Video Option
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Video Option (ビデオオプション - Bideo Opushon in katakana) was introduced in 1988 by Sunpro as a monthly video magazine version of the long running Option magazine
The video has always being presented by Daijiro Inada, who do many of the tuner car road tests, either on a test track, on public road with Daijiro's adventures at Bonneville. During the video early days, the series used to cover illegal races usually in expressways, which wis sometimes contributed by an anonymous figure called "Chiba Kun". Nowadays the series features Wangan competitions and unlike the rival Best Motoring series, the show is more focused on drift, drag, time attack, speed tests and mountains rather than pro racing techniques or circuit practises.
The series also covers Inada's escapade at the Silver State Classic from the unfortunate (1999), to having narrowly escaped (2003) and the unintentionally hilarious (2005)
Option Video has always covered drifting, even hosting one of the first drift contests in 1989 with Keiichi Tsuchiya called the Ikaten. Option would continue to cover drift events especially their own Ikaten, until in October 2000, they would introduce the D1 Grand Prix which appears exclusively on the videos. They also gave the Americans their very first drifting events in 1996 at Willow Springs International Raceway, California, which incidentally was won by a Honda Civic, it wasn't until seven years later Option gave them their first oversea D1 Grand Prix event. In 2005, the video series followed the season of former judge turned competitor Manabu Orido in his quest to compete in D1. Other highlights in the show includes the owner of tuner Top Secret, "Smokey" Nagata run-in with the law in both the UK and New Zealand in 1998 and 2000.
Beside the series high speed adventures, there is a segment called Go-Go Daijiro (Go!Go!大二郎) in which the Inada test drives other unusual form of transportation not normally covered in by the magazine, for example VIP Style cars (customised luxury saloons) and the sex discrimination segment which the D1 Gals (Kazumi Kondo and the D1 Gal of previous year, Hatsuno Sugaya) are tested in for example, their knowledge in car maintenance and what car they drive for comedy results.
Magazine contribitors Keiichi Tsuchiya, Eiji Yamada, Ken Nomura, Manabu Suzuki, Orido are also guest presenters.
In 2004, to satisfy the demand of US D1 Grand Prix fans who watched the Irwindale round, Sunpro introduced an English language version called JDM Option, unlike many Japanese orientated videos, JDM Option retains many of the original voiceovers with English narration. Mainly covers the D1 Grand Prix, this version is practically a censored version of the Japanese original in order to satisfy FCC regulations which cuts out the sexual jokes of the originals, involving many of the presenters.
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