transcript

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[00:01] You've probably heard of Option and Carboy. By the 1980s, magazines like these had become prominent voices in Japanese car culture. Widely read, widely trusted, and nearly impossible to find a tuner who didn't have a copy somewhere in their shop. But to understand how those magazines got there, you have to go back further. Before Option, before Carboy, before any of it, there were zines. Independent, cheaply printed, passed around by hand. Before the internet, in a period where car enthusiasts were scattered across Japan with no easy way to find each other, these publications built a community from the ground up. Motor Magazine, monthly private cars, and Motor Fan dominated the market and made a name for themselves as the big three magazines of Japan's automotive world. Their pages documented new car technology and racing results during a period when driving had become a national pastime. But these magazines played it safe. They barely touched what the smaller underground publications were doing. A raw, up close look at what was actually happening on Japan's streets. Things began to change in the mid 1970s as Japanese car culture continued to grow. Smaller, compact magazines started appearing in B5 format, aimed at hobbyists rather than showroom customers. Titles like Holiday Auto leaned into reader participation, spotlighting cars that enthusiasts were actually driving and modifying. One of its biggest hits was a serialized feature called Oh My Highway Racer, built entirely on reader submissions. It launched Holiday Auto into a level of popularity that other magazines couldn't touch. The publication quickly became known as the Bible of modified cars. This was a big shift. Less than a decade after sanctioned racing circuits had really started to take off, a real bridge between the formal press and grassroots culture was starting to form. Last episode, we talked about how the 1973 oil crisis handed Japan an unexpected opportunity. In garages across the country, a generation of young people started building a car culture nobody had officially sanctioned. But those kids needed a way to find each other. Today on Past Gas, how car magazines changed Japanese culture. Welcome back to the show, everybody. My name is Nolan Sykes. I am your host here on Past Gas. We are about a quarter of the way through our journey into the Japanese automotive industry. If this is your first episode of this new season, go back and listen to the first couple episodes there. So you really get the full picture here. Otherwise, you'll kind of be just jumping right in. Zines, man. I remember me and my boy, Chris Drysbeck, used to go to these shows in warehouses in this one manufacturing district of San Luis Obispo. And in the lobby, there was a rack with all these zines, little self-published magazines. It was like vegan stuff. There was like anarchist stuff. Zines are very important in counterculture, in subcultures. It's decentralized. It's DIY. It's how the real nerds find each other. Zines were able to help car culture break through from a subculture into the mainstream. And that is what we're discussing today in this episode. Without further ado, let's get into it. What made these magazines so powerful wasn't just the information they carried, it was the connection they made possible. Young drivers and tuners scattered across Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo could finally see themselves reflected in ink and photography. A single shot of a modified skyline under a streetlight, or a Cosmo Sport sitting in the shadows of a mountain road was more than a picture. It was proof that someone, somewhere, was doing exactly what you were doing, and into the same things that you were. Photography here was especially vital. These weren't glossy press shots. These editors preferred grainy images taken inside shops or snapped after a late run on the toemail. Each one invited scrutiny. Readers studied every detail and tried to replicate what they saw. They weren't just consuming a culture. They were participating in it. Modified cars offered the people a way to express themselves, and magazines were the mirror that amplified it so anyone could see what was possible. Distribution ran through traditional retail channels and through word-of-mouth networks that turned out to be surprisingly effective. An issue bought in Kyoto might get passed to friends in Fukuoka and then tucked under a bed only to be rediscovered months later. Yeah, they probably had other magazines they tucked under their beds. Demand was high enough that large print runs were necessary. These magazines also began giving the culture a shared vocabulary that it didn't quite have yet. Through another reader's submission, you might learn the difference between suspension setups you didn't even know were possible. At this point, what worked and what didn't were equally worth documenting. And magazines were where it got documented. Magazines directly contributed to a moment when cars became a tool of self-expression. The 1970s were moving fast, and not just in Japan. Across the world, young people were pushing back against