There’s a video on YouTube that typifies the philosophy and persona of Top Secret, one of the most famed – or infamous – tuning houses in the world.
A gold, R33 Skyline GT-R with 1200 horsepower (894kW) roars ferociously with an engine note only a heavily turbocharged, modified vehicle could have. It’s nighttime, and a Japanese man in his forties, small in stature and with enormous glasses, grips the steering wheel as he accelerates, full throttle, in a tunnel somewhere in Tokyo.
The Skyline blasts past a camera car like it’s standing still, except the camera car itself is doing 150km/h. At the end of the video, the camera zooms in on a small screen inside the GT-R where “328km/h” is displayed – a speed achieved on open public roads.
The man at the wheel? Kazuhiko “Smoky” Nagata, founder of Top Secret.
Since 1991, this Japanese tuning house has produced some of the most powerful tuned Skylines and Toyota Supras ever to exist, and Nagata’s own speed addiction has taken him, and his machines, to Germany’s autobahn and Italy’s Nardo high speed ring, even New Zealand (but never Australia). In the UK, Nagata achieved 312km/h on a public motorway in the dead of night, in the rain, immediately after which he was arrested, held in a jail cell for a night – and then banned from re-entering the country for a decade.
While Nagata himself has plenty of notoriety, it’s Top Secret’s cars – in their trademark champagne-gold colour schemes – that sit central in the limelight.
Countless GT-R-badged Nissans dot its history, from R32s to R33s, R34s and of course, R35s – all with incomprehensible levels of turbocharged power, all-wheel-drive and serious top speed potential. And, importantly, built to the highest levels by aftermarket standards.
One of those cars is an R32 GT-R with an R35 engine and running gear, as well as a full R35 interior – a car that won best custom car at Tokyo Auto Salon 2017.
Top Secret even built an S15 Nissan Silvia for competition in Japan’s top-tier drifting category, D1GP – where it won the championship outright in the hands of Ryuji Miki in 2004.
While it’s best known for its Nissans, it’s a pair of JZA80 Toyota Supras that will stick out in the memories of many. It was in an RB26DETT-powered Supra (that’s the engine from a GT-R) that Nagata used torment the police in the UK.
Probably the most famed Top Secret creation of all is a Supra with a twin-turbo V12 from a Toyota Century. Producing 930 horsepower (693kW) with a bit of help from nitrous oxide, this same vehicle achieved 358km/h on the 12.6km Nardo high speed test track in Italy, in the hands of Nagata no less. It also won best car outright at Tokyo Auto Salon 2007.
While Top Secret made most of its headlines in the 90s and 2000s, these days it’s a little more behaved – at least publicly. Torquecafe met Nagata in Tokyo in 2019 where he said business was good, and that his next dream is 400km/h in Top Secret’s R35 GT-R. We say watch this space.
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