Japan's street racing scene used to be the craziest on the planet some of the most outlandish fastest cars going all out on Tokyo's Highway and there's one street Runner club that was the most notorious of them all Midnight Club but it turns out the story that the internet has always told us about midnight club might actually be alive with the leader of the entire operation now facing a prison sentence so let's dig into the rise and fall of Japan's most notorious street racing game and find out how they may have fooled the world for decades I'm Guff this is Al Bond let's get started by the way we're giving away a thousand dollars to a random subscriber who comments below so don't forget to subscribe and leave a comment to win the streets of Japan were once the automotive Wild West the explosion of drifting and street racing in the late 70s brought car culture to the masses and by the early 80s anyone with a penchant for Speed and a car to back it up was racing on the Japanese toll roads that stretched across the island and these weren't just kids racing after school oh no these were organized dedicated racing teams the tops racing team Arya memia Tokyo group Shadow all known for their speed on the Tomei toll roads but none had quite the impact as the Midnight Club the Midnight Club was formed sometime in the mid 80s and it was distinctly different from the rest you see most of the clubs were clicks of some sort just friends hanging out and racing but the Midnight Club was quite the opposite it wasn't about friendship or belonging it was about speed and Beyond the speed it was about smoothness predictability trustworthiness because the Midnight Club were Street Racers that were adamant that civilians were to never be hurt by their racing it was all part of a strict code a code that supposedly also stressed anonymity with rumors that members rarely even knew each other's full name in an effort to protect the families and businesses of these Racers some of whom were very wealthy this code is perhaps the reason that the midnight club would later go on to become so Revere but that code may also be a total fabrication but we'll get to that later only one in 10 applicants made it past the extensive screening of the midnight club members and only once you were proved worthy were you able to don the legendary Midnight Club sticker on your car the members calling the shots well that would be yamadasan Vice chairman in his s-130 fair lady Z and yoshidasan the chairman with his legendary Yoshida special Porsche 930 Turbo they along with two other founding members started the club with one goal be the fastest street racers in the country but with the number of teams that raced nightly it wasn't going to be easy and so these guys had to have the fastest cars in the nation yamada's Nissan Z was insane aboard out Nissan l28 inline 6 boasting 3. 1 liters paired to twin turbos and a fully built head it's said to have made Power somewhere in the 600 horsepower range no doubt making it more than capable of speeds kissing 200 miles per hour yoshida's Porsche was somehow even crazier an air-cooled 3. 3 liter Flat 6 with a big single turbo making somewhere around 620 horsepower but it wasn't just about power it was the level of detail that went into that car some of the greatest tuners in Japan had their hand in building this Porsche and when that wasn't enough Yoshida shipped the car to Stuttgart German to have Porsche themselves see what they could do to make this thing faster the transmission and wheels were from a 956.
