The loudest thing on our Shibuya reel isn't a car. It's the silence where the music should be. For once we posted a clip with no soundtrack at all, just the city: tyres on the crossing, a train rattling overhead, and the low burble of a widebody Nissan GT-R R35 creeping along the kerb. If you have ever wondered what Shibuya car spotting actually sounds like at night, this is it.
The blue S15 and the RX-7 at the lights
Start with the photo that sums up the neighbourhood. A deep blue Nissan Silvia S15 sits on the kerb a few metres from the Scramble Crossing, dropped low on deep-dish five-spoke wheels, with an aftermarket front bumper and a windscreen banner. Behind it, waiting for the green, is an orange-and-black Mazda RX-7 in VeilSide Fortune-style bodywork, the look the whole world knows from Han's car in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The film made Shibuya famous to car people in 2006; twenty years later, the cast is still turning up.
The S15 was the last Silvia, built from 1999 to 2002, and in Japan its SR20DET and short wheelbase keep it at the centre of drift and street culture. This is one of the cleanest we have seen in Tokyo.
The widebody Nissan GT-R R35
Then the R35 arrives. Deep red paint, bolt-on arches, a swan-neck wing and the quad round tail lights that have marked out the GT-R since the Skyline days. The boot carries GAIJIN TUNED lettering. The R35 has been on sale since 2007, which makes it one of the longest-lived performance cars of the modern era, and Shibuya is where you see what people do with it once the warranty is a memory.
Liberty Walk Silvia S15 in Speed Mafia colours
The S15 that stopped the crowd wears orange and white with SPEEDMAFIA down the flank, LIBERTY WALK across the wing, LB TOKYO on the rear pillar, Liqui Moly and Mini GT decals on the bumper and blue underglow lighting the diffuser. Liberty Walk, the Japanese tuner led by Wataru Kato, made its name with bolt-on widebody kits, and this car is dressed like one of its show machines. People lined the pavement filming it, which tells you everything.
The red Toyota Chaser JZX100 at Shibuya Station
Our favourite moment of the night was the quietest. A red Toyota Chaser JZX100 simply sat there, facing us, with the glass walkway of Shibuya Station lit up behind it. Slim headlights, the Chaser's narrow grille, a low stance and nothing else. The JZX100 Chaser was built from 1996 to 2001, and in Tourer V form it carries the 1JZ-GTE turbo straight-six that made Toyota's four-door sedans into drift legends. We have more of its sound in our Toyota Chaser JZX100 Tourer V story.
Two R34 Skylines
Then a pair of R34s: a blue Nissan Skyline GT-R with the badge on its boot and a white R34 coupe beside it on black five-spoke wheels. Seeing them parked nose to tail in Shibuya never gets old. For the whole family tree, from Hakosuka to R35, see our Nissan Skylines in Tokyo feature.
Shibuya by day: the Acura lowrider
Not every car here is JDM in the usual sense. On another visit, in daylight, we filmed a gold Acura sedan on chrome wheels with green-tinted glass cruising past the shops, posted with the caption "Not your typical JDM - Acura Lowrider". Our clip of it is too small to print here, but it proves the point: Shibuya takes every style.
The verdict
Shibuya car spotting works best when you stop and listen. The reel ends under a low railway bridge as a train slides overhead, which is as good a full stop as Tokyo offers. For the walk that gets you here, see our Tokyo night walk from Ebisu to Shibuya, for the same streets in colder weather, Tokyo in winter, and for Tokyo's daytime supercar parade, Sundays at Meiji Jingu Gaien.
Photos and video: One Breath Pictures.
Comments