- There's a few things in life that
age like a fine wine.
The Datsun 240z
So beautiful.
So capable of being a fire hazard.
They are.
Then you've got a 67 Camaro.
No doubt, an absolute heater of a car.
Another one, fine wine.
Never had it, but it seems appropriate
considering the analogy that we made
and everybody else seems to say it.
So I'm assuming it's pretty good.
I prefer the bag wine.
The one that you slap that bad boy and pass around
in a camping chair and pray that you don't
lose your little Caesar's pizza.
That's trying its best
to absorb the trash that you drank
for the last six hours.
Either way,
there are cars, parts, and wines, apparently,
and movies, even, that age like a fine wine.
- What are you doing to that...
- And today we're going to talk about one of those brands
that I believe have done that before,
even though no one seems to talk about it
like ever.
It's just one of those things that has disappeared
from the limelight.
It's the acid rain of 2012.
It's the... I'm not entirely sure. Okay?
I'm Alex, @Alex.FI on Instagram.
And today we're going to be diving into the history,
some might even say truth about
the history of Veilside.
Before we get started drop one thing that you know
about Veilside in the comment section below
or something that you want us to read
or understand or ask about or learn about in the next video.
We're going to try and bring back a little bit of this.
And if you haven't heard of Fitment industries before
we started this to talk about all things related
about aftermarket cars, as we found it
near impossible to find what fit our cars
when I came to wheels, tires or suspension.
Which is kind of the whole thing that we did.
So we made a ginormous gallery where you can enter in your
your make model and find out what fits your car
and buy it either through the straight cold, hard cash.
Or if you need a firm
so you can buy it now and pay it later, you can do that.
We don't really judge, but if you got a cool car
at least add it to the gallery.
That'd be like the one thing I would ask for.
Stop scalping, Max.
It's still on your screen.
You're the reason I can't get a PS5.
I shouldn't need to try to buy something.
It should just be available.
- It's not available.
- Veilside is the name
of the game when it comes to fast and furious Tokyo drift.
And it was the reason
that many people likely found
a love with the FDRX7.
Even though mostly nobody knew it was an RX7
until the actual production company said it was,
because the kit removed approximately
95% resemblance from the stock body.
Which is something Veilside actually does.
Either way, Veilside Co.LTD was originally founded
in 1990 by a man named Yokomaku Hironao.
The name, Veilside can be broken down into
"veil" and "side."
"Yoko" from "Yokomaku", which means "side"
and "maku", meaning "veil", like a veil.
Veilside.
That's his name.
It's pretty catchy, actually. Okay.
So Mr. Yokomaku,
I'm trying not to mess this up,
started this company initially, not based
on any sort of body kits actually, but performance tuning.
It had nothing to do with body kits of any time.
Located near the classic, oh gosh.
Tsukuba Circuit Race Course.
Yokomaku would spend time using the startup business years
helping others with tuning adjustments
for the race cars to funnel
into his own passion of racing cars.
That was it. Just like a lot
of the companies that from overseas and in Japan
they fueled their business to fuel their passion for racing.
And for those that don't know Veilside was not
just known for having fast cars.
They weren't just known for having quick spirited vehicles.
Okay. They were known for having some
of the fastest rocket ships known to man.
Like, in the history of the world, they had some
of the fastest cars ever like gnarly quick!
So much so, that people knew them
for this like record breaking thing. Okay?
They initially started developing body kits to help
with drag and allow their very insane cars to
say connections to the road.
And Veilside was making mothers cry with vehicles
like their BNR 34 that broke the street world record
of 340 kilometers per hour
Which is 211 miles per hour back in the day on street tires!
They had a JZA80 super with 1200 horsepower
with a top mounted turbo, large core inter cooler
and there was relocated radiator to the rear
with a snorkel that look at it
and give Taco Bell a little run for its money.
Okay? The thing was huge!
You put a child in that thing.
It was really funky looking, but it was quick.