the shocks from a 935 there were even parts from the legendary Porsche 959 all in the effort of dominating Tokyo's highways after midnight a typical night went like this Saturday evenings members would come together at yoshidasan's Porsche workshop and when the last bit of sunlight left the Horizon the team would set off towards the wangan highways a few solo drivers would go ahead and Scout the roads and once that was done it was time for the main event the battles these were flat out races from point to point often dozens of kilometers long and they were fast with some of the fastest cars comfortably staying over 300 kilometers an hour for the entire race battles could be of two types unofficial battles between different midnight club members themselves or official battles against rival teams the real high-stakes stuff many members sported 911 turbos thanks to the tuning expertise of yoshidasan and could all reach speeds well above 160 miles per hour and that power along with the skill of the racers meant that midnight club members rarely lost a race planted to the road as they weaved in and out of traffic on the brightly lit Tokyo highways and with win after win it wasn't long before the entire country knew the name Midnight Club now a lot of people will tell you that Midnight Club was a secret hidden underground Racing Syndicate and maybe that was true for a few weeks but it wasn't long for them to become anything but underground midnight members and their Highway Rockets were not one to shy away from magazines or media and can you blame them these were some of the best built street cars of their time piloted by some of the most skilled drivers and the world was hungry to find out more about that in 1984 the Yoshida special 930 Turbo was featured in a local magazine for an October issue and by 1986 the crew was getting features in option magazine almost every other month of course it didn't take long before their notoriety spread even Beyond Japan and soon they had multi-page spreads detailing their builds in max power magazine a British publication but it wasn't until the 90s that Midnight Clubs Fame would truly take off and now a word from our sponsor dbrand [Music] [Applause] yo you ruined me [Laughter] for years I entered every car show from Toledo to Tokyo and I always won that prize money and you know why Dennis because I had to my little sister you see the only way she's getting through medical school is from the grand prize money from those costumes you you ruined everything all because of you and your your D brand skins Carmen get up it's not over for you or your sister it's time I showed you the way of the skin [Music] Master Dennis these dbrand skins the perfectly laser cut and it's so easy to apply of course they're available for all kinds of devices in all different colors and patterns thank you master Dennis you've you've given me a great gift I have given you nothing it was you who went to the link in the description ordered that amazing skin Link in the description and now armed with this knowledge you can always rely on dbrand to not only protect your precious devices but give you that perfect thank you master I must go now Grandmama needs me in 1990 Japanese manga artist Michi Charo kusunoki created the manga series wangan midnight and this was a street racing manga with clear inspiration from the midnight drivers and their cars the main character Akio drove the cursed devil z a z31 that was inspired by the Midnight Club s-130z and then there was tatsuyashima and his black bird Porsche burying a very obvious resemblance to yoshidasan and his own 930 Turbo that manga went on to do something like 42 Volume Plus a bunch of movie adaptations and perhaps most famously the 2007 anime that went on for 26 episodes and as you can imagine with the success of the manga it was inevitable that the notoriety of the club would Skyrocket by the mid 90s everyone with an exhaust on their car knew who Midnight Club was and wanted to emulate them which is exactly why joining the club was nearly impossible to join you had to go through an intense application period the ogs of the club would first test your driving obviously but anyway built car can go fast that's the easy part the big thing was you had to be comfortable at the limit you had to prove to the club that you could drive at those highest speeds 150 160 nearly 200 miles per hour maintain those speeds and still be in total control one unsafe move or even a hint of discomfort and you were out because when the stakes were that high at those speeds there was no room for air and if you drove well well then you moved on to an apprenticeship and you got a pink Midnight Club sticker as an apprentice you had to prove to the fully fledged numbers that you really did belong constantly improving and winning races and the process to become a fully fledged member sometimes took up to five years only after completing that apprenticeship were you allowed to officially join the Midnight Club and receive that Infamous silver Midnight Club sticker and as soon as you put that sticker on the bumper of your car you had a reputation to uphold a reputation of being the fastest most k capable driver in the country the midnight club members would go on to hit some of the fastest speeds ever recorded in Japan at the time in 1988 yoshida's 930 Turbo hit 302 kilometers an hour or 187 miles per hour setting a long-standing speed record then in 1994 Auto Works magazine held a special event at the yatabase speed track