise it seemed to go pretty smooth as far as getting people in and getting people parked without any major incidents as far as I could see.
Our weekend started Saturday morning at Mainstream Performance for Welcome To Atlanta, and continued onto the night on Barrett Parkway the night before for some parking lot pregaming, and lead up to the the spring meet Sunday morning.
Photos by KHRIS H , CORBIN WATSON & PERRI MINOT
A lot of people have seen Kurt’s RL many times on the net or at a meet around Atlanta. But not too many people know that it is a 96 Rl, with a updated 99-04 conversion from front to back. Kurt is deep in the RL community, and always has a progressive plan for his RL.
One thing that Kurt does with his RL is try to keep all Acura related and that goes for the wheels, I can not remember what these came from..if you recognize them let me know, Kurt has told me a dozen times I am just drawing blank.
Kurt’s riding partner always down for whatever…
Mark Naylor’s supercharged GS, up until last year at Import Alliance Summer this car was sitting. It has been around for a long time, and was upgraded and re done to catch up with the times from its previous state as a show car. It still has its show winning appeal but it has evolved more to its VIP side.
Team I/S/O was in the building and well represented
Larry Young’s Q45 representing I/S/O as well. Larry is another guy that is well known around Atlanta and has his roots dug deep into the VIP culture growing in Atlanta. I met Larry about 2 years ago when I was working on my 929 vip build. And he was always on me about the build, and motivated me to get it right! And continues to be the head man for VIP cars in Atlanta.
Larry recently changed his exhaust, and went with the quad tipped duals. I know it was something Larry was talking about doing for awhile turned out very well. The next time we see this car it will be on a set of new wheels, as Larry has put his AME wheels up for sale. If you are interested hit him up on his FB here.
Smitty’s M45 made the trip down to GA as well. Could not get many full scale pictures of his car because it was in a crowded area.
As much as Smitty travels in the Infiniti the is no way it would not suffer some sort of battle scar. There was a guy that took pictures of himself sitting inside his wheel..I could not find the photo online any where.
Zeb’s GS300 reppin I/S/O
Justin Barbry’s 5 speed SC400.. this picture was clearly towards the end of the event as the trash started to surround his vehicle.
Team Solo was represented with this VIP GS
RSXs are really starting to grow on me, even though I still miss the ole DC integra chassis.
Carlos’s Forte
I did not see this E39 at all at the event, glad Khris got a shot of it. Not sure if it is a M5 or not.
Walker and the man himself Don Napier getting a glamour shot..
This maybe the only photo from the weekend of Clayton’s Caliber with the hood on it…haha
2 bagged Subarus in the Grip Royal booth area.
Caleb Downey’s Eg
Justin’s EK hatch which recently got a K20 swap. We featured the car back before it went in to Midnight Performance for the K swap, check it out here.
Justin’s Ek bay and his new setup.
I only see this truck once a year at Import Alliance, and he usually rolls with a group of bagged trucks.
Khai’s 240 with its new Rays DR wheels.
Justin Butera’s bagged EK
He is a fan of Rust
Dan Kang of Zen Motors personal little toy.
Rich’s EG hatch top notch product!
VW owners what can i say…haha
Forged Performance brought out some of their cars aswell.
Sonny’s flat black EVo came out with his new TEs
Kevin’s EVO came out for the first time with his brand new setup pushing 800hp, a long way up from the 400hp last year.
Be’s Integra came out with Brando Built’s Air Jack setup. We featured Be’s car this fall check it out here.
Unique Auto were pretty deep this weekend in Atlanta.
Another Unique Auto car.
CTR that rolled with Unique Auto also from Virginia
This is when the Atlanta Police rolled through and started to let everyone know that the event was over, and its time to clear the lot. A lot of people thought it was because of people acting stupid around the area, but it was simply that the event got a lot bigger than the city had expected, and APD did not have the man power to control the flow of traffic around Turner Field.
As far as I saw, there was not any hostility from the APD at all during the whole exit process. And even though they kicked everyone out 3 hours early the vibes remained good in the air.
Exiting the lot turned into a show it self, being directed by Atlanta’s finest down through a large crowd of people begging you to do something that might get you arrested.
That will do it for our coverage of Import Atlanta, we apologize for the late post of the event but we have been gathering ourselves for our big weekend ahead at Road Atlanta for Formula D. But regardless of what anyone says about Import Alliance its always a great event from my point of view. This year for me with Southrnfresh and the progression of it and hosting events, I have learned that it takes a lot of time and cooperation from all contributing parties to make sure it runs how it is supposed to. Our events are not near as big as Import Alliance so I can only imagine the pressure for Don and the whole IA group. The fact that the event was shut down early due to high attendance can be translated to good things in my book, because even though it is a hassle to have to deal with sudden interruptions of your event, it is a good feeling to know that everyone came out in such big numbers. Hopefully it helps for some other big events to come out to Atlanta.
There are plenty of other photos posted up on our Flickr check them out here, a lot of them have been online and seen so I left some out but check the galleries out below.
