- Where's my cigarette?
Every one of these guys
has a (bleep) cigarette every time!
Rocket Bunny.
Pandem.
Four-Six Customs.
Really wide boys.
The official kit of the FRS and the BRZ.
The man with the side burns
that would make Elvis Presley jealous.
Taking you back to 1970 little Kei Miura came into the world
and said, I wanna be a fisherman.
We're just gonna rewrite history,
he actually came into the world and he said
I wanna make cars like super wide,
like not just wide but like big boys,
like really cool big, wide boys.
Like with cool car parts
and I wanna drive around cool cars.
That's actually what he started out with,
definitely not the fish part.
He didn't actually start out with cars,
Miura would find himself
in and out of the Bosozoku Motorcycle gangs
and groups until he managed to muster up enough cash
to step up to the automotive gang, which if you take it back
into the days of Japan back with the baby boomers,
that was actually something that was extremely exciting
and new for that culture at the time.
It didn't really take too long for him to get involved
into all sorts of tom foolery because
when he got his license in 1988,
he found himself a nice little AE86
for right around 4000 dollars
and did what any proper kid would probably do to an AE86.
Suspension mods, after market wheels and a body kit.
Not much really has changed, just different years, I guess.
From there the radioactive spider
that we call the automotive scene bit Miura
and was absolutely hooked.
Starting out as a proper delinquent
that lowered cars in Japan, Miura found himself starting out
on the Kanjo, Kanjo, on the Kanjo, Kanjo!
Started on the Kanjo highway loop
and he took whatever he had from the AE86 to his,
oh, I don't know, nothing really too special,
maybe just like a stripped out Honda Civic EF,
with a transplant B16A without license plates.
He'd sneak out there, mosey his way up real close
to a car in front of him and was like,
oh hey there bud, could I just maybe scoot
in there behind you on the tollway,
and he'd weasel his way
onto the loop without having to actually pay.
Mother (bleep) just like snuck past tolls by tailgating.
Love it.
Miura would then snap on his favorite Halloween mask,
a hockey mask, and go tear it up.
As Miura grew more and more into the scene,
so did his love for creating trinkets, like stuff,
you know, like tangible (bleep).
I don't know what I'm looking at down here,
it's just like a thing.
It's a weird twitch that I got goin' on.
He would grow within the boom of the tuning culture
of the 80s, becoming influenced from everything from
the Bosozoku trends to the Kyusha.
Miura would find himself being involved with nearly
every Japanese tuning scene from the weekend on the Togei,
which by the way, words that aren't English,
we've talked about this before okay,
I apologize for not pronouncing it correctly,
Togei or Toge, maybe we could say.
So it appears that expressways that enveloped the Kansai
area of Japan, Kansai.
But Miura wasn't set on destroying city roads
and drifting suburban alleyways
for the remainder of his days, oh no.
This Head and Shoulders sponsor wanted more.
It's story time.
When Miura was just 18 in 1988 he found himself staring
at a beautiful, minty fresh B10 Sunny.
And as any proffered enthusiast would do, he walked in
to find the owner of the dealership.
Called (clears throat) Rosato.
To inquire about the car. (clears throat)
Hold on there sport, I don't like you, your hair is funny.
Miura, he had, kind of had this poofy, blonde, permed
hair thing because Miura and a lot of people that seemed
to cut up cars in Japan had really crazy hair.
But he wanted the car so much that the next day
he went and actually got his hair dyed and he came back
to purchase that exact same car and the guy was like,
(laughs) she's sold there bud,
maybe you should have done normal hair, aye?
But don't worry we got a Five Ten out there back
that I'll sell ya, which by the way do you race?
Because you think about going to one of the races here
that we have that we're hosting up here, if you say that
you're actually a real racer.
And there's some more official language discussed
but the dealership owner actually ended up egging him on
to purchase the vehicle then go out
and race that very same day.
It actually ended up working out because Miura ended up
working for that same man to make custom car parts for him.
Sure beat the old day job doing FRP molding in a factory.
He would go on to make parts for the Porsche 911.
The Ferrari Dino, which by the way,
he had absolutely no idea he was making car parts for
at the time.
And the racing cars for Datsun, unofficially,
maybe officially, we really don't know.
Though the years he shook babies and kissed hands
with people from companies like Hayashi Racing,
which ended up teaching him how to engineer his own wheels.
No degree, no nothing, just straight, self taught knowledge,
and an eye for making a car truly unique.
Time passed and eventually Kiura, Miura, eventually Kimiura,
eventually, time passed and eventually Miura
wanted to make something his own, the reason that he founded
Tops Racing Arts Kyoto in 1995,
in the bustling area of Kyoto, Japan.
Using his friends and resources from Kyoto University,
Miura would end up creating his very own
Engineering and CAD system for creating
products for this company.
Some say he even uses the Xbox Kinect,
but that's, you know, that's a forum, that's not fact
and we're here to teach you things.
Over time he used this engineering process
to create parts for other automotive companies
but with like a little, a little
(smacks lips) touch of individualism.
