Our little tuner world has created some astounding cars and continues move forward unrelentingly. This motion has been fueled by many individuals, but one of the foremost has to be Smokey Nagata. Now, I imagine readers of this blog need no introduction to Smokey or his many innovations, but I do want to talk a little about what makes his latest Supra special to me. The car is ridiculous, completely over the top, absolutely ludicrous. In typical JDM fashion, though, it is ridiculous with a purpose. Smokey took a vision of the future and stepped into shoes that Toyota has refused to fill at this point in time. As amazingly competent as the basic JZA80 is, this car takes it to the next level.

I think it’s safe to say that the resources that would be required to top this demo car are out of the means of most everyone. An AE101 Corolla isn’t. Despite the plethora of well-done JDM Civics (basically the modern equivalent of the red Camaro in my opinion), Toyota doesn’t seem to get much love for its subcompacts and I think that this should change. There are plenty of parts available from hardcore JDM shops and cars from which to draw. Bomex raced an AE101 in GT300 and Pass Racing is running an old TRD Group-A car. The car that gets my attention the most is the Ultra Racing car that is actually from Malaysia. It’s pictured below and finished five laps ahead of its nearest competitor (unsurprisingly a Civic) in the Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race last year before being disqualified because it had something like 5cc too much displacement.

This is just one of many, many possibilities to stand out from the vanilla cars of the scene. Being different doesn’t even have to be all that hard. Parts interchangeability can show up in unexpected places. 4G63s fit in some older Hyundai’s as do many parts designed for other cars. The bottom line is even if you can’t put a twin turbo V12 in your car or combine 43 widebodies for the perfect look, you can stand out by putting some thought into doing things differently.