A Love Letter to Japanese Cars [4k]

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] I have a problem as you can probably tell I'm a little bit too obsessed with cars specifically Japanese cars [Applause] hi guys you're working gears in ethylene and I'm bent ever since I first got into cars at the tender age of 16 my first love has always been Japanese cars in fact the first car that I ever really really wanted was funnily enough a Subaru WRX STI which is somewhat ironic so rather than try and make a video explaining all the logical reasons why Japanese cars are so popular and certain people are very into the Japanese market I thought that I would kind of make this more of just a love letter to Japanese cars and well it's rainy and cold here in Virginia a couple weeks ago while you're in Las Vegas for SEMA it was neither rain nor cold so we sat down with one of my very first friends in the automotive community John to talk about why he loves Japanese Carter so much my name is John and I Drive a 1991 300zx I started getting into cars because my dad would make me help him work on his come out when I was 12 or 13 I was actually kind of embarrassed by his Camaro because I was flat black rusty and the loudest thing ever it just started becoming really interesting especially once I got closer to where I could drive being able to do something to your car fix it modify it just drive it around for the fun of it I started out with AZ 31 back in high school and after a couple years of driving that I started looking for the Z 32 just because I like the style of it better I liked the aftermarket sported it better they just felt like a lot more car say 1991 Nissan 300zx started out as a non turbo which I swapped a twin-turbo engine back in 2015 before that is slows balls now it's still kind of slow as balls but it's a lot more fun I think it's timeless some other people think it looks incredibly dated but it's all just opinions it kind of is intangible and riving the car makes me feel good working on it makes me feel good making stuff for it makes me feel good it's just I think Japanese cars have a lot of character [Music] if you were familiar with any of the really og years again Celine stuff from back in like 2015 then you might be familiar the name Eric rap we did a video on his WRX way back in the day so I sat back down with him again for this video to get his take on why he loves Japanese cars so much I just always liked cars he was my first word other than mom and dad so yeah my name is Eric I like all things Japanese mostly cars but toasters too it was really not fair because it was mark for supera FDR x7z 32 and when the FD came out that was a car there and was like oh my gosh it's amazing car they're so fast and people wrecked them on test drives it was kind of true and I'd look I thought they were amazing I mean you'd see him like that see of a super exotic looking and I really liked it then high school Speed Channel was speed vision and a super late at night they would show WRC and so I got into watching Colin McRae coming back in in and later Petter Solberg and all those guys drive and I've got a new Subarus because of that Gran Turismo Gran Turismo and Gran Turismo 2 I wanted a yellow version for STI coupe because of Gran Turismo I thought it was the best pixelated car ever seen in my life and like guys overseas who would send you like VHS bootleg copies of hot version my first car was a 89 twittered a two-wheel drive pickup after that it was a 96 Tacoma oddly enough and after that it was a 2002 coma there was a 93 eclipse GS ex and I couldn't afford play insurance go back to slow trucks for a while bug eye Impreza sedan one year stint with a Volkswagen which I don't recommend then I had a no7 Impreza Outback Sport 2005 for sure XP it's 2010 Honda Civic Si Sedan 2007 Hawkeye Wagon though I sold that and I bought a 2010 STI special edition which kind of one of those dream cars like Gran Turismo style ordered an STI it was awesome and now I have a 2015 Scion fr-s which is weird in the fact that it's a scion because I was always like all by a B or Z but even stock it's ridiculously fun to drive I just wanted something that when I walk down to it it spoke to me there's nothing I can say there's like oh my gosh you have to get a Japanese car because it does this this and this better you buy a car because you like if you buy a car because it says something to you when I walk outside and I see that car like sweet that's mine I like it now you guys may remember at the beginning of the video we open things up with a seed of me rather creepily searching for cars online and while that scene does bear a little bit more resemblance to reality than I would like to admit it was played for laughs however like all comedy it is based in real life which got me thinking about the absolute mecca of Japanese import impulse buying driver motorsport I'm Chris driver donor of driver motorsports and we import cars from Japan bring them into the