specifically for Midnight Club to prove their medal nearly the whole crew showed up one member in an R32 Skyline GTR hit 289 kilometers an hour and then there was tamur a prominent member whose Mazda RX-7 hit 293 kilometers an hour but of course not to be outdone yoshida's Infamous 930 Turbo went on to hit 308 kilometers an hour the tuner world of course went wild after seeing the Midnight Club break record after record and for members of the club the yatabase circuit became a training grounds for the club to come back year after year to break more and more records needless to say by the late 90s Midnight Club had grown into an international sensation and to think they had started as a small Collective of fast cars and skilled drivers just racing on the one gun but now that Midnight Club bumper sticker was known across the world and that was kind of a big deal because there were a lot of high profile members in the club for example Hiroshi tamura was an employee at Nissan his R32 GTR was one of the quickest in the Midnight Club and thanks to his expertise on the factory side he always found a way to make it faster and faster later tamurasan would go on to become one of the head product planners at Nismo and eventually was one of the main players that brought us the R35 GTR and the brand new Nissan Z on the other end of the spectrum was none other than masamichiwabo the founder of abflow now some of you may know this brand as a b flood which is what I used to think it was called but the word ablug actually means departure in German uabosan was a massive Porsche guy with his bright pink Porsche 930 Turbo being a integral part of the midnight AI Club Fleet his prominence in the club along with his tuning Powers made him one of the most popular tuners of the 90s and early 2000s but of course tamarasan and wabosan both deny being part of the Midnight Club despite bearing the infamous stickers on their cars remember this club was formed on the principle of secrecy and anonymity they were illegally street racing after all and for each of the members the stakes were too high to be publicly racing at those speeds and the thing is as the Public's perception of Street Racing grew so did the police's need to crack down on it plate scanners speed cameras and even government regulation against modifying your car continually made the life of a street racer more difficult and many teams began to disband after prominent members were getting caught and arrested so by the mid to late 90s it only seemed like a matter of time for the midnight club Rain to come to an end but that end didn't come as expected a lot of you might know the story of how the club was supposedly disbanded it wasn't law enforcement or some government intervention that took them down the supposed end to the club was a horrific car crash in 1999. The Story Goes that one December night in 99 the Midnight Club Racers were met by a group of bosazoku bikers at their nightly meeting spot now the bosuzoku are known for their unique subculture in Japan with modified motorcycles and a generally aggressive anti-social attitude towards the world apparently a race between the bosozoku members and the Midnight Club had broken out but apparently it wasn't your regular race it was more aggressive a Turf War fought with speed and adrenaline and this time it all went wrong drivers on both sides were getting Reckless Until eventually one of the bikers lost control it said that a huge pileup crash occurred on the highway and depending on where you do your research people say seven to eight people died in that crash some were motorcyclists and others were innocent civilians and some sources even say that some of the midnight members had died and it was apparently that day that the Midnight Club met their end you see they were founded on this premise of a code they were to always be in control and they were to never endanger anyone else that was the rule and once that rule was broken the entire Club was broken and in accordance to their own laws the club was to be disbanded immediately thus breaking apart the greatest Street Racing Syndicate to ever live well at least that's the story that we've been told but there's one major issue that just doesn't sit right with this story by 1999 Midnight Club had already cemented its place in car racing culture their cars were in magazines across the planet and movies were being made on the premise of their existence so why in the hell is there no real proof of a 1999 street racing accident of this magnitude no police reports no newspaper clippings no photos just second-hand accounts and regurgitated stories a crash so big so deadly so pivotal to the street racing lore and yet there's nothing but dig a little bit deeper and perhaps you'll find a little bit of fact in the fiction one of Japan's best tuners at the time masuru hosagi sat down for an interview with max power magazine the interviewer asked him about his thoughts about the Midnight Club but more specifically he asked masuru about an accident that left seven innocent bystanders dead sound familiar where the lines get blurred is that well this interview was in 1996 and the Crash they were talking about happened the year before in 1995. masuru's answer to the interviewer was basically meh [ __ ] happens so there indeed was an accident that killed multiple people that involved the Midnight Club but it happened in 1995 not 1999 like the internet says but one thing we also know is that the Midnight Club was still around in 1995.
