~ Auto Buzz ~: Initial D Fujiwara Tofu Shop Toyota Sprinter Trueno GT-APEX

We’ve talked, albeit very briefly, a couple of years back, on the chassis-code AE86 Toyota Corolla platform, so why is this one any different? What is it about it that inspires replicas to be built all around the world, let alone inspire a college buddy of mine to replicate it as best as he could (Sorry, no pics. He sold it soon after)? Because it’s a hero car for a niche of a niche entertainment category (read: anime)?

Yes, and to be fair, this car is not so different from other well-cared AE86s… not until later anyways.

You see, the beauty of this Hachi-Roku (Japanese for 8-6, Eight-Six, get it?), is not what it is, but what it isn’t. Exterior-wise, it has a couple of not-then-but-now sought-after factory JDM accessories like mudflaps and rain visors; common-in-Japan RS Watanabe F8-Type wheels without center caps (in fact, winter is the only time in which the Trueno switches its Watanabes for mesh-style rims, with snow tires of course), foglights (perhaps they’re Cibié brand, but I doubt they’re César models like every website that has copy-pasted from the Wiki link says it is), and the business call-out [Fujiwara Tofu Shop (Private Use)] that mixes oh-so well with the factory two tone paint scheme.

Interior-wise, it’s just your average zenki (early) AE86 with two-tone interior and not even a digital instrument cluster, save the Italvolanti Admiral red trim steering wheel , a/c vent cup-holder, among other details found on the last website I’d ever thought of finding such choice details. The oddest thing about the interior is that, while the car isn’t a sunroof car, it has the headliner and cutout of one. The model kit review that pointed this out said that this mod was done so that the original owner could get the front-mounted map lights.

It’s not all that powerful, it’s no longer modern or cutting-edge, and, during the story’s time period, it wasn’t desirable. It was considered a clunker, even by the driver himself. But what he and everybody else (excluding the driver’s father) didn’t see was that the car was a great training tool.

You couldn’t ask for a better machine to learn to drive competitively without arousing suspicion and Takumi, the driver, unknowingly did so for 5 years, illegally (no cops in empty mountain roads at those hours), every morning, no matter the weather or season, thinking he was just delivering tofu on the other side of the mountain -where the hotels that took delivery were- to help his father out.

It was in this car that he learned how to drift, use every bit of power from a puny engine, car control, how not to lock up you brakes (no ABS on any AE86s), use of momentum, control tire wear, heel-and-toe, drift without using the handbrake, among other things.

But wait a minute! If he’s drifting around while delivering tofu, wouldn’t it get ruined and/or spilled? Yes, but early on, after much wasted tofu, a trick was implied to help avoid such dilemma: drive with an open cup filled with a certain amount of water (varies depending on load, I suppose). The theory goes something like this: whatever Takumi does to upset the water in the cup, the same will happen to the tofu in the back. Drive on the edge, the water will literally be on the edge of the cup. Since Takumi wanted to get his deliveries done ASAP, he developed a very smooth driving technique allowing him to go fast without compromising his cargo. Sounds unbelievable but it works for him.

After reluctantly accepting to help out his street racing buddies (long story short: a girl was involved), Takumi and the Panda Trueno kicked butt, making a splash in the underground racing circuits of the Kanto region. Little did anyone know of the adventures this duo would get themselves into, and the discovery of a world, the world of cars, that Takumi himself did not know it could be enjoyable.

Yet it would be a complete and outright lie to expect this from any AE86, like so many fanboys learned the hard way.

Part of why the Panda Trueno is such a success is because of the driver. He’s been blessed with God-given instincts and exceptional heat-of-the-moment-concentration (extremely important, as one mistake in road racing could cost you or someone else’s life). Not bad for a space-case.

