The Story of the Real Devil Z, a Cursed Pantera, and the Missing NASCAR Engineer

[Music] in the past video we looked into the most infamous porsche 911 ever made the yoshida specials 930. yoshida was the founder of midnight an illegal street racing team that dominated the wong gun expressway and inspired michiharu kosinoki's wildly successful long gone midnight the manga begins with the main character akio losing out to the notorious 911 turbo discouraged by his loss he skips glass to search for better parts but instead finds a heavily modified s30z he's told the car is cursed with a long history of misfortune and that it's ordered to be destroyed unfazed by the warnings he manages to buy it and so begins his journey to beat the blackbird 911 and to tame the murderous devil z but what inspired the car in real life i always thought i knew the answer but as i began to dig deeper i found more parallels to the curse z than i or maybe even michiharu expected this story takes us around the world and explores mystery still unsolved this is the story of the real devil z a curse pantera and the missing nascar engineer while yoshida may have earned his title as emperor of the wongan there was another car constantly nipping at his heels a 1978 s-130z this specific s-130z is undoubtedly the most well-known example in the world from the inception of midnight this car was there originally owned by the vice chair since then it's continued to adapt and evolve in an attempt to best the 930 much like the fictional devil z unlike yoshi's approach of sending the car to germany this one was all japan and was tuned at various shops and by various owners over the years but what really took the car to the next level was when it entered the doors of abr hisoki started by masaru hisoki abr tuned a wide range of vehicles from american cars to rotaries and even yoshida's 930 but masara's true passion was the s130z he even sold an 11-piece wide body kit for it while the z had many parts from newer models like the 5 speed from a z31 and brake components from an r32 gtr masaro chose to keep the l28 heart and do what he does best the engine was stroked to 3.1 liters and twin turbos boosted the car to record-breaking horsepower numbers these numbers have also grown over the years with the car eventually reaching deep into the 600s the car had some fairly impressive showings at itabe but again could never quite match yoshida's 930 even years later [Music] so how does this compare to the fictional devil z akio's car may have been a first generation z instead of a second and blue instead of ferrari testarossa red but it also just so happened to have a 3.1 liter engine with twin turbos making 600 horsepower with all the similarities in both spec and story it's pretty safe to assume the abr s130z was the inspiration for the devil's eat when it came time to film the first of many wongon midnight movies the director wanted to make it as realistic as possible so he had his own 930 sent out to be modified for the role and asked abr hisoki to build a real-life devil z however masaru denied the request he had actually grown apart from midnight as he didn't like their newfound fame and just wanted to focus on building fast cars instead the job of building the devil z went to speed shop shinohara this shop was no stranger to the chassis having already built an insane fiberglass clad s30z drag car the shinohar team built the movie car exactly to spec and they did a great job they managed to stick a shop logo on the car which attracted all kinds of new customers and the shop was doing really well right up until mr shinohara passed and the shop faded away for many this is the end of the story similar to yoshida's 930 influencing the blackbird 911 the inspiration behind akio's devil z also seems clear with many nods to the abr hisoki s130z but what about the devil part did michiharu make up the storyline or was this also inspired in wongan midnight there's a character named june kitami known as the tuner from hell he's the one who tuned the devil z and the 911 turbo similar to how abr hisoki did in real life but masaru also helped tune one other very special car not a nissan or a porsche but a detomaso pantera [Music] much like masaro hisoki alejandro de tomaso was another fiery passionate character born in argentina to wealthy parents alejandra did tommaso enjoyed racing and politics before his connection to a failed coop forced him to escape to italy there he chose to stay at the most prestigious hotel the canal grande alejandro as we'll soon find out had a bit of an ego and when he couldn't afford the bill he told them that when he returned he'd buy the entire place and he did he made his money as a driver for oscar which was founded by the maserati brothers there he met his wife elizabeth isabel haskell who was also driving for oscar and was the granddaughter to one of the founders of gm together the couple started detomaso automobili and began building race cars and prototypes some of which even ended up in formula one one day alejandra received an unlikely call from a man you might have heard of carroll shelby [Music] the combination of shelby's legendary engines and de tomaso's featherweight mid-engine chassis seemed like a match made in heaven but these were also the two biggest egos in motorsports so eventually they went their own ways shelby began working on the gt40 and detomaso still upset at shelby released the mangusta or mongoose an animal known for killing snakes the mengusa used a ford engine and while it may