so that begs the question what is the real truth when they broke up in 1999 was it actually because their code was Dishonored and broken did that code that their entire Foundation was built on even exists or was it all just made up a false pretense to create a sense of Honor around something that was obviously Reckless something that had been the cause of numerous deaths and injuries of innocent people throughout the 80s and 90s and if the club didn't disband after a major accident like this well why did they disband just four years later well maybe they never did you see the police Crackdown in the 90s on illegal street racing was a big deal the government was pulling out all the stops to put an end to all these teams that ruled the streets and most famous of all was Midnight Club of course add to that the fact that fast cars were becoming more and more common Supra skylines nsx's rx7s all were available to anyone with a big enough pocketbook and by the mid 90s many clubs had cars that were just as fast as the cars that Don those silver stickers and so it's possible that the rumor of them disbanding the club was planted and intentional fabrication created by the Midnight Club themselves a way to keep police off their tail and to retreat back into the underground with their reputation still intact but the more I look into all these different possibilities of the club's fate the more I realized it doesn't really matter whether or not they had a code or whether or not they lied about the whole thing it really didn't make a difference the Midnight Club had already made their Mark a group of Infamous Street Racers with some of the sickest builds even to this day a group that made the Toge famous they made the one gun famous Manga Movies all inspired by their daring racing people all over the world repped fake Midnight Club stickers because they just wanted to be that hell even Rockstar Games capitalized on the hype by giving us one of the most influential speed racing games to make it Street side other than Need for Speed Midnight Club street race their impact on car culture is undeniable and their story in one form or another will always be revered but that would imply that their story is also over and that's just a downright lie because accident or no accident code or no code the reality is they never really broke up they just went silent but if you kept your ear to the Japanese streets that silence was often broken after the new Millennia there were often sightings of cars that bore the Midnight Club bad a 300ZX at Fuji Speedway a Lamborghini Countach that crashed at a Japanese track day and then of course there's the devil's Z the famous s130z ended up trading hands a couple of times and it was spotted at numerous car shows and racing events over the years supposedly it always stayed in the family and was only ever sold to other members of a midnight club one of those owners was interviewed in 2002 and another owner was even featured by option magazine in 2019 but the car most revered of all is yoshida's 930 Turbo that car actually stayed pretty low-key a few Street appearances here a Tokyo Auto Salon Cameo there and it also never left the ownership of Yoshida himself well that's what the world thought until 2015 where Dino carbonari from speed Hunters found it at a small exotic car dealership in odaiba tucked far in the back behind a sea of Lamborghinis and JDM one-offs was that on mistakable maroon Porsche I'm not sure whether or not it was actually for sale at that point but it's exciting to think that a car that was such a massive part of tuner car history could be added to your own collection but of course that begs the question what happened to the esteemed chairman yoshidasan by all accounts was a wealthy individual having gotten the Porsche worked on by every major tuner in Japan and even having Factory support from Porsche themselves so why would he sell off the car that was his life's worth well it turns out Yoshida wasn't exactly who the world thought he was in 2018 Yoshida was arrested for defrauding a dealership out of a hundred and twenty million yen or about 1. 1 million US dollars he had promised that dealership that he could get them an allocation for the Porsche 918 but it turns out that was a lie and Yoshida took that money and used it to pay off the massive amount of debt that he had accrued over the years the worst part apparently somehow he didn't go to prison for it and defrauded another person again in 2019. this time a car collector in Monaco for nearly 250 million yen he got caught yet again and once again stated that he needed the money to get out of debt from Bad business dealings he had made over the years so then the chairman of the Midnight Club ended up being a criminal which surely meant that the Midnight Club was now officially over gone even from the Shadows where they currently recited well no in fact it was quite the opposite in 2019 after the Chairman's second arrest a new chairman was selected tadao tamura the once famous driver of that blue fd-3s RX7 and he decided that now was the time for Midnight Club to come into the light a new website appeared Midnight Racing team.
jp and it detailed the history of the Midnight Club at least the history that they wanted us to know and proclaimed to the world that the Midnight Club was back but alongside that it made a surprising statement that the midnight club would never race on public roads ever again members had apparently seen great success in the world of professional racing and from now on midnight club would only ever race on track and that's where the Midnight Club stands today Paradox of what it used to be a street racing Club that's off the streets an honorable team once led by a man with perhaps no honor A Relic faced with the inevitability of its own obsolescence and sure car People Like Us will look back and glorify Hiroshi tomorrow's R32 GTR the hosuki built devil Z and of course the 300 plus kilometer an hour runs of the Yoshida special 9 30.
