For people who like racing events and cars from Japan, 2004 was a great year. The D1 Grand Prix drift series was returning for a second season to show off its new star and best-known drivers. Japanese sport compact cars like Honda, Nissan, Subaru, and Mitsubishi were no longer seen as a particular product. A clever event planner in Los Angeles tried to get Super GT to hold an event there while this trend was going strong. Because of this, GT Live 2004 was made. And it was huge. The All Japan Grand Touring Car Championship (JGTC), a race for the fastest sports cars in Japan, used to be called Super GT. Super GT was mostly a silhouette race with two classes of vehicles: the GT500, which had 500 horsepower, and the GT300, which had 300 horsepower. Since then, the rules have changed slightly, but in 2004, cars used various engines, most of which were taken from production cars. These engines ranged from V8s to three-rotor machines. After working as a consultant for the Japanese car parts company Autobacs, Randy Grube, who started Paramax Consulting, we had the idea to hold an event for cars. He went to a JGTC race to see what was possible, and the strange cars that looked like silhouettes caught his eye. This began a long and arduous journey to get the circus to the United States. Grube did it in December 2004 at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California, after much talking, convincing, and spending more than $2 million. A YouTube movie of an old Speed Channel episode made by 23GT tells the event’s story. It’s a nice look back at the strange event, which was more of a party with race cars than a race weekend. My parents didn’t like the word-of-mouth car culture at the time, and I was too young to go. However, I wish I had seen it. There were famous drivers in both the JGTC cars and the D1GP and Formula Drift drifting shows that happened before the primary race. Before becoming a Formula One driver, Kamui Kobayashi participated in the event. Just recently, Érik Comas won two JGTC crowns. Andre Lotterer had never been behind the wheel of an Audi Le Mans car. During the time assault section, the legendary Tarzan Yamada drove the vehicle. Tanner Foust has only just started his job as a drifter. These drivers and others all drove different kinds of cars in the same race. The best thing about the event was that 45,000 people came to see it. It went well. It was also the second-to-last race in the JGTC class before it was replaced by Super GT in 2005. However, the talks in 2005 were never finished. Even though the event was a success and 60% of the people who went were racing for the first time, it didn’t convince Japanese people to keep running. Because of this, Super GT was only in GT Live 2004. But it was just as cool as we thought it would be.
