Tag: zokusha (Page 1 of 2)

Baby-blue Toyota Carina GT-R AA63 kaido racer – Carina Sightings

February 7, 2024 / banpei / 0 Comments

I love to browse stuff for sale on Yahoo Auctions on a weekly basis and every now and then I find interesting stuff, like for instance the TRD Sports Accessories brochure. This week I encountered this baby-blue Toyota Carina GT-R kaido racer that is for sale for a mere 1.6M yen! (10K euros, 11K dollars)

Baby blue Toyota Carina GT-R kaido racer

Weak spot for Kaido Racers

I have a weak spot for kaido racers (also known as zokusha), especially if they are done well. This one is done very well, looking at the amount of work that went into this. First of all, you will notice the Levin AE86 front bumper has been widened and made its way to the front of this Carina. It’s not clear why they didn’t use an AE92 bumper as that would fit without any issues. Then the lip underneath the bumper makes it look more like a zokusha.

3 hours of Shakotan Boogie Anime – Friday Video

December 1, 2023 / banpei / 0 Comments

I have been dreaming about this for years now, and now finally, someone took the effort to upload the Shakotan Boogie anime to Youtube! You may wonder why this is such a big deal, so let me explain to you what Shakotan Boogie is, why I have yearned for this and why it is great to have it on Youtube!

What is Shakotan Boogie?

Shakotan Boogie (シャコタン★ブギ) started as a Manga in Weekly Young Magazine in 1986 and remained serialized until 1996. It’s a manga about two boys, Hajime Yamamoto and Koji Watanabe, who are into zokusha and the whole subculture around it. This is closely related to the Bosozoku, but they aren’t the same.

The two boys are car-crazy and they drive around in a blue and white Toyota Soarer Z10 on SSR Mk Is. This car has become so iconic that it became the stereotypical Soarer for many people who are into zokusha. Similar to what the panda-Trueno is for Initial D fans.

Toyota Carina GT-R AA63 with N2 over fenders

What looks better on a Carina? N2 or zokusha fender flares? – Carina Sightings

November 27, 2023 / banpei / 0 Comments

Fender flares will give you the ability for a much wider track than with your standard OEM fenders. Fender flares range from the simple bolt-on types as introduced on the Hakosuka Skyline to the bizarre wide creations of the Group 5 and N2 racing. Zokusha were copying racing designs, hence a lot of the zokusha have giant wide fender flares. I found this Toyota Carina GT-R AA63 from Okinawa on Cartune and it actually featured both N2 and zokusha fender flares. So my question to you: N2 or zokusha fender flares?

N2 style

I’ll first start with the N2 Style (not to be confused with the N-style) fender flares:

The N2 used to be a one-make racing series in the 1980s and early 1990s where it was based upon the FIA Group N rules. In Japan, the Group N was already driven as the N1 series which later became the Super Taikyu Series. N2 started out as a racing series organized by Toyota to have the Toyota Corolla Levin AE86 and Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86 compete against each other. Keiichi Tsuchiya, who just graduated from the Fuji Freshman series, wanted to join the series but was denied entry because he wasn’t an established driver yet.

What if Toyota sold Kaido Racers?

May 11, 2018 / banpei / 0 Comments

What if Toyota sold kaido racers?

Today I’ll try to answer the question “what if Toyota actually sold zokusha”. Zokusha, also better known as Kaido racers or bosozoku style cars, are cars that have been modified to the extreme. The style varies from race car inspired modifications, like enormous fender flares and super wide wheels, to bizarrely shaped objects, like sharknosed frontends and oddly shaped exhaust pipes.

This car styling started somewhere in the early 1970s and became extremely popular near the end of that decade and remained popular throughout the 1980s. Now why would Toyota ever sell these oddly modified cars? Would there be demand for such a car? In this new video series I’ll try to answer questions like this using a thought experiment, imagining what could happen.

JDM Trivia #7: Kaido Racer part swaps

January 15, 2016 / banpei / 0 Comments

JDM Trivia #7

The feedback I got from the picture I posted was great! Some people suffer from Pareidolia just like me. Pareidolia is when you see faces in everything and some of you saw angry and happy faces in the photo. But what I actually was aiming for were the swapped tail lights on the kaido racer in this photo. Some of the commenters already uncovered me as the person behind the Bosozoku Style blog and yes that’s me.

In the kaido racers scene swapping parts between various cars is a highly valued modification, especially if it something original.

Kaido Racer part swaps

I haven’t done any statistics on this but I can say the most swapped parts are the tail lights of a Nissan Cherry X-1R and most of them end up on either a Skyline C110 or C210.

Second most swapped parts are the banana tail lights of the first generation JDM Toyota Celica liftback and it is unbelievable how well they look on Glorias, Fairladies, Skylines and Laurels. It is almost like the Nissan owners are jealous of this magnificent Toyota design.

Commercial Time: Sharknose Toyota Chaser JZX100

October 9, 2015 / banpei / 0 Comments

The car in the photo below isn’t a Toyota Chaser JZX100, but a Toyota Mark II JZX100. Almost the same thing you might think…

Well it is not but it was the only photo I could find of a JZX100 kaido racer and I actually might have tricked you to come here and read this by doing so. The whole thing is, everyone nowadays associates the sharknose term with kaido racers and their modified bodywork and I’m also debit on making that term popular with the bosozoku style blog.

Anyway, the ad I found on Youtube is a whole different sharknose Toyota Chaser JZX100 than a modified front end. Watch for your selves: Continue reading