whatever monoculture they'd inherited. Back in the US., it was muscle cars and counterculture. In the UK., it was punk. And for many in Japan, it was a wrench in your hand and a magazine under your arm. By the late 70s, the tone of enthusiast publishing had already shifted. Coverage grew more confident and experimental. Editors were less likely to hold back from documenting the unauthorized side of car culture. They understood what they were giving their readers. And there was one person in particular who really understood that assignment. He had stepped into this world not just as someone with influence, but as a genuine fan of the culture. His name was Daijiro Inada, and his impact was nothing short of seismic. Inada's Option Magazine launched in 1981. And from day one, it did something the legacy car magazines never would. It documented illegal street runs, openly, proudly. In a country where conformity was a social contract, that alone was a statement. Inada didn't come directly from the street scene. His path ran through publishing and motorsports journalism, a more traditional route that turned out to be crucial. It taught him how media worked, how editors built and framed stories, and most importantly, how far you could push the system before the system pushed back. Option took what earlier publications had been quietly building towards and pushed it all the way to the front. A column here and there paired with some photos was no longer enough. This culture had grown too big and too hungry for that. It needed its own platform. Option called itself the Exciting Car Magazine, and it meant it. To understand why that mattered, you have to understand where the average car enthusiast stood at the time. Tracks existed, yes, but getting on one still cost money, real money. And even if you could afford a track day, that was a far cry from actually racing. That's still a reality today, still expensive to get out there. Competition licenses were expensive. The circuits where serious racing happened were mostly in rural areas, far from where most people live. And if you somehow cleared all that, you were still showing up as a stranger to a scene that had already sorted itself out. So, people took it to the streets. The Tomei at 2 a.m., the mountain passes on weekends, because the streets were free, immediate and always open. And once you're racing on the street, you start thinking about how to go faster. You tune the car, you push it further, you find out what that thing can actually do. That's where tuning culture really comes from. Speed as something you could chase on your own terms, on your own schedule, with whatever you had. Inada saw that clearly. He also saw that the people living this culture were constantly under threat. Operating in the shadows, dodging police scrutiny and legal gray zones. Where others saw liability, he saw an opening. As he later put it, that illegality wasn't just a legal issue, it was a social one. It meant the culture had no defense, no visibility and no ability to explain itself. His solution seemed almost too simple. Make it visible. Make it so widespread, it becomes impossible to suppress. Again, in his own words, I thought that if everyone got into it, it would be impossible for the police to arrest everyone that would tinker with their car. That's pretty sound logic. That was a calculated bet on scale. But visibility required trust, and trust required professionalism. Inada didn't want a fanzine. He wanted a real magazine, one that looked legitimate enough to sit on a shelf, but was honest enough to show what was actually happening out there. When Option began publishing in 1981, it entered a world that had been primed by a decade of enthusiast magazines. But Option felt different immediately. Instead of talking around the underground, it went straight into it. Modified cars were shown without apology. Speed wasn't being abstracted into theory anymore. It was being documented and recorded with pride. When it hit shelves, it wasn't just groundbreaking. It was shocking. Many people believed simply reading Option could get you arrested. Stories spread of readers hiding their copies, afraid that being seen with it might identify them as a street racer. Dude, that's crazy. But it makes sense too considering Japan's legal system as well. Ninety-nine percent conviction rate as of like two years ago. Insane. Inada's background helped him and his team figure out how to walk a very narrow line. The phrasing of articles, the way images were contextualized. Option found a place where nothing needed to be sensationalized to feel important. It was already exciting. It just needed a medium. That balance earned it readers from every corner. Yet street racers, shop owners, curious enthusiasts and industry insiders who pretended not to read it. Option didn't position itself against manufacturers or professional racing. It aimed to exist as part of that same ecosystem, filling a gap that had been left open. By framing tuning as a response to exclusion, rather than rebellion for its own sake, Inada created a narrative that was hard to dismiss. The people featured in Option were so passionate about cars, that they found a way to create with them by any means necessary. Big thank you to our sponsor, BlueChew. The future of erectile function is here. 