You see, the car belongs to former street racer Bunta Fujiwara, owner of Fujiwara Tofu Shop, and even BETTER driver than his son. He’s the one responsible for the condition and maintenance of the Panda Trueno. Let me remind you that it can get expensive to maintain an older car in Japan, not to mention the subtle chassis improvements Bunta has done (it has been tuned for perfect 50/50 weight distribution) and constant upkeep of all components from the abuse that drifting gives to a car. Takumi had no idea until much later.

It’s the learning and familiarization to the Panda Trueno that Takumi is able to pull off amazing feats against incredible odds, because the car is basically an extension of his body. Bunta himself said: “If the 86 was a tool, then my son is a professional at using that tool”.

It also helped prove that he’s no one-trick pony, being able to beat other competitors with contemporary machinery on their own turf. Skills learned in the Panda Trueno transferred seamlessly when Takumi had to use different cars available at the moment to shut up trash-talking racer-wannabees that were messing with his friends. This included a Hachi-Go (Eight-Five) AE85 Toyota Corolla Levin (the econo-car version of the AE86 chassis) on two occasions and in the manga, a Nissan 180SX (240SX).

Yet all good things must come to an end. In a fit of rage (a girl was involved), Takumi pushed the car too far, blowing the original engine and the race against a too-tough opponent. While his father claims that it wasn’t his fault, saying that the engine was on its way out and that he so happened to be driving it, I believe it was partly his fault because if he was paying attention before the race, he would have noticed that the engine was on its way out…

Like Bunta did. Those early warning signs convinced him to prepare for an upgrade in the form of a new, albeit mysterious powerplant. No word on the transmission. Getting accustomed to the engine’s power was nowhere near as dramatic as it was trying to unlock it.

A couple of things that are known about it, some said in the series, others by fan speculation:

Silver top (as shown in the Second Stage opening), 20-valve head (5 valves per head!) 4A-GE from post-second gen AE101 series/AE111 series. Click here for a helpful identification guide.
Variable valve timing, Twin-Cam design
Dry-sump oiling system
11,000 RPM is where the power’s at
Comes from Group A Division 2 Touring Class races in the Japanese Touring Car Championship (according to the Initial D Wiki)
Missing timing cover
Uses individual throttle-bodies
Power estimated to be around the 240-250HP area
Further mods (compression ratio, cam profiles, etc.) unknown

After the swap, Bunta himself re-tuned the car to handle the engine. He said that, because the repairs were done using the money Takumi has earned for the tofu shop by helping out with the deliveries, this made him the co-owner of the car.

After the resurrection (and a much-needed bucket seat), Takumi and the Panda Trueno went on to win even more races and learn even more things that couldn’t have been learned if the Trueno still had its old engine, like the nuances of a race that involves both uphill and downhill sections, which one needs some power to stay competitive.

During the Project D phase, pre-race maintenance and tuning fell into one of the team’s mechanics, Shuichi Matsumoto, who’s no chump, as he is also the trusted individual that looks after the legendary RX-7 FC3S of Ryosuke Takashi, Project D’s mastermind. So it’s a guarantee that the Panda Trueno of Akina is in good hands.

It was also in this phase that the Panda received its now trademark carbon fiber hood and headlight units (NOT BLACK PAINT!!). Discussions were made about losing the backseat, but being RWD, and for the sake of weight balance, it was retained. Besides, the Trueno was light enough.

Someone’s gonna have a rude awakening…

Also, it was during this phase that Bunta gave his son a wake-up call, by blowing him off in a 2-door 1998 Subaru Impreza WRX STI Type R Version V (phew!). This put Takumi in a slump (suffering of 4WD complex), that would later turn out to be one of the most important lessons that he’ll ever receive from his father. While the loss showed the potential of 4WD and the limitations of the Hachi-Roku, it opened his eyes of what he could do with it and how. Bunta observed how his son made that Subaru sort of a benchmark that he “chased” with the Panda Trueno (and when driving the Subaru, the "chasee”) , and how he compared and contrasted them both in terms of how they performed on the Mt. Akina home course.

But one of the most important things that are often over-looked happened about this time: Takumi became the owner of his father’s car. Early on he wanted his own car, but soon realized how much he loved his little Trueno. Now it was fully his.

