Japan's fastest cars weren't always Supras or Skylines. Before turbos took over, they were American.
In America, the 1970s were an era where domestic automakers lost battle after battle. The factories of the Big Three kept pumping out lumpen steel dinosaurs, while little Japanese cars overran them. The Datsun 510. The Honda Civic. Fleet of foot and fun to drive, Japanese compacts were the right way to stave off high fuel prices, and the public snapped them up. Meanwhile in Japan, what was Soichiro Honda driving? A Pontiac Firebird.
Yes, that Soichiro Honda, he of the globe-spanning Super Cub and the feisty front-wheel-drive Civic. According to Honda historians in Japan, Dr. Honda loved his Firebird dearly, and called it “Yakitori,” which is Japanese for “grilled chicken.” So inspired was he by his Pontiac, that he ended up using a similar front design for the Honda 1300, a small coupe that predates the Civic and Honda’s first “real” car.
Honda was not the only Firebird fan in Japan. In a strange twist, Pontiacs and Fords and Chevrolets were at the heart of Japanese modifying and racing culture in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These big V-8 coupes weren’t dinosaurs, they were the imports. Eventually, they would give rise to one of the most notorious underground street racing teams of the 1980s and 1990s. And, for a brief time, a blue Pontiac Trans Am would carry the title of the fastest car on the road in Japan.
Exactly how many American heavy hitters made it across the Pacific is hard to pin down. Private imports by Japanese enthusiasts are relatively common, and if you walk through downtown Tokyo, you might stumble across a Dodge Ram or a Chevrolet Astro van looking like supersized kei cars.
But for the likes of the Ford Mustang and the Pontiac Firebird/Trans Am, there existed a very small official import business in the 1970s. For the Mustang, it was just three years, from 1971-1973, generally very high option cars sold by Ford for maximum profit. These cars were modified to fit JDM specification, and ended up with a hodgepodge of sidemarkers and other requirements of Japanese road laws, including, in one case, some parts from a Nissan Skyline.
Beyond minor tweaks and the affixing of Japanese language labels here and there, these cars were the same as US buyers got. They were all left-hand-drive, and they still had the huge thirsty V-8s that were walloping folks in the pocketbook on both sides of the Pacific. In Tokyo or Yokohama, the pain was lessened by the odds that an owner was likely commuting to to work via train. Owning an American V-8 was all about weekends, tearing up the highways.
To the north of Tokyo, in Tochigi prefecture, the police services even went so far as to press a Mach 1 Mustang into service as a high-speed interceptor. The car still exists in a museum there, and was fairly well-known in popular culture – there are still diecast models available. Really, the Mustang was probably less about actually catching speeders, and more about being a presence: don’t try anything funny, ’cause we can get you.
However, this was the era which saw Japanese road infrastructure expand rapidly before the technology existed to enact a policy of widespread camera surveillance. The police were very visible, but there were plenty of high-speed hijinks, especially at night.
Unlike the US, which embraced the idea of a Cannonball Run in both reality and fiction, Japanese culture did not favor illicit speeding. In fact, the whole culture of vehicle modification for show or performance – something that now seems integral to Japanese car culture – was outright frowned upon.
To combat this, a tuning enthusiast named Daijiro Inada founded Option magazine, which would grow to become a linchpin of the Japanese performance tuning scene. Inada would also go on to found the Tokyo Auto Salon, showcasing Japan’s aftermarket manufacturers. He’d later become heavily involved in the rise of drifting as a competitive sport.
But in those early days, Option’s first goal was to take some of the stigma away from being a hashiriya – street racer – by simply making it so popular that it couldn’t be stamped out. Along with featuring reader’s rides and articles on modifications, the Option staff decided to hold a high-speed shootout to determine which tuning houses were building the fastest cars in Japan.
The coliseum for this contest of speed would be Yatabe, a now-defunct banked oval originally built in the mid-1960s. It wasn’t a racing circuit, but a test track used by various manufacturers. Notably, in 1966 Toyota ran a then-new 2000GT over 72 hours, setting sixteen international endurance records.
Yatabe is bulldozed now, partially due to how dangerous it was. In 2005, one of Option’s co-editors was killed in a high-speed crash there, and the circuit was shuttered soon afterwards. It’s now an industrial park, with a single piece of the track banking preserved as a monument.
In the fall of 1981, Option arrived with a rogue’s gallery of high speed tuning shops, each one eager to claim the title of fastest car in Japan. There were Celicas, Fairlady Zs, a Pantera, and one blue Pontiac Trans Am.
The Pontiac’s hulking appearance would not have raised eyebrows. Turbocharging was still in its relative infancy, though this would change with the rise in popularity of the Porsche 911 Turbo. Big displacement was the easiest way to go fast.
Later, street racing crews like Racing Team Mid Night would become notorious for top speed runs along Japanese highways in 911s and Skyline GT-Rs. But at the time that Option held their first shootout, the founding members of Mid Night were still part of the American Car Club. Indeed, after Mid Night started up, there were still many American cars in the team, including a Pontiac Trans Am complete with both a Mid Night windshield banner and a screaming chicken hood decal.
This particular Trans Am was a little more subtle – sort of. A 1972 model, it was painted a dull blue and fitted with some basic aerodynamic modifications. A central power bulge allowed for the fitment of four Weber carburetors, and the 455 ci high output engine had been bored out to 7.65L. Power was judged to be somewhere between 450-500 horsepower, and the car had been lightened with fiberglass body panels down to just over 3000 pounds.
The beast was the brainchild of Koichi Okawa, co-founder of the Japanese tuning company Trust. (American tuning enthusiasts might be most familiar with Trust’s sub-brand GReddy.) Okawa would have other Pontiacs, but this one would prove itself the fastest. Against a Pantera and an orange S30 Fairlady Z, it went 164.4 mph.
The glory was short lived, as just a few months later the Pantera would knock the Trans Am from its top spot. Turbocharging soon became the order of the day, with top speeds rising as quickly as the Japanese auto industry progressed. Soon, all anyone wanted to talk about was R32 GT-Rs and twin-turbo Toyota Supras.
But should you on a Sunday morning find yourself with not much to do, hasten over to Daikoku parking area near Yokohama, and watch the cars come rolling in. You’ll see everything you expect, and more than a few things you won’t. The odds are you’ll stumble across at least one Pontiac Firebird or Trans Am. Maybe it’ll be Dr. Honda’s old car. Maybe it’ll have belonged to the guy that once built the fastest car in Japan.
Keyword: The Pontiac Firebird Used to Be the Fastest Car in Japan