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Visit bluechew.com for more details and important safety information. And we thank BlueChew for sponsoring the podcast. At some point, claims of greatness can't just live as back alley rumors anymore. They needed to be proven. The Yatabe High Speed Loop became the perfect place to settle those claims. Unlike Suzuka, which had established itself as a battleground for Japan's top manufacturers, Yatabe wasn't a racetrack in the traditional sense. It was the Japan Automobile Research Institute's high-speed test course, a long banked oval near Tokyo, that had been open since 1964. With its loop structure, multiple speed lanes, and lighting for night runs, it was built for endurance testing. Long straights that could push any car to its limit. Toyota had famously used it to set endurance records with the 2000 GT, which we talked about a few episodes ago. Now, it was about to serve a very different purpose. Up to this point, the streets had been tuners' only proving ground. The Tomei Expressway was the scene's impromptu drag strip, where drivers chased bragging rights at serious risk. A handful of drivers lost their lives out there chasing a number that was never officially recorded. That changed, though, in the early 80s, when Option decided to formalize speed. Instead of hearsay about who beat who at 3 a.m., Option would bring tuners to Yatabe and measure their cars under controlled conditions. August 16th, 1981 is a day that will forever live in Japan's automotive lore. Those who were present at the Yatabe test course recall the air being thick with anticipation, plus tire smoke and high-octane fumes from dozens of modified cars. It was one of Option's first major events, and by becoming an organizer, the magazine was becoming even more embedded within Japanese tuner culture. Tuning shops stood next to private owners, each beside a car that had been refined down to its last bolt. To ensure the earliest tests were conducted safely, Option brought in professional drivers, Osamu Mochizuki, an experienced test driver, and the legendary Kunamitsu Takahashi, whose racing pedigree ensured these machines would be driven with precision, rather than just reckless speed. Each car filed out onto the track one by one, climbing the banked Yatabe corners before feeding onto the main straight. These were not purpose-built racing machines, but heavily tuned street cars. Everything from suspension to aerodynamics was being pushed well beyond its original design limits. At high speeds, these things could become completely unpredictable. Engines could let go without warning, tires could blow, one mistake and a car could be gone before anyone had time to react. One of the most aggressive entries was RE. Amemiya's RX-7 Turbo. Driven hard, its rotary screamed as speeds crept towards 230 kilometers per hour, before the engine overheated and left a trail of white smoke behind it. Impressive, but ultimately a reminder of how unforgiving these conditions were. Then came the moment that stopped everyone cold. A firebird, Trans Am, prepared by Trust and Gretti, rolled onto the straight. An American car with a massive engine under its hood and the kind of torque that felt foreign in a paddock full of turbocharged Japanese machines. It hit 261.71 km per hour, the fastest speed recorded that day, and it wasn't particularly close. Alright, so that's 160 miles per hour. Not bad, not bad. So this is like the early 80s. That's pretty, that's good. That's impressive. For all the ingenuity happening in Japanese garages, for all the late nights and custom setups and hard-won mechanical knowledge, the fastest car at the first Yatabe event was American. That stung a little, but it also lit a fire. Japanese tuners now had a number on the wall and a very clear message. Catch up. Finishing behind the Trans Am was a SS Kubo Nissan S30 Fairlady Z. Its meticulously tuned engine pushed into the 250 kilometer an hour range, showing just how much potential Japanese sports cars had, even with two fewer cylinders than the Trans Am. Other entries ranged from the classic Fairlady SR211s to turbocharged Honda Prelude builds. Every car, regardless of final speed, was part of a larger story, one about ordinary people pushing past the boundaries of what their cars were designed to do. The event was an instant hit. For the first time, tuners could see what their culture looked like on a professional stage. And the top speed battles only grew more intense from there. Before long, 300 km per hour became the target, the big 186 miles an hour. Milestones were chased and eventually reached at subsequent events, including the historic HKS Twin Turbo Celica XXM300, the first Japanese car to break the 300 km per hour barrier in December of 1983. If you were curious what this looks like in America, this was called the Celica Supra. The news of the accomplishment spread fast. It was part of a gradual process that helped Japanese tuners stop seeing themselves as just hobbyists. Anyone with the vision and the resources to see it through was now