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 n ...

's preeminent automobile magazine, 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 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 (now Super GT), the D1 Grand Prix, 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) a ...

. Some of the regular hosts/drivers included the "Drift King" Keiichi Tsuchiya, Manabu Orido,

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, Akihiko Nakaya, and Naoki Hattori. ''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'' ...

/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