Secret JDM Race-Car Vault Was Found in Connecticut—Including Top Secret Supra Built by Smokey NagataA Connecticut-based restorer has quietly assembled what may be the most significant collection of historic Japanese race and drift cars on US soil – and until now, almost nobody knew it existed.The collection belongs to the owner of a restoration company in Connecticut, a man who has spent years hunting down iconic machines from the early D1 Grand Prix era and beyond, acquiring them from garages in Sweden, Norway, Germany, and Japan before bringing them back through his operation, JDM Supreme. Most arrived in rough shape. Several required extensive mechanical and cosmetic work. One had survived an engine fire. Another showed up with a wiring harness that was, by his own description, a combination of everything.These cars have been quietly restored and preserved on evenings and weekends, kept under covers while the day job – restoring pre-war European and American classics for paying clients – paid the bills.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe scale of what he's assembled only becomes clear when you start walking the room.The Taniguchi S15 Is Just the BeginningThe crown jewel at first glance is the Nobuteru Taniguchi Nissan Silvia S15 – chassis-verified as the car that Taniguchi drove to the inaugural D1 Grand Prix championship in 2001, winning two of the five rounds that season under the After-Fire banner with HKS sponsorship.The S15 began life as an EV1 Lightning Yellow Spec R and was originally a Kei Office demo car before Taniguchi acquired it.It still carries its competition-spec interior and original SR20 engine – no cage, no stitch welding – making it one of the earliest examples of a genuine D1GP car before the series mandated the structural changes that defined later competition builds. Verification came through multiple channels, including the discovery of original yellow paint underneath the car's surface when an inspector crawled the underside, followed by confirmation from contacts at Power Vehicles in Japan.AdvertisementAdvertisementWhen the Silvia was sold at auction, Taniguchi himself commented on the new owner's celebratory post: "Thanks for buying it. I would be happy if you could keep the current style."The collector intends to honor that. The car required the least restoration work of any vehicle in the building – it still smells, per Larry Chen's description, like Japan.The collection doesn't stop there. Among the other machines are multiple Katsuhiro Ueo D1GP Toyota AE86 competition cars – including what the collector describes as the 2002 D1GP Grand Champion car, a stitch-welded all-motor build that reportedly ran to 11,000 RPM through a custom timing setup developed in collaboration with an engineer named Tom.Ueo himself is apparently aware of the collection and has been actively building a period-correct replacement engine for the car currently sitting in Connecticut. The goal is a full rotisserie restoration, from the ground up, for a chassis that ran steel doors before the sport migrated to fiberglass and carbon kevlar – and which, as a result, has developed rust in every door jamb and rocker panel that time and competition have had a chance to touch.What This Room Actually RepresentsBeyond the D1-era hardware, the collection extends into some genuinely rare territory. There is a Super Taikyu R34 GT-R – chassis serial number 001, described as the first Nismo-built Super Taikyu car and one of only 12 such vehicles ever constructed, predating the public release of the R34 by a year because it left the Omori factory as a stitch-welded race chassis. There is a Signal Auto R34 GT-R finished in a color the collector tracked down through the original Maziora/Nippon Paint collaboration – a chameleon shade called Andromeda, used in everything from underground highway street racing to drag events to time attack to Formula Drift, across a run that reportedly made it one of the fastest GT-Rs on the planet for a stretch in the early 2000s. There is an Amuse R34, famously one of the lightest Skylines ever built, with a carbon inner structure and a stitch-welded chassis gifted by Nissan to Tonavisan, currently mid-restoration with a coat of clear being laid over a completely refinished interior.AdvertisementAdvertisementThere is also a car that nobody outside the shop had seen before the camera crew arrived. It was covered under not one but two car covers. The reveal visibly overwhelmed Chen, who spent years photographing these cars in competition, when he pulled them back. What was underneath was a Toyota Tom's JGTC machine, currently looked after ahead of being brought to the US to join the JDM Supreme collection.Chassis 001, one of fewer than four factory team cars built, with its original 503-series engine – a proprietary Toyota race motor that never officially left the factory – rebuilt and sitting behind the car, ready to go back in.The collector noted during the tour that when asked directly whether this was the most complete historic JDM collection outside Japan, his answer was yes – in terms of historic cars specifically.There are other collectors in Japan doing serious work with contemporary builds. But nobody else appears to be doing what this operation in Connecticut is doing: systematically tracking down the machines that built the sport, verifying them, and bringing them back from wherever in the world they ended up after their careers were over.AdvertisementAdvertisement"It was a goal just to save the ones that needed help," he said. "And with that said, it became a passion project. When you really do something for the love of it, there's no goal. There's no end."That's a reasonable way to describe assembling a collection most Japanese motorsport historians probably don't know exists in someone's Connecticut workshop.
