Witness the evolution of our scene: First was the dragstrip-tearing Hondas. Next was the rise of the show cars. Drifting's been smoking up the tracks for the past few years and Time Attack's made driving lines sexier than Keeley Hazell (Google her, thank us later). But now the scene's about to get all grows up. It's gone past the squeaky-voiced, no hair on the playing field laddy, to a deep-throated gorilla-chested adult. And the name of this new man? Bippu-san. Or if you prefer En-grish: Mr. VIP.
You've seen them at car shows and on the street-big-bodied sedans rocking muted colors and oozing elegance and style. Think Audrey Hepburn after a visit to Pamela Anderson's surgeon. It's a Japanese tuning style that's sexy and sophisticated as hell. And like the first Galapagoan iguana to leap into the seas, it was only a matter of time before VIP cars would hit the US. It's our scene, evolved. To learn about the origin of the new Bippu species, we have to take a HMS Beagle of a trip across the Pacific to Japan, circa early '90s.
History 101
It's 11 in the evening, and you just finished dinner with your company. Tired after a long day's work, you long for your bed and some quality time with your hentai anime. Still warm from the last shot of sake, you hop on the Hanshin Expressway, one of Osaka's major beltways, and make your way home. Cruising at a comfortable 60kph in your little Fit, the hum of the road is shattered with what sounds like the shriek of a thousand castrated elephants followed by a blur of light that rocks your car violently from side to side. Startled, you swerve as a sequence of similar rockets fly by. Damned street racers!
An all too common scene in Osaka, street racers in the early '90s would often take to the roads in high speed chases and tire screeching drift battles. Terrorizing the city streets like a bad scene out of Tokyo Drift, Tetsu Q. Public's cries for help pushed the Osaka police towards a crackdown on illegal street racing. As a result, speed cameras, checkpoints and stings were setup to quash the road rebels.
Feeling the heat, many Osaka street fighters looked for a more subtle way to cruise the streets. Since sport coupes were being targeted, innocuous-looking sedans made for a better option. VIP was born. Taking Euro styling cues from luxury-sport AMG-modified Mercedes, modified dark-hued saloons emerged on the Osaka streets, blending in seamlessly with the public.
At about the same time Osaka's VIP culture was coalescing like cold bacon grease, up north in the Kanto area of the Tokyo prefecture, the more thuggish element known as the Bosozoku (Bo: abbreviation for violence; So: short for speed; Zoku: tribe or group), a motorcycle mob turned car hooligans, looked for a new form to roam the streets. Picking up sedans flavored on the incognito tip, the Bos element would cut stock coils and mufflers and slowly cruise about the streets looking to stir up trouble like Frank the Tank after one too many beer bongs.
Unlike the street racers of Osaka, this breed of Bos Bippus was loud and bold. Known to cause havoc and mischief-think Curious George meets the Hell's Angels-the members of Bosozoku were infamous for deliberately driving slow on public streets, causing traffic congestions on the highway, skipping tolls and just plain driving recklessly. Modeling themselves after the elder Yakuza element, they picked large black sedans as their weapons. What better to dirt in than an understated four-door?