one of the coolest, most iconic Japanese cars in the history of freaking Japanese cars? Don’t answer that. The answer’s yes, I am. I hope you got your beauty rest because No. no one sleeps in Tokyo. We’re going Bumper to Bumper on the Toyota AE86. Eurobeat intensifies. Initial D, it’s the manga slash anime that inspired a generation of car nerds, myself included. In the same way that TwoLane Blacktop and American Graffiti inspired Our. our dads to get into heavy American iron, Initial D introduced us to the world of glorious Nippon Steel. The show featured pretty much every standout Japanese car you can imagine. Mazda RX7, Nissan GTR, Subaru WRX STI. But one car stands above the rest, a humble Toyota AE86. Kinda. Kinda this one. Actually it’s exactly this one. The car’s driven by the protagonist Takumi Fujiwara who uses it to deliver tofu for his dad. Just the show, this AE86 has the Fujiwara Tofu. tofu shop on the side. This car is owned by Vincent Chan, and he went to extreme lengths to faithfully recreate Takumi’s Car.. car. And it took a lot more work than you Might. might think. So the Corolla that Takumi. Takumi drove in the show never Really. really came to America. It was called the Corolla GTS.

GTS over here. It looked an 86 but it wasn’t quite Takumi’s. The Corolla GTS we got came with pedestriansafe USspec bumpers. They’re very ugly. We also got some other less powerful versions the Corolla