Option (car magazine)
Encyclopedia : O : OP : OPT : Option (car magazine)
Option (オプション, Opushon in katakana and subtitled Exciting Car Magazine) is a automotive magazine founded by Daijiro Inada in 1981, to meet the demand for enthusiasts of modified Japanese cars in Japan.
The magazine is published by the Japanese media giant San-Ei Shobo Publishing Co. Ltd., the parent company of Sunpros, a company owned by Inada, who is behind both the D1 Grand Prix series and Tokyo Auto Salon.
During the earlier days, the magazines used to cover illegal street racing held in expressways before it became illegal to do so.
Also, it covers the exploits of Inada attempts at driving speed records, whether it was at Bonneville, at the German Autobahn or at the Silver State Classic, even by it members of the magazine editorial team. Nowadays the series features Wangan competitions on closed roads and where it is legalised to do so.
Beside speed tests and modifed car features, other regular features includes, a rate-my-car feature where readers sents a photo of their car to be judged by Manabu Suzuki, with a comedic result; a monthly features, where Keiichi Tsuchiya solves readers' problems that concern with drifting, a monthly column called Sugoiyo Osaru-chin (すごいよ！ オサルさん) by Ken Nomura. Also it has a D1GP mini-magazine. Other contributors includes Eiji Yamada and Manabu Orido.
The magazine also covered the build up to his Silver State exploits in 2003. After having to luckliy to escape with nothing other than a mechanical failure in previous times, during his second appearance in the Silver State Classic, Inada narrowly escaped serious injuries when his car, the Option Stream Z, a modified 700bhp 350Z suffered a tire blowout which rolled the car seven times, he would send the car back home to display it at the Tokyo Auto Salon the following year. Learning the mistakes he made, the previous year, he would make a return equipping the car with a drag chute and hiring a helicopter to watch over his car in case things go wrong and would score a third place overall. Unfortunately in 2005, on the day before the race, during a minor accerlation race, Inada sent the car off course not noticing the finishing line and misread co driver Susumu Koyama's (owner of tuner, JUN Auto) signal to slow down, causing minor damage to the car, putting the co-driver in hospital for whiplash injuries and was forced to miss out on the main race, but he was the winner of the race that caused such unintentially hilarious misfortunes for himself.
Other magazines in the Option line are Option 2, a similar magazine but less emphasises on feature cars but more on technical bits and DIY modifications; Option Wagon for modified MPV, Drift Tengoku, a magazine and video series dedicated to drifting and Video Option. The Option magazine is known to be very popular amongst JDM enthusiasts and people who work in the Import industry who use it to gain knowledge on new parts.
See also
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.