Best Motoring International
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Best Motoring (katakana: ベストモータリング) is Japan's preeminent automobile magazine, video, and DVD series. Alongside Best Motoring are Hot Version and Video Special. With the first edition debuting in 1995, the videos are marked by non traditional races and challenges such as the Tōge battles, in which one car tries to outrun another on a twisty mountain pass. The drivers are the premier racers of the various Japanese racing series, including JGTC, the D1 Grand Prix, and Formula Nippon. Some of the regular hosts/drivers include the 'Drift King' Keiichi Tsuchiya, Manabu Orido, and Juichi Wakisaka.
Best Motoring, Hot Version and Video Special are all produced by Kodansha/2&4 Motoring.
[edit] Best Motoring International
In April 2000, Taro Koki founded Zigzag Asia and took international distribution rights for Best Motoring, creating Best Motoring International. 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.
The Japanese version of Best Motoring is a monthly video series covering mainly non-tuned factory cars, whereas Hot Version (ホットバージョン) is the bi-monthly video series testing mainly tuned cars. Video Special is another video series that is released irregularly and usually focuses on a particular car model.
Other spinoffs series includes the Hot Version specials, AE86 Club and VTEC Club which is dedicated only to the Toyota AE86 and Honda VTEC engined cars respectively and the quarter-yearly Racing History, released in 2005, is dedicated to the historical aspect of Japanese motorsport.
Best Motoring International is an English compilation of various video clips from all three of the Japanese video magazines, Best Motoring, Hot Version and Video Special.
