was

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

's preeminent

automobile magazine An automobile magazine is a magazine with news and reports on cars and the Automotive industry, automobile industry. Automobile magazines may feature new car tests and comparisons, which describe advantages and disadvantages of similar models ...

, video, and DVD series, before becoming a web video series. Alongside ''Best Motoring'', there were ''Hot Version'' and ''Video Option.''

History

With the first edition debuting in 1987 and the last in June 2011, the videos were marked by non traditional races and challenges such as

Tōge Tōge or Touge may refer to: * The Japanese word for mountain pass A mountain pass is a navigable route through a mountain range or over a ridge. Since mountain ranges can present formidable barriers to travel, passes have played a key role i ...

battles, in which one car tries to outrun another on a twisty mountain pass. The drivers were the premier racers of the various Japanese racing series, including

JGTC All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship (JGTC) is a grand touring car racing series that began in 1993. Originally titled as the , the series was renamed to Super GT in 2005. It was the top level of sports car racing in Japan. The series was s ...

(now Super GT), the

D1 Grand Prix The , abbreviated as D1GP and subtitled ''Professional Drift'', is a production car drifting series from Japan. After several years of hosting amateur drifting contests, Daijiro Inada, founder of '' Option'' magazine and Tokyo Auto Salon, and ...

, and

Formula Nippon The Japanese Super Formula Championship is a formula racing series held primarily in Japan. It is considered to be the pinnacle of single-seater racing in Japan or Asia as a whole, making it one of the top motorsport series in the region. The s ...

. Some of the regular hosts/drivers included the "Drift King"

Keiichi Tsuchiya is a Japanese professional race car driver. He is known as the for his nontraditional use of drifting in non-drifting racing events and his role in popularizing drifting as a motorsport. In professional racing, he is a two-time 24 Hours of Le ...

Manabu Orido is a Japanese professional racing driver. He currently competes in the Super GT series for Team apr Racing driving a Toyota 86#Super GT, Toyota GR86 GT300, in the Super Taikyu Series, Super Taikyu series driving an Aston Martin Vantage (2018)#G ...

Nobuteru Taniguchi is a Japanese racing driver and drifting (motorsport), drifting driver who currently competes in the Super GT racing series. Taniguchi is commonly nicknamed "NOB" (first three letters from his name, meaning "No One Better") or "The Pimp" as a ref ...

Juichi Wakisaka is a former Japanese racing driver who was a 2002, 2006 and 2009 champion in Japan's Super GT series in the Super GT#GT500, GT500 category. Prior to the 1998 Formula One World Championship , 1998 Formula One season he tested for the Jordan Grand ...

Akihiko Nakaya is a successful racing driver in the Japanese Touring Car Championship and F3000, as well as regular presenter on the Japanese motoring show ''Best Motoring''. Nakaya offered a distinctively analytical approach to reviewing cars on the show, provi ...

, and

Naoki Hattori is a motoring journalist and racing driver from Japan. After he won the Japanese Formula 3 championship in 1990, he failed to pre-qualify for two Formula One Grands Prix with Coloni in 1991 as a late-season replacement for Pedro Chaves. He ra ...

. ''Best Motoring, and Hot Version'' were all produced by

Kodansha is a Japanese privately held publishing company headquartered in Bunkyō, Tokyo. Kodansha publishes manga magazines which include ''Nakayoshi'', ''Morning (magazine), Morning'', ''Afternoon (magazine), Afternoon'', ''Evening (magazine), Eveni ...

/2&4 Motoring. The Japanese version of ''Best Motoring'' was a monthly video series covering mainly non-tuned factory cars, whereas ''Hot Version'' (ホットバージョン) was the bi-monthly video series testing mainly tuned cars. ''Video Option'' was yet another video series that was released irregularly and usually focused on a particular car model or topic (racer's background, driving techniques). The final issue were released in April 2011. However, Hot Version would make its return shortly after being cancelled, due to popular demand. Best Motoring's attempted revival (now called Best Motor TV) now only airs 2-3 installments per year with their first new issue airing in Japan in December 2011. Since 2016, Best Motoring has been moved to

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

where they release new videos indefinitely. Other spinoffs series included quarter-yearly ''Racing History'', released in 2005, was dedicated to the historical aspect of Japanese motorsport.

''Best Motoring International''

In April 2000, Taro Koki, Masa Kuji, and Katsu Takahashi co-founded Zigzag Asia and took international distribution rights for ''Best Motoring'', creating ''Best Motoring International'' (BMI). ''Best Motoring International'' was an English compilation of various video clips from all three of the Japanese video magazines, ''Best Motoring'', ''Hot Version'' and ''Video Option''. Initial releases were dubbed entirely in English, and some might say suffered from poor voice acting/editing. From volume 3 onwards they settled on having an English narrator and retained the original Japanese audio for the presenters, using subtitles for translation instead of dubbing, and localizing graphics in English. International automotive editor Sam Mitani has also appeared on the series. Post production for most of the series was done by Dogma Studios, with Brian Alvarez doing the editing, graphics and some of the audio mixing. The other differences between the two are that the English version did not refer its series by volume number.

References

External links

*{{YouTube, channel=UCrmsruqPgCIs4PImiZs0t9w 1987 establishments in Japan 2011 disestablishments in Japan Defunct magazines published in Japan Automobile magazines published in Japan Monthly magazines published in Japan Magazines established in 1987 Magazines disestablished in 2011 YouTube channels launched in 2016