Back in 2013, Nitto Tire decided to celebrate reaching five million Facebook followers, and they came up with a brilliant way to do so. They called it “Auto Enthusiast Day,” and it was essentially the perfect mix of everything cool with a motor on display in one location. Because Nitto doesn’t specialize in any one style of tire, they didn’t celebrate with any one style of motorsports. The celebration was so popular that they ended up doing it the following year, and continued to do so up to and including the 2017 Auto Enthusiast Day (AED) which recently took place and it was better than ever.
Rather than a glorified car show like some other events, the AED is put together and fueled by hardcore enthusiasts from a wide variety of disciplines. The 2017 AED took place in the parking lot of the Angels Stadium in Anaheim. It provided ample room for the best drift racers and off-road racers to go out and put on a show. Some of the biggest names in the business showed up to help make the 2017 AED the best one yet.
Most of those names we have featured in one way or another here on the site. For example, Vaughn Gittin Jr, Loren Healy, and of course Sam Hubinette and his lovely wife Stina, all made an appearance with their preferred weapons of choice. Gittin Jr had a few of his toys such as his RTR professional drift car and one of a kind Ford F-150 that’s been modified within an inch of its life. Healy, who you might remember from his epic video called “Milk Run” that displays his incredible driving talent out in the middle of the desert, brought his professional Ultra4 buggy out. And even though there wasn’t much dirt to be seen, Healy was still able to put on quite a show thanks to some well-placed ramps and those massive tires being reduced to a pile of rubber dust. Plus, who could forget Sam and Stina Hubinette and their modified Lamborghini Huracan going out and showing even the professional drift cars a thing or two about putting on a good smoke show.
