When did it all start?

JAE can trace it roots back to the early 90's, here is an insight in to the early days of the event .

The Z men '92-'94

It was back in 1992 that the Z Club hired Goodwood Race Circuit for the day and four members of the club, Sean Dezart, Pete Trafford-Smith, John Hemsley and Kevin Kay decided to invite other Japanese Classic Car Clubs along to a Japanese only event as they were tired of being called 'Japcrap' at other classic car shows.

The event was called The Japanese Classic Sportscar Day and was a great success with over a 100 Z/ZX's, 20 Toyotas, 12 Honda S800s, 7 Mazda's, 3 beats and a Honda Z attending with one of the Mazda's being a rare 110S Cosmos being one of only two in the Country.

The event was awarded the Best Club Event of the Year by Classics magazine.

In 1993 it was felt that as the event had been such a great success the previous year that the Z Club would host another Japanese Classic Sportscar Day but this time at the Aintree Race Circuit as it was a more central location.

This event attracted over 130 cars including Datsuns, Mazdas, Hondas, Toyotas, Suburus and Z/ZXs. Amongst the cars attending were two very rare cars, one a Datsun 2000 Saloon, the only known one in the country and an even rarer 1963 Mazda R360 believed to be the only one outside of Japan.

The biggest supprise at this event was Granada Television turning up and filming the event for inclusion in their one and six o'clock news programme. Maybe we were beginning to change the Japcrap image.

'94 -'04 The Billing Years

With the organising of a four day International Z convention by Pete Trafford-Smith and Steve Burns, and with Sean Dezart moving to Holland, the Z Club felt it didn't have the resources and finances to host another track day, when looking for a venue to close the last two days of the Convention one of the Club's local groups who had held a couple of camping weekends at Billing Aquadrome suggested it would make a perfect venue. It was at this time that the name of the event changed to The Japanese Auto Extravaganza. The event included an Autotest run against the clock, a Blind Duck Competition were a blindfolded driver was guided by their passenger around a set course and an Indy Style Pit Stop all the previous clubs attended and the Suzuki club made their debut.

1995 Saw the event get bigger with more Clubs attending and in '96 we  saw the last time that driving competitions were held at the JAE as at 11 o'clock on the Saturday, the Billing Management asked us to either stop or amend the course as it was cutting up the field and would spoil it for the next club coming to Billing.

We later found out that the next club to have the field booked was the Land Rover Club who we think enjoyed the ruts we made. We managed to persuade Billing to let us carry on with the autotest and by the end of Saturday managed a total of 167 runs of the course.

1997 saw a change in the event to more of what it is today as Billing would only let us hold the event there if we did away with the mobile car competitions which was just as well as it bucketed down over the week before the event and the field was quagmire. Some cars had to be either pushed or towed of the field at the end of the event. The Events that took place this year were an inter-club tug of war and a timed Spark Plug Change competition.

1998 Saw the first cavalcade of cars in the an arena but as the show got bigger and bigger getting the cars from the plots to the arena proved to difficult and unfortunately has now been discontinued.

2005 A new home

Over the years JAE has expanded to what it is to day, the largest and best Japanese Car Club oriented event in the yearly calendar that is run by enthusiasts for enthusiasts and 2005 marked yet another change in the Japanese Auto Extravaganza.

After an extensive stay at Billing Aquadrome we had outgrown the site and a new venue was found. JAE started a new chapter at the East of England Showground. As well as a change of venue the new arena saw Men & Motors' Used Car Roadshow film at JAE for the entire weekend.

In 2006 we brought you Drifting Passenger Rides! Rather than watch it on DVD or TV and rather than hear or read about it, we thought it would be better if those who loved the event and those that knew nothing about it could see for themselves. Not just to watch, but to sit in the cars and see at first hand just how difficult drifitng really is. So much interest was generated by this we even made the Saturday Evening News and the Sunday Lunch time Bulletin on Anglia TV's news programmes.

An extremely wet 2007 but the hardcore JAE'ers would not be put off and turned up in their droves as usual to celebrate our annual gathering!

2008 A new chapter

Bringing the JAE feeling back we move event to the excellent all round venue of Mersea Island, with plenty to see and do, we cant wait for August to arrive!

See you all again soon!