a competitor on par with global performance machines. The data from Yatabe became something you could pin on the wall and work towards. Before Option formalized things at Yatabe, there was another stretch of road producing its own kind of mythology, the Wangan. Otherwise known as Tokyo's Bayshore Route, a stretch of coastal expressway running between the city and Yokohama, the Wangan had long straits, light traffic after midnight, and no speed limit enforcement that could keep up with what was happening out there. Out of that scene came the Mid Night Club. Founded in 1982, it was unlike anything else operated on Japan streets at the time. It wasn't a gang. It was closer to a private club, invite only, governed by a strict code of conduct, and built around one simple requirement. Your car had to be capable of 250 kilometers an hour, just to be considered for membership. The cars were extraordinary. Porsche 911 Turbos, Nissan Skyline GTRs, Mazda RX-7s, Lamborghini Countachs, all heavily modified, many with enormous sums of money sunk into them. The members were clearly wealthy, but who exactly they were was impossible to know, because the club had a strict policy where members weren't allowed to share personal information with one another. The most legendary Mid Night car was a Porsche 930 Turbo known as the Blackbird. Reportedly sent to Porsche's own Vysack Research Facility for modification, its rival was a 600 horsepower Nissan 280ZX known as the Devil Z. You have to put dramatic emphasis on that name like that. That's cool. The two cars later became the basis for the manga series, Wangan Mid Night, which sold over 17 million copies. The cars are pretty sick, but what made the club genuinely interesting and I think worth talking about in this podcast 40 years after the fact was its ethics. Members were banned from dangerous driving. Anyone who posed a risk to other motorists was out. Meeting locations were advertised as miscellaneous notices in newspaper classifieds to avoid police detection. Yeah, like you would see ads for used handbags and purses and stuff at certain highway rest stops. That was code for the meeting places and the times to meet. New members served a full year as apprentices required to attend every single meet. Only around 10 percent made it to full membership. The club eventually transitioned to track racing only. But for a window of time in the 1980s and early 90s, the Mid Night Club represented the absolute ceiling of what street tuning culture could produce. Machines so fast that the police couldn't do anything about them. Also, these guys were very well connected. A lot of them, I mean, it's legend. Of course, we don't have confirmation of this, but they're very high-ranking CEOs, guys that are in the automotive aftermarket, guys that work at some of these big OEMs that we've talked about. If they do get caught, they can hire a lawyer. They got the resources for that. The era of the Midnight Club as well as Options Yatabe Testing Facility legitimized high-performance tuning. It was now a defined, documented movement with numbers that could be charted, cars that could be studied, and stories that could be published. But Daijiro Inada wasn't satisfied. He understood that printed materials can only get you so much visibility. If tuning was going to survive long-term, it needed physical space, somewhere legitimate, public, and impossible to ignore. Just two years after launching Option, he started thinking beyond magazines. That thinking led to an idea that at the time seemed a little absurd. What if there was a car show dedicated entirely to modified vehicles? A car meet full of modded rides might not seem like a bold idea in 2026. But in early 80s Japan, the concept felt like a recipe for trouble. When Daijiro Inada started taking the idea to shops he was hoping to feature, many didn't even see the point. The police were immediately skeptical. They assumed it would just become a Bozuzoku rally. Even people who understood his vision had doubts. Cynics figured it would attract the wrong crowd. Others wondered why any builder who had just spent years operating quietly would ever roll their car onto a brightly lit exhibition floor. Something about it felt like it ran against one of the things they took pride in, the gray area. But Inada pushed forward. Option's success had given him a solid network to draw from. Years of publishing had built relationships with tuners, shop owners, parts manufacturers, photographers, and writers, people who understood the culture from the inside and could help bring the show to life. But the show needed real backing. Even with all those people at his disposal, Inada was still just one person. He went to Suzuki Osami, then president of Sanai Shobo, the publishing company behind Option. Suzuki quickly understood what was being proposed and what it could mean for the culture Option had built itself around. Things moved fast from there. A venue was secured at the Tokyo International Trade Center in Harumi, but availability was limited. The only open dates were in the second week of January, right after the New Year holiday. But who attends an experimental car show in the aftermath of the