On a balmy summer season’s evening within the foothills of Mt. Fuji, I stood at nighttime, on the sting of a forest at a bus cease – lengthy after the final bus for the day had departed – my digital camera bag weighing me down and my thumb out within the hope of getting a elevate to the closest prepare station.
As I anticipated, each automotive drove previous with out as a lot as a toot. I had come from an occasion at Fuji Speedway, so there was a hope that somebody may pity a fellow automotive fanatic and cease to ask the place I used to be headed. After half-hour, I began coming to the realisation that I’d want to start out making the 20km stroll to civilisation, however my pondering was interrupted by the sharp beep of a horn and the glow from the rear brake lights of a GD collection Subaru Impreza wagon.
I hurried in the direction of the automotive in disbelief and jumped in. It turned out that the driving force, was not solely a fellow photographer, however had been on the wheel of a few of the traditional Mazda race vehicles I had been capturing all day. Fortunately he recognised me; it will have been an extended stroll in any other case.
As we chatted about vehicles, he requested if I knew of Tommykaira. ‘Sure, after all,’ I replied, to which he casually introduced whereas gesturing to the passenger seat: “That is Kaira-san.”
I wasn’t certain if he was joking till, out of the darkness, the mysterious entrance seat passenger handed me his enterprise card. Within the blink of a watch my dire state of affairs had turn out to be an unforgetable life second.
We exchanged LINE particulars in the course of the drive, after which stated our farewells on the prepare station. However this opportunity encounter wasn’t going to be our final.
Over the subsequent few months I organized to go to with each Kaira-san – and the second half of the outfit- Tomita-san on their house turf in Kyoto. When that day lastly got here, we met on the Tommykaira showroom.
What struck me in a short time throughout our first assembly, is that these two previous buddies have a chemistry which could be very a lot The Odd Couple in dynamic. Kikuo Kaira (sporting eye glasses) is softly spoken, deadpan and witty. Yoshikazu Tomita, Kaira-san’s enterprise associate and pal of just about 40 years, is a typical Kansai native – vibrant, enthusiastic and by no means removed from a joke.
However regardless of their variations, the pair have been buddies for 48 years and colleagues since 1984 – across the time Kaira-san joined Tomita Auto as an engineer.
There are such a lot of trade connections and threads which kind the historical past of this story, however to maintain it easy, it went a bit of one thing like this: Within the late-Nineteen Seventies and early ’80s, Tomita Auto was a dealership and distributor of varied European sports activities vehicles from Mercedes-Benz and BMW, in addition to the primary Hartge seller in Japan.
Having established a fame as an excellent engineer and designer within the UK with Tom Walkinshaw’s Components 2 automotive, a podium end within the Japanese Grand Prix and not least being the chief designer of the Toyota DOME 84C Le Mans automotive, Kaira-san started work with Kojima Racing in Kyoto to develop their new F1 automotive – the KE007 for the 1976 Japanese GP. Kyoto isn’t a big metropolis, and it didn’t take lengthy for Kaira-san to pay a go to to Tomita Auto.
Maybe the 2 younger males recognised one another’s strengths, however regardless of the motive, a friendship was shaped and finally a plan was hatched to develop tuning merchandise for the fashionable efficiency vehicles of the day. And thus the model we now know as Tommykaira was born.
With technical steerage from the sensible Kaira-san, Tommykaira didn’t cease at tuning components, ultimately creating full, particular version vehicles primarily based on the GT-R, Subaru Impreza and Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution platforms. They have been even liable for a Hartge-tuned Skyline GTS.
As if producing what have now turn out to be extremely collectable particular editions of halo vehicles from the golden period of tuning wasn’t sufficient, Tomita-san and Kaira-san set their sights on growing a light-weight, exhilarating sports activities automotive that might match the efficiency of supercars of the day, the results of which was the Tommykaira ZZ and ZZII. However that’s a narrative for an additional day. Belief me although, it’s value ready for…
The superb factor is, this pair shouldn’t be fairly completed but. Kaira-san is designing high-end garden mowers for golf golf equipment across the globe, and Tomita-san is negotiating with sponsors to get the ZZII into manufacturing.
Having met Kaira-san whereas primarily hitch climbing, his quiet, light method made it simple to neglect the genius he’s. The identical goes for Tomita-san; he’s a sensible man with actual standing within the Japanese automotive trade.
It really was an honour to fulfill two of the best and loveliest personalities in automotive tradition.
Toby Thyer
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tobythyer.co.uk
