Best Motoring: Blast From The Past

    During the covid lockdown when I didn't have to go to school, I bought my first laptop that I own personally, a M1 MacBook Air which I still use till this day. I spent a lot of time watching Youtube videos at home because it was just so boring staying at home, and that's when I found a Youtube channel that essentially changed my taste in cars.

    I spent a few years of my childhood in Germany so I naturally became a big fan of the "BBA" group and Porsches, all the Japanese that I've ever seen on the road are just generically ugly boxes. They looked so depressing to me because at the time I really couldn't understand why would anyone spend so much money just to buy these miserable looking things. I thought at that time that if I had the money to buy my own car, I'm buying one that will make me smile every time I look at it. Anyway, the channel I stumbled upon on Youtube was a channel that posted countless super old Japanese motoring journalist videos. But after I dug into the discography a little deeper, I found out that this was a rabbit hole way deeper than I ever thought.

    The Japanese franchise "Best Motoring" started out in the late 80s when the bubble economy is at its finest. At that time, Japanese domestic sports cars were so accessible to the Japanese public that it was often used as gifts from parents to their children. If you are lucky enough to turn 17 years old during the 80s in Japan, you're very likely to receive a Nissan Skyline or a Mazda RX-7 as your birthday present. What a crazy time it was! So naturally the demand for car reviews skyrocketed. What made Best Motoring stood out among other motoring show was that the hosts were all top tier racing drivers of the time. As I've wrote many weeks ago, the 1980s was the golden age of Japanese motorsport, there were so many incredible drivers coming on the scene at that time that they even had time to be media trained to become professional hosts. The show not only tested the sports cars and super cars at the time, but also economy boxes and work trucks, even "Kei cars". To see these low performance cars being pushed to their limits, and many times even over their limits, is so entertaining.

    A special part in almost every episode of the show was the Tsukuba 5 laps battle. The racing drivers would pick a car each and then race them at the Tsukuba Circuit 2000 for 5 laps. The Tsukuba Circuit 2000 is a rather small circuit compared to many other race tracks in the world, and that's because the track was originally made for motorbike racing. But since they're all racing economy cars most of the time, it would be much more fun to watch them race in a super tight circuit. In that unit you get to see some of the most skilled racers over driving the hell out of whatever car they're in and often rolling down the windows to cuss each other. Because they were all used to driving race cars that are so much faster and brutal, they had so much brain power left for making fun of each other, and that's what normal car journalists nowadays couldn't do. Seeing al these silly battles made me realize that to enjoy driving and speed, you don't really need an expensive or exotic car. The key to the joy of driving is just mastering your skill of controlling your vehicle. Once you acquire enough skills, you could get so much more out of your cheap economic box than some rich old man in his Lambo. So, since then I started to appreciate all cars instead of just special ones, and that made me one step closer to become the ultimate petrolhead there is.