Awesome if not just for that audio track!

Thanks Karl

According to reports, Toyota’s chief test driver, 67-year-old Hiromu Naruse, has died in a crash on highway 410 near the famed Nürburgring race track in Germany. He was driving the recently spied Lexus LFA Nürburgring Edition at the time of the accident, and reports say he veered into oncoming traffic and collided head-on with two others test drivers in a BMW. The two BMW test drivers survived the crash, though one is reportedly still in critical condition. Police are investigating the crash and have yet to determine its cause.

Naruse was heavily involved with the development of the Lexus LFA supercar he was driving, along with many other past sports cars from Toyota’s history since he joined the company in 1963. Enthusiasts today call him the “Godfather of the LFA,” though he was involved in the development of sports cars for Toyota going as far back as the storied 2000GT from the late 1960s – and including our very own AE86.

Club4AG’s founder Moto Miwa shares a little about Naruse-San’s life. Thanks Moto.

He was the chief testing driver for Toyota’s Development team who started with the company in 1963. He was the head of over 300 test drivers at Toyota globally, and has possibly logged more miles than any other test driver from Japan.

Not too long after his start of career at Toyota, we was assinged a task as the … See Morefirst project leader for Toyota’s racing programs, which later branched and branded as TRD. His first mission was the team project to race at the Spa Franchamps, and Nurburgring from a base in Switzerland in 1970′s.

Also, as one of the few who people accredited as Nur-Meister, he was among the handful of drivers in the world, intimately familiar with the famous Nurburgring course in Germany where the ultimate benchmark performance is gauged among all automobile manufacturers in the world.

A very few men could do so much to analyze a pre-production street car…and even more rare for someone from Japan. Abilities such as isolating each components as minute as consistencies of rubber bushings in isolated particular areas, determining tire behavior and details of construction on 30 or more levels, and just simply being totally at one with a car to be tuned before production.

Testing engineer of equally long career at Ferrari and BMW both claimed him as “The man with the longest logged distance as vehicle testing engineer” As such, worked diligently day after day, being passionate about his automobiles.

Many of his assistant drivers and engineers often claimed him as crazy, for being such a perfectionist, and to not stop on any development until he was forced to by other departments…

List of cars he has ‘tuned’ as the leader of testing engineer/driver for product development are as follows:

1965 Toyota Sports 800
1967 Toyota Corona 1600GT
1967 Toyota 2000GT
1970 Toyota Seven (race car)
1971 Toyota Celica GT (and all succeeding Celica and XX/ Supra, and WRC Corolla/Celica)
1981 Toyota Soarer (and all successor Z chassis)
1984 Toyota Corolla Levin, Sprinter Trueno (AE86)
1985 Toyota MR2 (and all successors of the W platform)
1989 Lexus LS400
1990 Toyota Soarer/Lexus SC300
1994 Toyota Supra JZA80
1998 Toyota Altezza/ Lexus IS200/300
1999 Toyota MR-S (USA MR2 ZZW30)
2004 Toyota Prius 2

Also, adviser to countless other Toyota and Lexus development programs.

We will all miss him.

We will indeed. Lets hope his many many proteges can pick up where this legend left us. Rest In Peace.  If you would like to read more about his long and very detailed career, check out this interview with the late Naruse-San at the Gazoo Racing Website.

Moto over at Club4AG has put up this great video compilation on YouTube of clips from the documentary “Eikou No Chousen” released in 1986!  It documents the trial of Team ACP, an adventure enthusiast organisation and their attempt at the treacherous Paris Dakar Rally with a Toyota Corolla, Land Cruiser, and several Yamaha Motorcycles.  Moto has cut the movie down to feature the AE86 content on this short video and overlayed the un-translated Japanese Audio with none other than ’80s badboy rocker Billy Idol and Santana! Sweet!

You may have seen this sticker on your freshly imported JDM steel or second hand parts and thought WTF? It is the mark of the oldschool

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This mid 80s Japanese car buying guide tv show called Car Guidance was found on Youtube.  Apparently the format of this show was to have Japanese women review a car and tell everything about it (from a women’s perspective?).  Apart from the common Laurel and Mark II-like saloons they also did an occasional sports model, like the kouki 1985 Sprinter Trueno GT Apex Twincam…  Hilarity ensues after the jump!

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Just a random picture I stumbled upon at photozou.jp. My first thought was “Looking good in 1990″ and no, that did not apply to the guy in the picture.

Just think about what our current idea is of a good looking hachi! Even though this guy upgraded his factory stock Levin Apex twincam with a set of 15 inch Weds Albinos, it is far, far from the picture above…

The picture above is showing the first usage of the Toyota AE86 in Rally sports and possibly also the first use of the AE86 in motorsports at all!

The screenshot was taken from a collection of videos (13 in total!) of the first AE86 to be entered the All Japan Rally Championship B Class. This particular round was held on June 4th and 5th 1983.  Since Toyota first started the AE86 production in May 1983, these brand new hachis must still have smelled like a typical 1983-era Japanese Toyota showroom when they rolled up to compete in this rally!

Hit the jump for the videos and more history!

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AEU86 admin (and all-round JDM freak!) Banpei has a great FAQ style article on one of those wacky AE86 optional extras: the Levin rotating grille! If you simply HAVE to know about everything ’86 (and I’d like to think you all do!) then head over there and check it out!

About 35km West of Prague in the Kladno province of the Czech Republic lies the town of Lany. With a population of approximately 1610 people you would think there would be nothing of interest to find in this small country township, that’s exactly what I thought when I drove past there a decade or so ago. How wrong I was, because besides the rolling acres of grass and gorgeous picture-postcard scenery there is something worth stopping over for in Lany. And I’m not talking about the local castle that plays summer-vacation-host to the countries President. It’s a building that houses something even more important.

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Is this a sequel you ask? Well almost, it appears to be the same mountain road featured in an earlier blog we posted a mere few days ago. Another oldie, is it the same AE86? Perhaps.

The JZA80 Supra stretches its legs early on but the Hachi pilot reels him in (a pretty good effort on the uphill section) before there’s an ubrupt (though by the lines of the Supra driver, almost expected) sad end to this pursuit! Thankfully the speed of this video hasn’t been edited, nice sound quality too!