States fix them up and so on I personally look for the cars and we have someone in Japan that can actually be on the ground checking the cars out for us so we bring the cars here to the States and go through them thoroughly we check everything out mechanically we fix any existing issues make sure the customer when they buy the car they don't have to work on it immediately we want to make sure that it's showroom condition you know you can take it to a car show the next day our car of choice is the Nissan Skyline GTR is some GTS T's but mostly the GTRs is you know our bread-and-butter car I mean the cars you know they are 25 years old or older they have to be for us to import them illegally into the states a lot of the cars that we get in have low miles you know 50,000 miles 40,000 miles and I mean the Japanese people are more fastidious and they take care of their items a lot better than people in the United States I mean it's it's the truth you know people they don't care that they're 25 years old they're just in love with these cars and they have a passion for it because they grew up on Gran Turismo they grew up on fast and furious it's kind of like their face to face with their childhood hero Japanese cars from the late 80s to the early 2000s are just some of the best engineered vehicles ever made you know Italian German what-have-you they're to me hands-down the best cars that have ever been made they were never of Mercedes they were never a BMW they were never a Porsche but the technology that went into them I think we're gonna take all this cool race technology and we're gonna make this into our car you know hey I've got a bass Civic with dual wishbone suspension all the way around and you know it's super fun to drive it was built by engineers not by accountants kind of thing like it seems like there is there was passion behind it like there is there was something that they wanted from it and they wanted the car to be fun to drive they wanted it to be their best work and I think that was the part that got me we always look to the Japanese see what they're doing with their course they definitely like to be different like unconventional when it comes to modifying their colors of their racing meet exists because of rotaries the heartbeat and if that thup thup thup thup thup that's that's what that comes from school when I was a kid oh my capella spoke Duloc top secret car shall glow car station Marsh aqua oh I'm gonna go buy that new gloss lonesome car boy deck for my car so I can play like the dopest minidiscs [Music] it's it's a culture that it frowns upon standing out that's you know like that's you know you're not supposed to stand out from the crowd kind of thing and car people it like most of the world like want to be different you want to express themselves through like that's their form of artwork that's their form of self-expression and so those companies exist because someone thought the exact same thing and like I want to do this and we're gonna make this and this is our outrageous name that's gonna people are gonna be like all right that's crazy and let's go for it I definitely believe that we have a sustainable business model because of the enthusiasts that are out there you know the number of people wanting to buy these cars far outweighs the supply because of that I believe we're gonna have many more years of growth in this industry because of the huge fan base and just people that love these JDM vehicles just being able to be around these cars and work on them it's just awesome it's fun it's my dream come true I think there are always be a younger generation that becomes interested but to them classic JDM cars because that's what they will be by that I understand that some of you guys might not really be Japanese car enthusiasts and that all this might seem a little bit overblown and kind of weird to you and I totally understand that but for me the cars that Japan has brought us over the years have hit me and influenced me in ways that literally nothing else in my life has and I don't think that that's something I'm ever gonna grow out of I don't know there's no actual reason I can say you have to like this or this is better because I just like it like it's just [Music] to me there's that little part that just says this is what I like and I want to be good at it and this is what I like and I want to keep at it this is what makes me happy every single day I guess I don't grow out of it I think it's just kind of me [Music] yeah this is all yours injury this Pompeii today and it's a go slide yeah and now I'm just gonna watch it like and what's not like watching the threat Oh [Music]

Channel: Gears and Gasoline

Views: 484,811

Rating: 4.9678917 out of 5

Keywords: jdm, japanese, cars, subaru, toyota, scion, mitsubishi, nissan, gtr, 300zx, turbo, dsm

Id: CboVSvbL3ds

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/ExplosiveMachine]

No Honda? for real?

[u/Capnserious]

The Z in the thumbnail is GORGEOUS