It was extremely fast.
But the start was a hundred percent tuning until about 1993.
when they begin out on officially making aero parts
for their cars, performance, and actually selling them
out to people that wanted them,
which a lot of people did.
They got the official authorization in July of 1995,
but Hey, tomato, tomato, all right.
They began making aero parts in 1993
because that's when he said it did.
But it was for the overall change of the car.
Meaning that Mr.Yokomaku wanted to make
make their cars to be a complete performance package.
They wanted to do everything.
Tuning, aero, wheels, tires, suspension,
but not from Fitment Industries.com
because it was in 1993.
But Hey, the man's got a taste and an idea
and I respect that.
That was the vision.
And so for him to do it all
he needed to be able to source it all.
And it started off really well for them.
Because their name was already known for their performance
everybody just picked up their body kits
because they thought that that's what they needed to do.
But what started as a total transformation
and what they wanted to do with every customer
began to turn into people just requesting
to buy just the body kits.
Just those pieces.
Damn millennials
and their want to only have aesthetic parts!
Okay, this actually happened back in the 90's, okay?
So, calm your
Over time, the tuning images of
Veilside started to slowly go away
from just performance and go towards body kits.
But Veilside kept pushing
into the performance and racing perspective
of their brand for as long as they could.
Specifically considering that the owner really just did all
that other stuff to fuel their racing heritage.
Veilside would introduce their
very own throttle bodies,
their own coil overs, their exhaust systems,
wings, and all that "funky, thick
with two C's and probably a K" era.
Overtime, Veilside's image
became something people want it to have.
And as cars began to be released
during the pinnacle of JDM performance sports cars,
which is like 1992 to 1997,
Veilside would be a brand
or, "the brand" many turn to for a crazy modification list.
That's pretty expensive.
I mean, it wasn't cheap by any means.
But people paid it.
Veilside would go through the years
using the president's vision for each body kit
using a pretty basic process.
He'd grab some clay, hand-lay the kit on a car
to the way that he wants,
and then they would just,
that would be the whole thing.
I'm very excited because they have, or had,
Veilside Ferrari kit, which was fricking awesome!
What the hell?
You never see that no "Tokyo Drift".
But it was whatever.
As the years went on,
Veilside ultimately grabbed the attention of people
across the water that were beginning to truly
become infatuated with JDM design and heritage.
This was becoming a really big thing
as we get further into the 90's
and into the early 2000's.
Veilside would begin to handle the full array
of aftermarket components for the Toyota Supra,
the Mazda RX7,
the Subaru Impreza, the Mitsubishi FTO,
and even the Mitsubishi Evo, some Porsche models, BMW
and even a touch of Italian cars in there, like the Ferrari.
There's quite a bit of love for Veilside
in The Fast and Furious series, as well.
Which is probably what spawned a lot
of the continued interest in the domestic world.
You'd see the "family man".
Wait, family, family.
- I'm Vin Diesel.
- On the Veilside RX7,
Suki's S2002 in "2 Fast 2 Furious",
for the short screen time.
"Tokyo Drift" had a Veilside RX7, obviously.
The STI in the fourth one had a Veilside body kit.
"Fast Five", it's in there.
Nearly every single movie has a Veilside car in it.
It's like an Easter egg game.
Go try and find them all.
The Veilside name would introduce
Veilside USA models and all that sort of stuff
within Veilside USA, such as the D1GT kit,
the Combat series, the Fortune kit and so many more,
especially as they started to open their borders to try
and sell to everyone across the world.
As the years progressed,
the body kits will continue to remain extreme.
Capturing the wants and needs
of those that bought anything from Veilside.
VIP's and celebrities wanted something unique,
excessive and completely out of taste
without needing all the performance stuff.
So over time, Veilside entertained that
and they did make things that were just completely wonky
and just out of this world.
Veilside would make an H2 Hummer
and Bentley conversions for the JZA80 Supra.
I mean, they did that as a real thing.
