Original JDM Players - Living Legends

The legend of import tuning in America began during the late '70s in Southern California when a small population of car enthusiasts began exploiting the potential of lighter and more affordable cars from manufacturers like Toyota, Nissan and Mazda. These enthusiasts were mostly young Japanese and Filipino immigrants who needed a diversion from the various socio-economic problems that plagued their local neighborhoods. They began lowering these Japanese cars, replacing the factory wheels with some shiny rims, hanging fuzzy dice on their rearview mirrors and cruising around the neighborhood streets, similar to what the Latinos did with their lowriders. It was a mere shoestring hobby relegated for the weekends and to share among friends.

It wasn't until the mid '90s, when the entire nation and the major corporations began looking deeper into the world of import tuning, that a young man named Frank Choi created an exclusive event where these cars and the street racers that loved them so much could hang out and race. Frank's event not only set the foundation for this multi-million dollar industry that has produced movies, books and shows that span the entire globe, but it also produced the first crop of celebrity racers mostly unknown to tuners today. Frank and these racers are the group of men we like to call the pioneers, the trailblazers of this industry, and the event was called the Battle of the Imports.

In the early '90s, street racing was at its peak on the streets of Southern California. There was a drag race every weekend, where a person could watch Honda CRXs run against Mazda RX3s and Toyota MR2s would battle it out against Nissan 240Zs at now-famous spots like Maria Street in Compton. Frank was one of the many who raced on these weekends but grew tired of being chased away by the police and wanted to test his car out on a real track. He entered his '77 Mazda RX3 at sanctioned races at local drag strips but was quickly denied. "I didn't know if they were turning me away because of the car I had or because I was Asian," he explained. "It seemed like they were automatically stereotyping us. I thought, 'What if I was to hold an event with all my buddies from the street races and I had the chance to make the one guy with the small-block Chevy turn around and go home? What if the shoe was on the other foot?'"

So he started an organization called the Amateur Import Race Association (AIRA) and began holding the Battle of the Imports that featured small street cars from Japan and Europe, having them race bracket style down the quarter mile. His first race was held during the summer of '90 at the Los Angeles County Raceway in Palmdale, CA. The turnout wasn't spectacular, but it was a place where racing was safe, friendships were made and Japanese cars weren't discriminated against. He continued to hold the event intermittently throughout the following years. In the spring of 1993, the media began taking notice and the word quickly spread.

"When we did our first event, I didn't see a future in it. I did it out of personal spite," Frank laughed. "Racing made me happy. I would go back to my regular job and everything was great until I started getting phone calls. Guys asking, 'Hey, when's the next event, where's the next one?' So I thought about it, put a little more effort into it and that was it. From that point on, it skyrocketed."

The guys who would always go to Battle of the Imports came from car crews across Southern California, like Redline Racing, Cyber Racing, Team Precision and Split Second Racing. These crews were mostly composed of friends who lived in the same neighborhoods and shared the same passion for street racing. They would help fix each other's cars and represented by placing the team's logo somewhere on their rides. These teams belonged to the second wave of street racers that helped change the street racing culture, while the original racing clubs like Shoreline Racing, Street Image, Black Magic, 8-Ball and Horizon were mostly inactive during the mid '90s.