Flex Ventures Opening San Diego Dealership
For years, Flex Ventures has sold its retro Land Cruiser builds on the Japanese market. Now it’s our turn.
When cars are modified to look like older versions of themselves, it almost never goes well. Ever encountered the abomination that’s a C5 Corvette dressed up like a C1 model? It’s something you just can’t unsee. Shudder. But for years, Japan’s Flex Ventures has been taking the Land Cruiser 100 and Land Cruiser 80 Series and transforming them with front clips inspired by the 60 Series —and as you can see from the pictures here, the results are fantastic. If you weren’t familiar with the model, you might even think these were factory.
Up until now, Flex has been strictly a JDM operation. That’s about to change, however, as the company just announced its bringing it’s distinct retro-cool builds to the United States for the first time. So while we might not be able to by the newest Land Cruiser? Stateside fans will get the option of getting one of these killer rigs without the dealing with the byzantine process of importing a vehicle from the Land of the Rising Sun. In the official press release, there’s no exact date on when the doors will be open, though since a location has already been secured in San Diego, it can’t be all that long.
Flex Ventures calls their products Renoca, which is a mashup of the words “renovation” and “car,” and every build starts with a standard 100 or 80 Series. It’s then overhauled inside and out, so it looks old but runs and drives like new. In Japan, the treatment runs to north of 20k US, and at this point, there’s no word on pricing here. I spent a few minutes playing with the configurator and build a couple of different versions of the company’s 106 model — based on 100 Series — and really liked what I came up with. When I started this post? I was really digging the green example, which is why it’s the hero image. Now, however, the black model with the dog dish wheels seems to be calling my name.
In other interesting news, Flex will be launching a new product here in the States — and it’ll be based on the Toyota Tacoma. Other than it will be a US-only machine, there’s precious little info about the retro Taco available currently. But given the company’s previous success, I expect it’ll be just as fetching as the Land Cruiser-based models. So what do you think? Are these retro-mods hot or not? Hit me up and let me know, and if you happen to live in the San Diego area, make sure to swing through and shoot some pics after the dealership opens — folks on the forum will likely love to see them.
Photos: Toyota