This isn’t about making the kind of cars you’d see on MTV, though – under the hood is a strut brace and a suite of engine modifications, all designed and built by Impul themselves for the newest Nissan models. It looks like none of the Jukes I see waiting outside the Edinburgh private schools at home time. In today is a Juke with a full-on Impul bodykit, including a ludicrous WRC-style spoiler and massive alloy wheels. They do bodywork and performance enhancements for the whole spectrum of Nissan cars, from the Micra (or March as the Japanese call it) through to the big people carriers. The hand-signed plaque attests that the replica was given to team founder Hoshino-san in recognition of Impul’s services to raising the profile of the Nissan brand.Īll the racing cars live at Fuji Circuit, so what’s in the Tokyo showroom are specimens of Impul’s latest roadgoing offerings. It contains a beautiful three-foot replica of an old Calsonic Skyline, presented to the team by none other than Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn. No object in the garage sums up the significance of the Impul team to world motor sport than the glass case by the far window. You’d be wrong if you thought this was a mom-and-pop garage team. Presentation to Kazuyoshi Hoshino from Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn Right next to a championship trophy is a dusty model of a roadgoing Fairlady with the rear-left wheel missing. ![]() Particularly endearing are the home-made models of Impul’s vehicles that intersperse the trophies, hand-painted 1/24-scale model kits and hastily-assembled radio-controlled cars. There’s Benoit Treluyer’s second-place plaque from Formula Nippon 2009, various Super GT trophies the famous Calsonic team has picked up, and a helmet belonging to team founder Kazuyoshi Hoshino. On top of the cupboards and right the way around the showroom – which can’t measure more than twenty square metres – are scores and scores of awards the team has won over the years. There’s a rack stuffed with dog-eared magazines, some mismatched tables and chairs at which a customer sips tea while he waits for his car, and an adjoining office piled high with invoice slips and manuals. Three cars are rammed in bumper to bumper, surrounded by a few cabinets containing parts and merchandise. Trophies from high-level races out on display in the open air!ĭespite being such a slick outfit on the track, there’s something very homely about their main showroom. Their main international claim to fame is probably running the Calsonic Nissan team in the Japanese GT series, the blue number 12 car familiar to millions across the globe as a result of their appearance in the Gran Turismo computer game series. Their founder Kazuyoshi Hoshino has an impressive record in top-level international racing, including appearances as a Nissan works driver at Le Mans and Daytona and even a brief stint in Formula One. Impul have been responsible for countless GT and Formula Nippon triumphs, running consistently at the front in Japanese motor sport over the last decade. It’s not so much ‘blink and you miss it’ as ‘don’t look up and you miss it’, because the only obvious external cues are the big signs on the wall and above the windows. Impul’s garage is an unassuming building at the side of a busy, leaf-lined road, hemmed in between an American car importer and a vehicle hire firm. Two trains, a brief walk and the obligatory stop at a Calpis vending machine later, I was there. I hadn’t had time to do my homework other than to find out which station to get off at and which of Tokyo’s many rail lines to take to get there, so it would have to be a flying visit. This time, though, I was heading west out into the huge and largely residential Setagaya Ward, to the Sakuragaoka area. Much like the Nismo visit, I had to jump on a train out to the sticks of Tokyo to get there. If you look carefully you’ll see the umbrella I left.
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