have ticked off carol shelby ford was interested in alejandro's efforts and partnered with him to make the most well-known detomaso ever made the pantera the pantera combined v8 american muscle with italian style and performance creating an affordable supercar it was an instant success and had buyers all over the world trying to get their hands on one even in japan the japanese car industry wasn't producing high horsepower cars at the time so street racers looking to be the best and others wanting to show off at yatabay often turn to european or american power one example of this was koichi okawa who held the record for the fastest kart hitabe with his trans am hitting 264 kilometers an hour this record only lasted a few months though as masaro was putting the final touches on a very special pantera owned by gary mitsunaga giri was born in hawaii to japanese parents but eventually found himself back in japan drag racing his savannah rx3 at the tachikawa airfield at one of these races he happened to run into masara hisoki and teamed up to create an s30z powered by a 327 small block chevy this car won events all over both legal and illegal and set the duo up to work on the car which would cement both of their names in history mitsunoga's pantera was on a completely different level from anything seen before and while the car was a monster on the streets it was going to be almost impossible to drive to its full potential on the steep banks of yutabe so they got the best kunimitsu takahashi kuni mitsu deserves a video of his own he started off with motorcycles becoming the first japanese racer to win a world grand prix and then switched to cars racing in everything from the 24 hours of le mans to formula one he was even winning races at 59 years old he's also known as the father of drifting and the mentor and idol of the drift king himself keichi suchia back in 1981 though he was the man tasked with taking the monstrous pantera around yutabe the goal was to beat the 264 kilometer an hour mark and it did but not by a kilometer or two or 10 or even 20. kunimitsu in the pantera obliterated both the record and the 300 kilometer an hour mark with a new top speed of 307.69 kilometers an hour the car was the undisputed king of yatabay but mitsunaga wanted to go faster still and took the car to the streets ended up taking a journalist out for a ride to prove that the car could reach 320 kilometers an hour on public roads the journalist wrote about the immense power of the car and how it apparently maintained an average speed of 250 kilometers an hour for over 38 kilometers then mitsunoga dropped the journalist off and drove away on his way home though something happened and while details are blurry we know that the car crashed and gary mitsunaga was tragically killed panteras weren't a safe car to begin with and this one really was a death trap after all the modifications but the mid engine layout did protect one thing the engine apparently the engine was taken from the car and transplanted into another road car some say it still roams tokyo to this day is it a coincidence that the devil z is also a car that brought death to owners before its engine tuned by the tuner from hell was passed along to the next owner i'll let you be the judge but there's one more extremely unusual and surprising connection this engine wasn't actually built by massaro hisoki while masaru prepped the devil's engine for the atabay run it was actually built and tuned far far away by a genius nascar innovator who's even more shrouded in mystery mario rossi [Music] shortly after new year's in 1983 mario's family received a phone call that he had been killed in a plane crash off the coast of the bahamas but unlike mitsunoga's crash this one never happened mario rossi grew up on a chicken farm in new jersey where he began taking apart vehicles and driving tractors at a young age this led him to a long career in nascar where he drove built engines acted as a crew chief and more much of rossi's legacy is rooted in safety he implemented headrests to reduce whiplash an added point to seat belts and other small life-saving alterations he had other innovations too some legal like gluing lug nuts to the rim to speed up tire changes while other times they weren't quite so legal like his ability to hide nitrous bottles within the car mario often went against the grain in 1971 the cars were getting too fast for the tracks so the teams were forced to choose between a bigger engine or a big wing all the teams chose the big block except rossi who was confident he could make the so-called mini motor 305 work and he almost did up into second place and the fans are running for this little car they call a mini motor goes down underneath and takes the lead and is everybody yelling now unfortunately the car was taken out although it still managed to finish seven there are some theories other teams were trying to hamper it as the larger corporations didn't want the public to see their fancy new big blocks losing to rossi's mini motor like many of the characters in this story big egos finances and changing realities forced mario to jump between various teams and careers over the years in the late 70s he declared bankruptcy and started to build engines to pay off his deaths like the devilish motor that ended up in mutsunaga's pantera shortly after he received an offer from a man named billy harvey to join his team and work with their driver gary bellew together the team did well but then in 1982 just four days after the daytona 500 there was