Daigo Saito doesn't only drive drift cars, he hosts the people who love them. On Christmas Day we went to his barbecue at Fat Five Land, the yard and workshop of his team Fat Five Racing, in Tokorozawa, Saitama, about an hour north-west of central Tokyo. This is the man we later watched hustle his #87 GR Supra around D1GP Ebisu, and whose Nissan Laurel was one of the hero cars at ULTRACE 2025. The full tour is in the video above.
The Supra in the bushes
Right by the gate sits an A70 Supra slowly disappearing into the hedge. It wears the Twin Turbo badge, which on the Japanese-market car means the 2.0-litre 1G-GTE, and the inside is serious: a roll cage, bucket seats and a NOS sticker. Whether there's still a nitrous system in it, nobody could tell us. It looks like one of the late-night highway cars of the '90s, left where it last parked.
Past it, a row of older Ferraris and a Lamborghini Diablo, all in the same red and all wearing wide aftermarket body kits.
Mark IIs, for sale and for sending it
Fat Five is a drift garage first, so the cars that matter are the four-door Toyotas. A JZX100 Mark II was up for sale for close to 20,000 Canadian dollars. It runs a Kakimoto exhaust, one of the best-sounding systems you can put on a JZ engine, Advan wheels and Yokohama tyres, and it's covered in the tyre debris of a life spent sideways. Buy it at a barbecue, drive it around Japan for a few weeks, then ship it home.
Next to it, a JZX90 Mark II, almost factory apart from a body kit, wheels and a rear wing. On the workshop wall: the team's recipe for reinforcing engine mounts. The other half of a good drift missile, we were told, is simple: a bolted-down engine and a welded rear differential.
The Skyline
The cleanest build on the property was a Skyline GT-R with fender mirrors and a cabin stripped to the steering wheel, gear lever, a few switches and a hydraulic handbrake. Under the bonnet sit individual throttle bodies; we couldn't confirm which engine they feed. It rolls on WORK Meister M1 wheels with Wilwood brakes behind them.
Barbecue, games and a raffle
The afternoon was food, a drift game, Vespas parked around the yard and a rock-paper-scissors draw for sponsor prizes: oil spray, brake cleaner, tyre-grip spray for icy roads and a breathalyser. That last one is more useful than it sounds. Japan treats drink-driving extremely seriously, so if you're driving here, don't drink at all.
How to go
Fat Five holds these barbecues regularly, including around the Tokyo Auto Salon weekend in January. Dates are posted on Instagram: follow @fatfiveland and Daigo Saito himself at @daigosaito87. The garage is on Google Maps as Fat Five Racing.
Filmed on Christmas Day 2023 and first published on our TUNEX ONE channel in January 2024. Video: TUNEX ONE, production by One Breath Pictures.
Photos: One Breath Pictures
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