You see TRA Kyoto uses 3D scanning
and then will actually end up
cutting a mold of polystyrene
and ensuring that every product is built like,
the plastic essentially is made to spec.
Instead of using clay to make the mold here
he's able to more actively work on their products
in a speed that was pretty much unheard of at the time,
and it still is one of the fastest ways
that you can produce parts.
This made Miura untouchable when it came down
to making parts both small and large,
batches.
Without taking forever, unfortunately the thing is,
is that with many partnerships TRA was making,
they were strict hush hush deals.
While Miura could do something creative,
he wanted to do something different
that he wouldn't really have to like,
get approval for and you'd probably guess
what he ended up making stuff on.
Oh my gosh Alex, where is the Rocket Bunny information?
Calm down there bud.
Ever since TRA Kyoto was founded Miura wanted
to build something upon like the body kit idea
for different platforms
and essentially that's what Rocket Bunny is.
Founded the name under a coffee cup that he had in his shop
the brand Rocket Bunny was born and rumors have it
that the Rocket Bunny lineup was originally for Kei Cars.
Kei Cars, while Four-Six Customs was for the S Chassis.
However the name Rocket Bunny has become so common place
that everyone just associates the TRA Kyoto kits
with Rocket Bunny even if they
(clears throat) are not.
Fun fact for all you whippersnappers out there
the Rocket Bunny logo is not the symbol for okay,
it's actually the hand sign symbol for condom.
(sniffs and clears throat)
I wish I was making it up.
Originally the perfect circle okay symbol
came from the Okamoto Rubber Manufacturing company,
that's just it, and yeah, there you go.
Rocket Bunny is a brand line underneath the TRA Kyoto line
with the Four-Six Customs, Number Six, Pandem,
and Rocket Bunny and everything in between.
They're just pretty much all product lines
underneath the TRA Kyoto umbrella.
You see TRA makes products for other brands,
like about 20 of them, to really be honest,
and I mean just like his own.
He's done things like wheel designs for NK in the past,
Hayashi Racing, and Liberty Walk
and to smaller shops in Kyoto
requesting more unique products for racing.
TRA Kyoto does it all,
I mean Miura is involved a hundred percent,
from start to finish with his kits
to ensure every product is exactly the way it ought to be.
No massive production system at the works here,
just a man with a smoking habit that loves making
overfenders slash deck lids and body panels
and bon appetit parts.
Rocket Bunny was born with a vision that allowed Miura
to make a car the way that he thought would be different
and fun and unique, without actually destroying
what made the car the car.
Taking pride from historical Japanese cars of his youth,
Miura blends each vehicle's style into that.
The goal was to be unintrusive yet unique.
His first car however was actually intended to be
for Keis, Keis like the Suzuki Wagon R,
but we'll look past that.
The TRA shop looks like it's something out of,
like, an American Pickers episode as it's packed
pretty much to the max with items that inspire him.
There's things like vintage video games, old computers,
DVDs, vintage wheels, you name it, it's probably there.
It's like a, like a Resto to 1980s.
But besides that the shop isn't some sort of mega
large corporation, it's a garage, tools and stuff.
Video games, cigarette butts, like, just things.
Miura set TRA Kyoto apart by taking a step that most
were afraid to take.
By developing this technology and these methods
of making the parts paired with a sense of style and design
that made the car different, he pretty much became like
one of the go to guys for genuine design.
The name Rocket Bunny began to truly explode
with the introduction of the FRS and BRZ kits
and it's involvement in the Tokyo Auto Salon
in the early 2000s and into the 2010s.
But with this growth the shop and style stayed
the way it was, it was, I mean originally it's like a
Bosozoku car adaptation, that was what made it so unique.
The eye that Miura eventually started to grow from his like
Bosozoku riding days and all of that unique (bleep)
to this canyon runs with the A86,
pretty much was a result of
what Rocket Bunny became to be and a lot of other companies
saw that as well and a lot of private companies started
to use TRA Kyoto to make their (bleep) too.
Rocket Bunny's a facet of a style that's been imprinted
in Miura San's brain since he was a child
and while this is a newer style for most of us
over yonder way in the U.S of America,
it's actually something that's been
a thing for quite a while.
It seems like we're always the last ones to get one,
like I thought the Midwest was the last to get all
the cool styles, like all the Yeezy's
and all of the supreme stuff
is like coming into the Midwest,
but like you ask my boy Arturo over in the West Coast
and he's like, nah bro that's been a thing for a while now,
and it just makes me sad but now I get to learn
that not just like our style in the Midwest
is delayed by five years.
I've also learned that our car adaptation
of what we appreciate of the JDM scene is only,
I don't know, 20 years behind,
so we should catch up eventually
and that's the exciting thing.
We hope you guys enjoyed,
don't forget to drop a comment below
on what you'd like to see us talk about next,
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Hit me up with a sponsor plug, I'm not a sellout,
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I'm Alex from Fitment Industries,
we will see you later, peace!