a sting operation known as black thursday it's well known that nascar has roots in moonshining but on black thursday 66 people were arrested in a south florida drug bust valued at over 300 million dollars in marijuana and cocaine among those arrested were rossi's teammates billy harvey and gary blue mario didn't appear to be involved though at least not at the time but something changed after visiting his family for christmas that year his family commented that he seemed different at this gathering wearing a gold and diamond watch given to him by gary baloo and giving his family members money they dropped him off at the airport and watched and waved goodbye without knowing this would be the last time they would see him then they received the mysterious phone call from a girlfriend of mario's telling them that he'd been killed in a plane crash and that they shouldn't ask questions or try to gather his belongings again we were trying to possibly make arrangements for me to go get my father's you know belongings and you know she basically told me that you'd be a dead man before you got to the bottom of the stairs from the plane the family tried to access his life insurance policy but the company determined that the crash never happened and that the plane in question was still fully operational and so began the long agonizing search to figure out what actually happened the main theories are that he entered a witness protection program after cooperating with authorities chose to disappear and escape the situation or that he was murdered there's a podcast called the sneak which sheds some light on the characters involved his children share that he was consumed by his love of racing and didn't get to spend much time with their dad i didn't get to really know my dad you know like like most people would his sister speak on his glowing caring personality he was kind very kind especially to my mother i mean that you don't see too much of that as a person he was a good person [Music] i hope he's still i hope he still is but the most interesting interview is the one with gary blue gary claims to have also received the phone call although he doesn't remember who the caller was but knew right away it wasn't true at first he said mario wasn't at all involved in the smuggling ring and that after his disappearance he had seen him on a barbara walters tv special showing mario flying a plane in colombia this is the clip it's actually from a 1990 frontline special but isn't mario rossi i don't think anyone can tell from this gary also said that his ex-wife song too and even took blood from him but when asked she said she never did and that she would have known when pressed gary began spouting off conflicting stories stating that mario actually did move drugs for him and that he was working with an informant and how that informant was killed off after opening this can of worms he seemed to get more and more upset the interviewer tried following up but gary was done talking i'm not getting involved with that that i don't know and don't care don't want to know none of my business if you always fart it wouldn't be out of your business neither no that's all i'm going to say i'm done bye some members of the rossi family are ready to give up the hunt and finally accept he's gone but others aren't even in the past week people are still trying to make connections and figure out an answer to rossi's disappearance for now this mystery still haunts us although i hope that one day the rossi family gets the closure they deserve after nearly 40 years of searching it's amazing how a fictional car and japanese manga can somehow be linked to a missing nascar engineer while this story took us around the world there are also a lot of similarities between the intensely passionate characters involved and the sacrifices they made to leave their mark i know this story has been a bit of a wild ride jumping between all the connections but i really hope you enjoyed it i want to take this time to thank you so so much for all your support with your likes comments subscriptions and even two pounds from a gentleman named robbo the channel is nearly 10 times the size it was just a month ago and that's all thanks to you on top of that there's been some really great video ideas suggested in the comments which i'm excited to dig into and hopefully share here soon this video wouldn't have been possible without the absolutely incredible research done by auto team retro nascar man and many others i'll leave some links to them down below the final thing i wanted to mention is that while i'm not at all superstitious or anything of the sort i saw a blue devil d lookalike drive right past me the other day as i was leaving for work which isn't a common car at 6 45 am here in the country anyways thank you all again so much for watching i really hope you enjoyed the video and that you have a great day [Music]

Channel: Hunter's Moon

Views: 488,575

Keywords: midnight club, mid night racing team, yoshida 930, mid night, wangan midnight, yatabe, street racing japan, smokey nagata, mid night club, midnight club story, mid night racing team story, jdm, kanjo, devil z, real devil z, abr hosoki, abr s130z, abr, s130z, z31, s30z, s30, s31, masaru hosoki, mitsunaga, pantera, detomaso pantera, de tomaso pantera, devil z wangan midnight, devil z theme, devil z vs blackbird, mario rossi, missing nascar, datsun 240z, datsun, fairlady z, nissan, 240z

Id: zY2AkUf_dVw

Length: 16min 49sec (1009 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 31 2022