Roadster Garage “Hakoste” Hakosuka + Stagea
January 1, 2010 by Adam Zillin
Filed under Latest Articles
Toyota 2000GT replica producer Roadster Garage has brought together two very unlikely candidates to bring the old school and (relatively) new school together: the Hakoste! The name “Hakoste” comes from Hakosuka, meaning “box Skyline”, and the first half of the Stagea name (ハコステ).
Roadster Garage made a lot of noise at the Tokyo Auto Salon and Nagoya Auto Trend last year with their Aki-Coupe, a Toyota 2000GT replica powered by none other than a 600PS N1 version of Nissan’s RB26DETT. They also produce kits for Mazda Roadsters (Miata/MX-5) to turn them into mini 2000GTs called the Roadster Hiroshi which, if you ask me, doesn’t pull the 2000GT look off as successfully as the almost perfect Aki-Coupe…
Back to the Hakosute though, it seems that Roadster Garage haven’t updated their website to include any details yet but it’s been featured in the December 2009 issue of Japan’s Custom Car magazine already. The engine is a similar N1 version RB26DETT like in the 2000GT replica so it’s not short of power that’s for sure. The kit consists of the front end conversion you can see in the photo above plus the C10-style “surfline” crease in the rear fenders and along the sides, C10 GT-R tail lights and chrome rear corner bumpers. So restyling isn’t just confined to the front like we thought initially, but a “complete car” as Roadster Garage put it. So how much will all this set you back? Well for a complete car built by Roadster Garage (the customer supplies the car obviously) they offer two options, the front kit only for 900,000 JPY, or the full kit for 1,700,000 JPY! The front and full kits are also available separately for 498,000 JPY and 980,000 JPY respectively. These prices of course only cover the exterior bodywork, so you’ll have to fork out more for wheels and suspension work to get it looking like the demo car here.
So what do you think? As a very different approach to front end swaps seen on Stageas previously, most notably the R34 GT-R face by Masa Motorsports, this Hakosuka face on the WGC34 Stagea looks… good in an interesting way? A few blogs have mentioned that the C34 Stagea can’t be made to look any uglier so the Hakosuka face is somewhat of an obvious choice seeing that the Stagea is so boxy as well. The black overfenders, fender mounted mirrors and choice of wheels (and fitment) all go together to pull the conversion off quite convincingly, don’t you think?
If I had the $20K or so burning a hole in my pocket, I wouldn’t say no to one!
Words: Justin Karow
Image: Custom Car