Later, a rollcage was added, which as a reader, takes getting used to seeing on a car which one feels it’s slowly losing its streetability for full-on race mode. But despite the race-oriented hardware, the the Panda Trueno still represents the type of breed street racers are, even more so than Project D’s other ace, an RX-7 FD3S.

Replicas, anyone?

Takumi just keeps learning with the Panda Trueno. From new techniques like left-foot braking to using his head more often (read: strategizing) in the game, we see our space-cadet mature after each race to become a true well-rounded racer.

That’s right, the final race is between two AE86 Toyota Truenos.

By the last race, the Panda Trueno and its driver have come full circle. Once they’ve kept more powerful competitors bent on winning races, setting records and becoming legends at bay from conquering their home coursel; now they were part of a well-prepped race crew, bent on winning races, setting records and becoming legends. They themselves were better-equipped and more experienced, respectively, than the home-course representative: a young kid driving a stock-ish AE86 Panda Trueno that didn’t belong to him, who knew his home-course better than anyone. What happens at the end of the series? Let’s just say that the victor kept his momentum all the way to win by a tail.

However, the race did wound the engine, and this is where it gets bitter: Takumi mentions that he’s not yet interested in getting a new engine to fix his trusty warhorse. The secondary characters made it sound as if the Panda Trueno sacrificed itself and was now resting in peace, and while that is noble-sounding and all that, they made it sound as if it was unsalvageable scrap. If you’re of the train of thought that the finale flat-out sucks, keep in mind that this is anime and endings are usually not their strong suit. Believe me, I know. It could’ve been worse. A lot worse. It’s bittersweet, to say the least. At least it has an ending that those of us outside Japan get to know.

I view this ending to be open for interpretation, but the creators really missed an opportunity here by rushing everything just as they have been for a lot of the chapters. After following this series since the early ‘00s and even just by going over this post, I’m convinced that there is no way in hell that Takumi is just gonna abandon his Panda Trueno. The contradiction is too great. The guy even shed tears when the first engine blew up, as if the Panda Trueno had died! He’d stated that he’d never get rid of it! Even if he never races with it again, even if the engine gets replaced with a more pedestrian version (and thus the entire car get re-tuned for said engine), the bond that he has with that car as well as his hometown mountain pass are too great. The Panda Trueno is a part of him and he knows it. He could be skeptical of putting an engine that would change the personality of the car. That was a concern while the Panda Trueno was getting overhauled. Thankfully, this was fixed in the Final Stage, where it’s said that Takumi is saving up to fix his beloved Panda Trueno.

Obviously, I’m not the only one that has deep fondness for this particular Panda Trueno, but while pic-hunting, I came across the words of Speedhunters car-lifestyle website contributor Linhbergh Nguyen that just sums up our love for the machine in such a way that this post would feel incomplete without it:

“Everyone has a top 10 list of favorite AE86s in their mind. And I can guarantee that Takumi Fujiwara's infamous, yet unassuming, tofu delivery machine is somewhere in everyone's top 10. No other Corolla embodies the spirit of the underpowered car better than this fictional one from the hyper popular manga/anime, Initial D. It's that can-do-can-conquer mentality that the car and its owner, Takumi, has as it goes into each situation. Even as it goes up against the automotive titans (S13s, SW20s, GTRs, EGs, EKs, FCs, FDs) of Japan up and down the country's mountain roads, the duo doesn't flinch.

Add to the fact that its classic styling is copied around the world to this day and you have my pick of favorite 86 of all time.”

-Linhbergh

These two will continue to surprise new audiences as well as entertain the old ones. Because even with the series’ original run having ended, the influence of the series’ itself, spear-headed by the plucky Fujiwara Tofu Shop (Private Use) delivery car, will continue running for a long time coming.

And that is a victory that not even Ryosuke Takahashi could’ve foreseen in his research.

Click here, here and here for gifs. You’re welcome.