was

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

's preeminent

automobile magazine ''Automobile'' was an American automobile magazine published by the Motor Trend Group. A group of former employees of ''Car and Driver'' led by David E. Davis founded ''Automobile'' in 1986 with support from Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, u ...

, video, and DVD series. Alongside ''Best Motoring'' were ''Hot Version'' and ''Video Special.''

History

With the first edition debuting in 1987 and the last in June 2011, the videos were marked by non traditional races and challenges such as

Tōge A mountain pass is a navigable route through a mountain range or over a ridge. Since many of the world's mountain ranges have presented formidable barriers to travel, passes have played a key role in trade, war, and both human and animal migrati ...

battles, in which one car tries to outrun another on a twisty mountain pass. The drivers were the premier racers of the various Japanese racing series, including

JGTC Super GT (stylized as SUPER GT) is a grand touring car racing series that began in 1993. Launched as the , generally referred to as either the JGTC or the All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship, the series was renamed to Super GT in 2005. It is ...

(now Super GT), the

D1 Grand Prix The , abbreviated as D1GP and subtitled ''Professional Drift'', is a production car drifting (motorsport), drifting series from Japan. After several years of hosting amateur drifting contests, Daijiro Inada, founder of ''Option (car magazine), O ...

, and

Formula Nippon The Japanese Super Formula Championship is a formula racing series. It is considered as being the top level of single-seater racing in Japan and regional motorsports in Asia. The series is sanctioned by the Japan Automobile Federation (JAF) and ...

. Some of the regular hosts/drivers included the "Drift King"

Keiichi Tsuchiya is a Japanese professional race car driver. He is known as the for his nontraditional use of drifting in non-drifting racing events and his role in popularizing drifting as a motorsport. In professional racing, he is a two-time 24 Hours of L ...

Manabu Orido is a Japanese racing driver who currently competes in the Super GT series for Team apr Racing, driving a Toyota GR86 GT300 and in the Super Taikyu, driving Aston Martin Vantage GT4. He's a two-time JGTC/Super GT GT300 class champions. Racing ca ...

Nobuteru Taniguchi is a Japanese racing driver and drifting driver who currently competes in Super GT and D1 Grand Prix. Taniguchi is commonly nicknamed "NOB" (first three letters from his name, meaning "No One Better") or "The Pimp" as a reference to his S15 Silv ...

Juichi Wakisaka is a former Japanese racing driver who was a 2002, 2006 and 2009 champion in Japan's Super GT series in the GT500 category. Prior to the 1998 Formula One season he tested for the Jordan Grand Prix team. In 2002, Wakisaka raced the Toyota Sup ...

Akihiko Nakaya is a successful racing driver in the Japanese Touring Car Championship and F3000, as well as regular presenter on the Japanese motoring show '' Best Motoring''. Nakaya offered a distinctively analytical approach to reviewing cars on the show, prov ...

, and

Naoki Hattori is a motoring journalist and racing driver from Japan. After he won the Japanese Formula 3 championship in 1990, he failed to pre-qualify for two Formula One Grands Prix with Coloni in 1991 as a late-season replacement for Pedro Chaves. He r ...

. ''Best Motoring, Hot Version'' and ''Video Special'' were all produced by

Kodansha is a Japanese privately-held publishing company headquartered in Bunkyō, Tokyo. Kodansha is the largest Japanese publishing company, and it produces the manga magazines ''Nakayoshi'', ''Afternoon'', ''Evening'', ''Weekly Shōnen Magazine'' an ...

/2&4 Motoring. The Japanese version of ''Best Motoring'' was a monthly video series covering mainly non-tuned factory cars, whereas ''Hot Version'' (ホットバージョン) was the bi-monthly video series testing mainly tuned cars. ''Video Special'' was yet another video series that was released irregularly and usually focused on a particular car model. The final installments are Best Motoring of April 2011's. However, Hot Version would make its return shortly after being cancelled, due to popular demand. Best Motoring's revival (now called Best Motor TV) now only airs 2-3 installments per year with their first new issue airing in Japan in December 2011. Other spinoffs series included quarter-yearly ''Racing History'', released in 2005, was dedicated to the historical aspect of Japanese motorsport.

''Best Motoring International''

In April 2000, Taro Koki, Masa Kuji, and Katsu Takahashi co-founded Zigzag Asia and took international distribution rights for ''Best Motoring'', creating ''Best Motoring International'' (BMI). ''Best Motoring International'' was an English compilation of various video clips from all three of the Japanese video magazines, ''Best Motoring'', ''Hot Version'' and ''Video Special''. Initial releases were dubbed entirely in English, and some might say suffered from poor voice acting/editing. From volume 3 onwards they settled on having an English narrator and retained the original Japanese audio for the presenters, using subtitles for translation instead of dubbing, and localizing graphics in English. International automotive editor Sam Mitani has also appeared on the series. Post production for most of the series was done by Dogma Studios, with Brian Alvarez doing the editing, graphics and some of the audio mixing. The other differences between the two are that the English version did not refer its series by volume number.

References

External links

*{{YouTube, channel=UCrmsruqPgCIs4PImiZs0t9w 1987 establishments in Japan 2011 disestablishments in Japan Defunct magazines published in Japan Automobile magazines published in Japan Monthly magazines published in Japan Magazines established in 1987 Magazines disestablished in 2011