holiday season? Businesses were just reopening. People were either traveling or broke, and on top of everything, winter weather was the biggest wild card. One bad day could kill the whole thing before it had a chance. Many advised Inada and his team to postpone by a year. Do more planning, play it safe. But if we've learned anything about how the Option team operated, playing it safe was never on the table. This meat was happening. Behind the scenes, the work was chaotic and uncertain. Fumiyuki Enomoto, acting as a key organizer and coordinator, managed the outreach and handled the business side of the event that didn't yet look much like a business. Invitations went out to tuning shops and aftermarket manufacturers, many of whom declined at first, unsure exactly what they were being asked to participate in. What eventually persuaded enough of them to commit was Inada's persistence and the clarity of his vision. Why can't we bring tuning and custom cars into the mainstream without stripping away the identity that made it all special in the first place? The event, titled the Tokyo Exciting Car Show, finally opened its doors in 1983. Expectations were cautious, to say the least. No one really knew what to expect. Organizers were worried about turnout. Authorities were worried about disorder. Critics, like reporters and enthusiasts who felt some kind of way about option coming in and taking over, were waiting for the whole thing to collapse into a mozuzoku-sized disaster fit for the front page. For years, the underground had survived because it could disappear. A bad night could be forgotten. A rumor could fade. But once you bring the underground into the fluorescent lights, you can't put it back. Failure would have been a public confirmation that Inada and his team had overestimated the culture's weight. And yet, despite all that, the cars showed up. And with them, so did the people. Not because success was guaranteed, but because the moment was in high demand. Over three days, visitors moved through the halls of the Tokyo International Trade Center. Enthusiasts, ordinary people, young people, hobbyists stood next to engineers who stood next to fans who had up to that point only been able to follow the culture from a distance. For the first time, all of them were in one place, experiencing it openly. Imagine you're a young enthusiast in early 80s Japan who had centered their dreams around a Celica XX Twin Turbo. You have pictured its custom body kit and quad headlights a thousand times. Now, imagine opening your eyes and seeing that exact car right in front of you. It's nearly 300 horsepower are ripped out of an Option Magazine. Cars that had only existed in grainy magazine photos were suddenly real. Their builders, the people who had poured everything into making them work, were right there and happy to answer any question. Parts that had only been described in words were now out in the open, available to inspect up close. Ideas that had started in a reader submission column can now travel freely from car to car, booth to booth. Without compromising anything, the underground had come to the surface. Picture this, it's late at night, and you're scrolling through your feeds, where all of a sudden you see it, that one product that you've been looking for. You click the link, you add it to the cart, maybe even shop around a little more before finally hitting checkout. Then as you're filling in your address, you realize you don't have your card anywhere near you. That's when you see it, that purple pay button that has all your information saved, making checking out as easy as a simple tap of your screen. That's Shopify, baby. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US. That's a crazy stat right there. And it will help you get started with your own design studio. With hundreds of ready to use templates, Shopify helps you build a beautiful online store that matches your brand style. Shopify can also help you get the word out like you have a marketing team right behind you. You can easily create email and social media campaigns wherever your customers are scrolling or strolling. You might be saying, but Nolan, what if people haven't heard of my brand? Shopify helps you find your customers with easy to run email and social media campaigns, see less cards go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com/gas. Go to shopify.com/gas. That's shopify.com/gas. Thank you, Shopify, for supporting Past Gas. Honorary Chairman Haruhiko Oyabu remembered it finally before his passing. The finished production was even better than I imagined. To be honest, I was surprised, but I want to continue to cherish this way of enjoying cars that is different from Bozuzoku. Within just a few years, the significance and reach of the event had grown so much that even the name needed to evolve. By 1987, the fifth iteration re-branded as the Tokyo Auto Salon, a title that presented the event as something with real standing. What had started as a niche gathering had suddenly become a recognized fixture on Japan's automotive calendar. A show born from underground tuning, which was still technically illegal in many respects, had earned the industry's attention. The