The British Drift Championship and America’s Formula Drift championship sprouted in the West as the sport spread worldwide, requiring speed, skill and precision of its drivers to score points. It told the sensationalised tale of a tofu delivery boy who slid his Toyota AE86 through the mountains with unbelievable skill, much to the chagrin of so-called experts and their much more capable cars.Ĭompetitive drifting got going in the 1990s, culminating in the D1 drift championship featuring cars built to specs and rules. The video Pluspy, which he and local Japanese magazines and garages collaborated on, effectively inspired the now world-famous anime Initial D. Inspired by racers of the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, racing driver Keiichi Tsuchiya, known as the Drift King, spent much of the 1980s perfecting the techniques we know to comprise drifting today. And it all goes back to the cars, their capabilities and the roads and tracks Japan is blessed with. Definitively Japan’s own form of motorsport, born out of daring drivers sliding their Toyotas and Nissans down slippy Japanese mountain passes, drifting has become an international phenomenon today. Yes, we’ll get to The Fast & The Furious, but first it was the sport that some of these cars gave birth to that would also help catalyse their cult-like spread within motoring culture. In rallying, Toyota’s Celica and latterly Subaru’s Impreza dominated the WRC, leaving past masters Lancia to wither away and Audi to step back from the sport in favour of touring car and endurance racing.īy 1995, on the road and on track, Japanese performance cars were known as forces to be reckoned with, but they hadn’t yet conquered the world. Latterly the Honda Integra and Accord, along with the Nissan Primera, would make waves in post-Group A eras. In touring car racing in the early 1990s, the Nismo Nissan Skyline R32 GT-R began decimating the Group A tin-top establishment all over the world, earning it the well-known ‘Godzilla’ nickname. In endurance racing, Mazda’s 787B Group C car with its screaming rotary engine clinched Japan its first 24 Hours of Le Mans win in 1991. In F1, Honda engines were driving McLaren chassis to world championships, from 1988 to 1991. The Japanese assault on the world of motorsport came in parallel with the road cars coming to market in the 1980s and 1990s. On the other, they were stuffed to the brim with hi-tech driveline, aerodynamics and chassis systems to humble contemporary supercars – see the Nissan Skyline GT-R, Toyota Supra, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo and Subaru Impreza WRX STi. On one end of the spectrum, they were lightweight, chuckable and beautifully balanced sports cars – see the Toyota AE86, Honda Civic Type R, Honda NSX, Mazda RX-7 and Nissan Silvia among many others. Happily, for the most part, the same level of overengineering was put into the way the cars in which they were installed drove. Of course, engines are useless without cars worthy of their performance. Such is the legendary performance, tunability, reliability and overall effervescence of these engines, you’ll be lucky not to see at least one of those otherwise random collections of numbers and letters stamped on someone’s t-shirt at a Japanese car event. 4A-GE, 2JZ-GTE, 4G63T, RB26DETT, SR20DET, K20, B18 – for most other carmakers, engine codes don’t go far beyond the parts catalogue. Indeed, so mythical and revered are these motors now, they have their own cult followings. Yet small Toyota and Honda economy cars came with screaming twin-cam engines – the latter sporting the all-important VTEC cam systems – with warranties instead of rebuild intervals. A redline over 8,000rpm was once the preserve of Formula 1 and latterly, touring car racing. Meanwhile, that year’s Toyota Supra and Nissan Skyline had turbocharged six-cylinder engines strong enough to produce well over 1,000hp with the right upgrades. Over 600 horsepower in the McLaren F1 made headlines in 1993. This is where the all-covering noun of JDM comes from, given the performance associated with Japanese Domestic Market vehicles. But it’s what’s been called the over-engineering of certain Japanese enthusiast cars, leaving latent and difficult-to-believe performance potential, that set the foundations for the JDM car culture phenomenon. For as long as cars have existed, we’ve been pulling them apart and fettling them to make them faster. But how did we get here? From the cars, to the pop culture explosion, this is the story of Japanese Domestic Market – otherwise known as JDM – cars. Japanese car culture blossomed from a microsphere of dedicated fans and car enthusiasts to perhaps the world’s dominant motoring subculture in the space of around 30 years, with a fandom so strong it fuels an inflated market of cars, parts and expertise all of its own.
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