What comes to your mind when you think of a van? Cheap, durable, rear-wheel drive, small in size but easy to install, you can hardly find any shortcomings, but you must not associate them with performance. So have you really ever looked at those vans on the street? Although very practical, most people think that these cars are boring to drive, slow, and useless except for pulling people and cargo. However, in Japan, the situation is somewhat different. As a country with an extremely developed car culture, it can be said that they never change any car, and any model can stand out in their own way, such as this Toyota Hiace. Due to work needs, this car owner usually spends a lot of time with the van. He travels back and forth between Tokyo and Nagoya several times a month. During this one-way journey of about four hours, the ordinary and boring driving process made the car owner start to think: Life is short, why should his good time be consumed by this kind of "boring"? Can this journey be made more interesting? The first thing a car owner should do is to buy a suitable van and then modify it to make it no longer "boring". In fact, it is not uncommon for the Japanese to modify vans, as can be seen from the Toyota Alphard. Therefore, for Hiace, various body kits, wheels, coilover suspension, and customized interiors are not a problem. Nardi's racing steering wheel, additional racing instruments, six Recaro racing seats, the entire car's customized black and red leather interior, ambient lighting...etc., things seem to be heading in the wrong direction. Generally speaking, the luxurious and comfortable style of VIP is the normal route for this type of van, but car owners seem to be moving in the direction of performance. When it comes to performance, the original Toyota Hiace only has a weak 2.0-liter naturally aspirated engine with only 134 horsepower and 183 Nm of torque. Therefore, the car owner is determined to change this situation, even though upgrading powe
What comes to your mind when you think of a van? Cheap, durable, rear-wheel drive, small in size but easy to install, you can hardly find any shortcomings, but you must not associate them with performance. So have you really ever looked at those vans on the street? Although very practical, most people think that these cars are boring to drive, slow, and useless except for pulling people and cargo. However, in Japan, the situation is somewhat different. As a country with an extremely developed car culture, it can be said that they never change any car, and any model can stand out in their own way, such as this Toyota Hiace. Due to work needs, this car owner usually spends a lot of time with the van. He travels back and forth between Tokyo and Nagoya several times a month. During this one-way journey of about four hours, the ordinary and boring driving process made the car owner start to think: Life is short, why should his good time be consumed by this kind of "boring"? Can this journey be made more interesting? The first thing a car owner should do is to buy a suitable van and then modify it to make it no longer "boring". In fact, it is not uncommon for the Japanese to modify vans, as can be seen from the Toyota Alphard. Therefore, for Hiace, various body kits, wheels, coilover suspension, and customized interiors are not a problem. Nardi's racing steering wheel, additional racing instruments, six Recaro racing seats, the entire car's customized black and red leather interior, ambient lighting...etc., things seem to be heading in the wrong direction. Generally speaking, the luxurious and comfortable style of VIP is the normal route for this type of van, but car owners seem to be moving in the direction of performance. When it comes to performance, the original Toyota Hiace only has a weak 2.0-liter naturally aspirated engine with only 134 horsepower and 183 Nm of torque. Therefore, the car owner is determined to change this situation, even though upgrading power is still a relatively new thing for a van. However, it took the car owner a year to upgrade the power, but the result proved to be worth it! Because he successfully transplanted a Nissan R35GT-R engine into this Hiace! This VR38DETT is installed in the original engine compartment between the front seats, which can directly use the original gearbox and rear wheel drive system without disassembling and modifying the entire Hiace chassis. Since this twin-turbocharged 6-cylinder engine has more than 600 horsepower, the original car's gearbox obviously couldn't bear it, so the owner replaced it with a manual gearbox from another Hiace diesel turbocharged model and added OSgiken's parts to further enhance it. These processes sound simple, but it is not an easy task to cut the gearbox of the Hiace and the gearbox of the GT-R and then reassemble them into a powertrain that can match the work. It was an absolutely insane undertaking, so the owner not only created a super van, but a GT-R version of the Hiace! With the heart of the GT-R perfectly integrated into the body of the Hiace, the owner turned his attention to other parts to match this monster machine. In addition to the previously mentioned interior, the exterior has also been significantly adjusted. The most eye-catching thing is the wide-body fenders. After all, after the power has been increased by nearly 5 times, widening the tires to improve road grip is also a necessary measure. Behind the 19-inch wheels are AP Racing's large brake kits, and Yokohama AD08R tires are responsible for releasing the GT-R's power to the ground without reservation. The customized FinalKonnexion coilover shock absorber not only reduces the height of the car, but also provides the necessary support for the huge car body. After all, car owners not only want to be the "king of straight lines" on high speeds, but also have many curves to solve. A pair of TRUST intercoolers have been modified and can be seen clearly in the front bumper. URAS's carbon fiber rear wing and quad exhaust pipes bring enough hints to prove that this Hiace is definitely not a good kind. The matte black body and the red aero kit on the chassis remind me of the iconic Nissan Nismo paint. Once the GT-R powered Toyota Hiace was completed, the originally unknown owner suddenly became the focus of discussion on the automotive social platform, so much so that even the "Godfather of Drifting" Keiichi Tsuchiya came to test drive the car. He was very impressed with this car. Tsuchiya, who was full of praise for the monster, even offered to take it to Tsukuba Circuit for a few laps. It is worth mentioning that this car has also passed the vehicle inspection of the local transportation department, which means it can be legally driven on the road.