early salon floors became the first real stage where builders could put their reputations on public display. The roots of the scene were visible everywhere. RE Amemiya had started in the mid 70s as a one-man shop in Chiba Prefecture, doing rotary mods before word spread that their kits were genuinely competitive. By the early 80s, Amemiya was shipping full body kits and turbo setups to clients across Japan. With their RX7s now in the salon floor, machines that had literally grown from night runs into polished street legal cars. Similarly, HKS had their beginnings around the same time, operating out of a dairy shed where Hiroyuki Hasegawa and Goichi Kitagawa tinkered with fuel systems and custom turbo setups. Their Celica XXM300s at the first show didn't just demonstrate turbo potential, they proved that dairy shed ingenuity was a real thing. Impul founded in 1980 by former Nissan factory racer Kazuyoshi Hoshino showcased a specialized Skyline GTS-R that reflected the shop's philosophy directly. Take what is learned on circuits and make it usable for enthusiasts. The cars on display were the result of that pipeline, from test track to workshop to exhibition floor. Trust, Greti and Mugen had their early success tied to the salon as well. Trust started as a small exhaust and intercooler shop focused on high-performance aftermarket parts. Mugen began by modifying Honda motorcycles before expanding to Honda cars, its founder being Hirotoshi Honda, son of Soichiro Honda. His Civic and CRX builds were an extension of the family's legacy. Each modification, a signature of years spent learning, failing and refining. As the event grew, so did the scale. The venue moved from Harumi to larger locations like Tokyo Big Site in Ariake, and eventually to the Makuhari Mess International Convention Complex in Chiba. A vast space capable of holding thousands of cars, hundreds of exhibitors, and massive crowds. By the late 80s, the salon had become a living catalog of Japan's tuning creativity. Custom aero kits from Ariamemia, suspension setups from TN and Cusco, turbocharged Celicas and Skylines, Mugen Civics pushed to their limits. Dreams and engineering had completely collided on a stage many people once thought was too absurd to even exist. But it did, and people loved every bit of it. But for the Japanese government, this presented a real dilemma. On the surface, tuning culture still carried the markers of delinquency. Noise complaints, unsafe modifications, lingering associations with street racing and bozozoku gangs. But underneath that was a fast growing aftermarket economy populated by technically sophisticated small businesses, export ready products, and a youth culture that was channeling its energy directly into engineering. I mean, this is kind of like a, it's a exported like kind of soft power. The whole aftermarket and the whole car culture, probably at that point, they weren't thinking of it as like an extension of like soft power for the nation. But like, you know, there might have been some people who had the foresight to realize that. Pop culture is a is a form of soft power. You know, it's like, okay, now, like people might be more willing to buy Japanese cards if they see how cool they can be. But Japan had faced moments like this before. The country had a tendency to not crush subcultures outright, but to discipline and absorb them, thereby converting chaos into structure. Rather than declare war on tuning culture, regulators started asking a different question. How do we manage all this without killing it? One of the most important answers came in the form of the Japanese Automobile Parts and Accessories Association. Couldn't find a word with N at the end, huh? Couldn't make it Japan. It wasn't glamorous, but it would become the bureaucratic bridge that carried tuning culture fully into the mainstream. JAPA's certification system was designed to answer one fundamental concern that had been keeping government officials and police up at night. Are these modifications safe? Every part distributed within the subculture now had to be submitted for approval and issued a certification marking indicating whether it could be legally installed on a street vehicle. For tuning shops, this was transformative. Before certification, many builders operated entirely in a gray zone. Their parts worked. They were in high demand. But selling them openly carried big legal risk. Now, because of the new regulations, they could advertise and distribute JAPA approved parts without fear of a sudden crackdown. But not everyone saw this as progress. For many who had come up through the underground and learned through the risk of the gray zone, the rise of certification stamps and approved parts felt like sanitization. The same paperwork that let shops operate openly also defined what counted as acceptable modification. Creativity now had limits. If you wanted to innovate, you had to pass inspection first. With that came the fear that the tooting world would lose its edge, that the culture would get smoothed into something more polite and marketable. What would tooting culture be without the messy, improvised energy of late night builds and experimental setups? Could