Touge is the Japanese term for winding mountain road. Thankfully the love of cars and driving transcends languages and cultures. Drifted.com presents this video of a 1st generation Toyota Cressida drifting on a touge in Norway. There’s a professional stunt driver behind the wheel, a hot model riding shotgun and two professional filming rigs chasing the car. Enjoy:
The Fast Lane checks out the Toyota Motorsports Group EV P002 and the Mitsubishi i-Miev Evolution to see what incremental improvements were made to take on the mountain this year. Both cars are now capable of more power output and downforce compared to how they ran during 2012. The video include interviews with the engineers and footage from their practice sessions.
Toyota Racing Development of Japan released this update on their progress with their Griffon concept based off of the GT-86. Originally debuted at the 2013 Tokyo Auto Salon, the idea was to build a car capable of lapping Tsukuba Circuit in under a minute with the stock unibody and engine. All of the modifications have been done in the areas of suspension, lighter components and improved aerodynamics. These modifications make sense when you consider the Toyota GT-86 is the spiritual successor of the AE86. Both cars were designed to be lightweight handling machines with modest power so they could be used to train drivers.
Car Revolution Style Hiace via Speedhunters
Toyota has several amazing models that are sold internationally but not here in the US. I think they would be commercial successes here with little to no modifications on Toyota’s part outside of passing emissions and crash test standards. The Hilux diesel should be the top priority and then there are these Hiace vans. All of the Japanese carmakers have recently tried to revitalize their van sales by with restyling and slightly sportier options. I’m sure soccer moms everywhere appreciate the effort, but I think we’re ready for a return to the glory days of the masculine van. I’m not advocating for this simply because 
I’m a huge A-Team van fan. These vans would fill a niche that we won’t let trucks fill. There are a lot of people who daily drive pickup trucks because they occasionally need to haul bulky objects the do not fully utilize the gross vehicle weight and towing capacities that heavy body-on-frame construction affords. What the average consumer needs is something lighter, more efficient and more flexible which really should be a unibody pickup truck. We’ve seen a unibody truck here in the US in the form of the Honda Ridgeline which is a great vehicle but a huge sales failure. The reason why it didn’t sell well was due to the fact that the pickup truck is too sacred of an institution to us to soften with unibody construction and storage bins. That’s where I think masculine vans like the Hiace can fit into the market. Here’s something that has the utility to haul larger things, is good on gas and most importantly is cool to drive in a different way than a pickup truck is cool to drive. Toyota sells them with mid-size gas and diesel engines in automatic and manual. I will be trending #MasculineVan on Twitter to convince the world that this is good for them. In the meantime here is a Toyota Hiace drift van built by Japanese tuner Car Revolution Style:
Sam Ip Photography put together this little video from this year’s Queen Mary Toyota Fest in California: