Episode 04: A Boy Fascinated by 1980s Japanese Cars

Episode 04: A Boy Fascinated by 1980s Japanese Cars

I still cannot fully explain why I fell in love with cars. But as a child, I often found myself staring at vehicles driving far into the distance, as if they were carrying a world I didn’t yet know.

My father being a taxi driver probably had something to do with it. His car was always parked in front of our house. The sound of his engine returning from night shifts somehow gave me a sense of safety. Cars from 1980s Japan—boxy, simple, and strangely alive.

Inside our house, everything felt calm on the surface but unstable underneath. Something was always shaking. In that environment, cars were the only things that behaved predictably. They didn’t lie. They didn’t yell. They didn’t blame. They simply responded to how they were handled. Whenever I opened a used-car magazine, I imagined the world behind its pages. Model codes, engine sizes, horsepower— I memorized numbers long before I understood their meaning. They felt like a place where I belonged. My father was sinking into alcohol. My mother battled her own loneliness. My younger sister, caught in the same atmosphere, became emotionally volatile. In the corner of that home, I quietly fell deeper and deeper in love with cars. People rarely know exactly why they are drawn to something. But I know this: back then, cars were saving me. And that pull would eventually steer the direction of my entire life.