catalog parts really replace that? There was some truth to that concern, but it's worth remembering, sanitization is not the same thing as erasure. For Japanese tuners in the early 80s, the gray zone, I mean, yeah, it wasn't, you didn't have the legality, but then you also didn't have the oversight. So you can just do whatever you wanted really. Now you do have to check boxes and make sure you're up to code. Is the trade-off worth it? Is the question that these guys are asking? For some guys, the answer is maybe not. The legitimacy that came with the culture's growth did change things, but many were ready to grow with it. Shops that had started as one-person operations in rural workshops or industrial outskirts or like milksheds finally had a reason to formalize. And enthusiasts were given confidence, not just that the thing they loved mattered, but that they could modify as they pleased without inviting legal trouble. That expanded the market dramatically, pulling in people who had admired the scene from a distance, but were previously hesitant to participate. Not to mention what this meant for global expansion. That's right, no story about Japan's automotive industry would be complete without a little midi action. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry had been instrumental in shaping the country's post-war manufacturing miracle, and now they were starting to recognize the tuning scenes and the export potential. Big thank you to our sponsor, Rocket Money. Organizing your finances could be pretty daunting. I remember a few years ago, I was looking at my credit card balances, looking at my budget and saying, hey, I'm a little overwhelmed here. Well, that's where a tool like Rocket Money comes into play. One component of saving money comes down to tracking your regular expenses, and you might have subscriptions that are costing you money that you don't even use. So, Rocket Money can help track those subscriptions, and has the ability to cancel unwanted ones within the app, with a few taps, saving users over $880 million in cancel subscriptions. I am part of that $880 million there. I've done that. It's pretty easy. You just go through the app, it will find those subscriptions and help you cancel them. It's very easy to do. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so you can grow your savings. Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster. Join at rocketmoney.com/pastgas. That's rocketmoney.com/pastgas, rocketmoney.com/pastgas. Thank you so much Rocket Money for supporting the show. It's late 80s Japan and OEM automakers have already made their mark on the global market. But the aftermarket, that's a different story. Tuners were developing systems and solutions at a pace that was sometimes ahead of the major manufacturers. Backyard experiments had become autosalon show pieces, and it was MIDI that began directing that energy outward, encouraging tuning companies to participate in international trade expos and showcases. Isn't it crazy how fast all this happened? Less than a decade earlier, there wasn't even a place in Japan to legally race tuned cars. Now, it's going global. The same culture that had once been chased off highways was now being prepared for international distribution. Almost overnight, tuners were reframed not as rogue operators, but as certified Japanese engineering firms. With support at home and abroad, several shops made the leap from cult favorites to international names. HKS, Trust, Greddy, REA. Memia. They each found their lane, whether in electronics, chassis tuning, or rotary-specific expertise. Together, they began transforming Japan from just a place where tuning happened, into the place where the standards for tuning were set. Japan had achieved something rare. It had taken a youth-driven, semi-illegal subculture and brought it into the mainstream without hollowing it out. The edge was still there. The individuality was still there. But now it existed within a framework. And with global attention now focused on what was happening on Japan's streets and how it was being captured, Japan was positioned for a takeover. A takeover that would intersect perfectly with new technology and the right moment in time. On the next episode, we explore the boom as Japan completely takes over the automotive world at exactly the right time and place. This has been Past Gas. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you are not subscribed already to our podcast channel on YouTube or the podcast platform that you're listening to right at this exact moment, please do so. Leave us a review. How are we doing, man? I wanna know, I really wanna know how you guys are feeling about this new format. We're a few episodes in now, so you know what? I'll stop making such a big deal about it in the next one, I promise you. And also I wanna thank our writers, Anthony Hardin, Greg Nix, Audrey Holden, Joe Weber here in the stew, and our editor, Mark Schroeder, the man, the dude with the plan. So if you like this visualizer here on YouTube as well, that was done by Joe's sister, Katie, and Demeter Design, phenomenal artwork on that, I really love it. Okay, have a good day, I'll see you later, bye.