Celebration of Spoon Sports U.S. Race History: Spoon Collection 2023 Set For Holiday Release
To celebrate Spoon’s 20 year racing history in the U.S., KurumaNFT will be launching an officially licensed Spoon collection x KurumaCards™. This limited collection of 1950 digital cards contains all of Spoon’s past Thunderhill racers including the latest FK8 Civic Type R that it ran in partnership with GoTuning Unlimited, with stars like Tarzan Yamada and Dai Yoshihara behind the wheel. This race was also Ichishima-san’s final race before his retirement from the company he founded 30 years ago.
The story behind this collection
In the early 2000’s, while I was still at my previous company, the president of Spoon Japan, Ichishima-san, contacted us about bringing over a JDM Honda Accord EuroR (CL7) race car to the U.S. Our team had helped Spoon with their U.S. marketing efforts in the past, and we accepted the amazing opportunity right away. As content marketers, we knew the kind of attention a Spoon race car could generate.
The EuroR wasn’t exactly a “Type R” but it was still an “R”-badge Honda in the JDM lineup next to the DC5 Integra and EP3 Civic Type R. At the time, there were no “R” offerings in the U.S.
Once the car arrived in Los Angeles, we took the car to various events and made it available to major tuner and motorsports magazines. But Ichishima-san’s grand vision was for Spoon to challenge the 25 Hours of Thunderhill in December of 2003. This is how Spoon’s official U.S. racing history kicked off.
Spoon has entered the 25 Hours of Thunderhill numerous times since that day with different vehicles from various Civic Type Rs to even a Honda Fit. The latest was in December 2021 where it won its class in the FK8 Civic Type R. These projects have always been a collaborative effort between the JDM tuner brand’s U.S. representatives and a group of drivers and mechanics flying out from the homeland. The race cars were always built in Japan and flown to the U.S. Spoon has always believed endurance racing was the best method for R&D, team building and also marketing the brand. They have stuck to this formula from the beginning until now.
We are super excited about this collaboration to offer a piece of Spoon’s racing heritage. Stay tuned for more information about this epic collection!
Contact@kurumanft.com for questions and comments!
