Battle Magazine — March 1997
An archive project by Flock MFGNew issue alerts →
About this issue
116 available scans from Battle Magazine — March 1997, in rtl reading order. Original scans with English draft translations and searchable page text. Drafts have not received exhaustive image proofreading; unreadable source remains recorded in the archival data.All 59 provided PDF pages retained as 116 reader pages; completeness against a physical printed copy has not been independently established.
Page 89 — English draft translation
That’s why its popularity is truly extraordinary. Fourteen years have passed, and even the final model is approaching its tenth year, so it’s only natural for wear to appear all over the body. Hachirokus are often driven hard, too… That makes it difficult to find a really good one if you’re shopping now. So why not bring one in from overseas? Here we meet Suzuki, a Hachiroku enthusiast. After working at the service desk of a well-known car dealer, he now runs T&S Garage, which mainly handles vehicle inspections and modification-approval paperwork. On the side, he’s devoted to the Hachiroku. Of course, he loves grip driving, drifting, and driving in general. Like other Hachiroku fans, Mr. Suzuki has owned three of them…
…and when it came time to choose the next one, he felt it was hard to find a clean Hachiroku in Japan. In a conversation with his friend Kei Nakai of ROUGH, they talked about wanting a Hachiroku nobody else had. They joked, “Then let’s reverse-import one!”—and he really did bring one from America. Naturally it was left-hand drive. Suzuki likes the American character, and the car had covered plenty of miles cruising across the country. Still, if it had never been in an accident and the body was sound, he thought it might be easier to find a clean example than in Japan. About a year and a half earlier, he asked acquaintances in Los Angeles and San Francisco to find one. His conditions: no accidents, no modifications, original paint, no body rust, under 100,000 miles (about 160,000 km), and within his target price. After waiting six months, a promising search began in March 1996; by August he had found the one he wanted. The body was crimson, and its American-market name was Toyota Corolla GT-S… To drive it in Japan, the lights had to be modified, and it needed various inspections and paperwork, including emissions testing. As a professional, Suzuki handled that with ease: it cleared customs in September and was registered in November. So, what differences from Japanese models would interest a Hachiroku enthusiast? Let’s look at the exterior and interior…