Neil Tjin has turned a love of cars which he developed in high school into a unique business that has Neil building show cars, badged as Tjin Editions, with the cooperation of automakers and aftermarket suppliers and then taking the cars on a tour across the country. This gives enthusiasts a real physical connection to the parts and cars they see on their favorite websites. Neil’s journey through the automotive world to get where he is now has been an interesting one to say the least.

Neil Tjin got interested in cars starting in high school. His wife and brother shared his obsession and together they went about modifying their cars. Neil was one of the first people in Miami with 17” wheels which he put on a somewhat unlikely car, the Eagle Vision. After his Vision, he acquired an Acura Legend while his wife Mei and brother Gene both got Honda Accords and fitted them with Bomex body kits. The Legend didn’t stick around long before being replaced by Neil’s now famous school bus yellow Acura 3.2 TL. The TL was Neil’s first fully built and realized car and it was this car that eventually landed him a spot the 1996 Super Street Tour and at the NOPI Nationals in Georgia. His experience visiting cities on the East Coast with this influential magazine allowed him to build relationships with a variety of companies, such as MagnaFlow,  and become more fully involved in the automotive industry.

In 2003 Neil and his wife moved from the East coast to Southern California where he started working with Hot Compact and Import and B/Scene magazines. Around this time, Neil was approached by Scion who asked them to design and build a custom tC. They inked the deal and shortly after that, Turtle Wax approached and asked them to design a marketing tour. That tour became the Turtle Wax “Get Waxed” tour and Neil ran it in 2004 and 2005 before it morphed into the Tjin Edition Roadshow.

The Roadshow is unique in that Neil works directly with auto makers and aftermarket parts and accessories manufacturers to build cars and then take them to more than 30 events around the country. Neil also regularly builds a number of cars for SEMA which takes place annually in Las Vegas in early November. Last year, Tjin Edition built six cars for SEMA which, as anyone who’s actually tried to build a car will tell you, is a pretty tall order.

One thing that sets Tjin Edition cars apart from the crowd is their unique and often non-traditional color choices. The cars are generally not seen in traditional automotive colors and instead feature more subtle, neutral and non-metallic hues.

“Well this used to be a big secret but its kind of out now that when we want to pick a color for a show car, we typically end up in the paint section at Home Depot. We use house paint colors because there are typically a lot more shade variations to choose from and many of the colors are just something you’d never expect to see on a car,” said Neil Tjin. “It really helps us stand out from all the candy colored and metal flaked cars you normally expect to see at SEMA.”

Tjin also pulls many of his other aesthetic choices from outside the normal realm of what might be expected for import style cars. He regularly draws on ideas from world of lowriders and hot rods and street rods. This gives his cars an unexpected feel that helps to draw people in despite being surrounded by other cars.

Being able to turn one’s hobby into a business is maybe one of the most American things someone can do. It’s not an easy thing to accomplish but if you’re able to pull it off, like Neil did, you never know where it might take you.