If you want nightmares, go look it up.
I mean, they did quite a bit of just really weird stuff.
And after that,
Veilside really just kind of fell off the map.
But we're not here just to...
Sorry, that's the wrong series.
So what happened?
Veilside was the first to
make a bomb shape muffler made from round pipe.
If you guys ever noticed back in the past
that was a huge thing, especially in the early 2000's
that your muffler was designed a certain way.
Veilside, like, coined that design.
That design element was Veilside's thing.
They built 1400 horsepower cars like nobody's business
that could run eight on streets tires.
Now, I say street tires,
and I know sometimes they ran drags,
but for the most part
a lot of their records were made with street tires.
All right?
They even audited those that bought these cars
to make sure that they could handle it.
They had iconic racers
like Tetsuya Kawasaki running their cars.
They had the fastest R32 street legal tires.
You know how hard that is to do
on street legal tires?
You know how much easier it is when the rubber is just
strictly made to melt onto the asphalt?
They didn't do that.
They ran like some minnows, or something.
Well, they're still making body kits.
But it's just not as crazy as it once was.
And I don't mean in the design
because some of Veilside's stuff is still pretty nuts.
They've some still very ridiculous stuff out there
that was, like, super cool.
That, I'm not so sure about it now.
They're one of the first
to the over fender wide-body games. Hands down.
And in addition, what made Veilside
so unique was just how much they changed
on the car that practically made it look nothing
like the original car, save for the roof.
This was something that they were very, very proud of.
But as of the 21st century,
and as that whole very interesting century rolled in
and rolled through the design cues outside
of likely that RX7 Fortune kit dated pretty dang hard.
All right? And the days of wanting a full body
over transformation were replaced
with people just simply wanting over fenders.
And after that, it was over fender kits.
But the kids still retain some of the OEM look
which is more aggressive body styling
that was more wedge styled like a good old block of cheese.
Narrower in the front and wider in the rear.
If you look at kits these days this is what they do.
And Veilside didn't do that. Veilside did this.
And it's just wide, absolutely everywhere.
And while the kits were initially made
for function and rightfully so,
that styling really didn't meet the
same parts of enthusiasts the late 2010s as it did
for those in the late 90's and early 2000's.
And over time, their heritage couldn't meet up
with the demand of people
and the companies that were now coming
into the freight to offer similar things
but with a more trendy style.
Regardless of the current performance of Veilside
the company itself stands for something truly special
in the Japanese aftermarket community.
I mean, when you really look at it,
I mean, Hironao didn't like to use a stroke engine
because he feels like the engines character is lost.
He just didn't enjoy doing it.
So all of his cars are tried to be based
off of the RB stock platform.
He enjoys the RB's peakiness and high revving engine style.
It's his thing.
While, he understands it,
he still prefers a high revving car
and he doesn't want to stroke the motor
out any more past that to lose that soul.
It's just a very respectful thing.
And it's the same thing with street tires.
He runs them on street tires because it's his thing.
This seems to be a common occurrence with these brands
especially brands that are over in Japan.
And I think this is why a lot of
the reasons people absolutely love them.
It's based on a principle
that keeps them making what they love
regardless of the trends that seem to edge either
for or against whatever it is that they're doing.
They held a pillar of the aftermarket community
and are likely one of the main reasons
so many aftermarket body part companies exist to this day.
Their kits inspired thousands,
if not tens of thousands of people to want an RX7.
And they traveled the world breaking records,
which is something that most, if not any,
automotive driving enthusiast would just
love to do, they built a name.
And it's one of those names
that carried the success for people like you
and people like me in 2020 to enjoy JDM cars.
And so for that Veilside, it gets a warm "W" in my heart.
Could also be coffee.
But what do you think about Veilside?
Worth it or not?
Let us know below.
And if you're looking for it, I got wheels,
tires, or suspension, be sure to let us know
or be sure to check us out
at fitmentindustries.com.
I think that...
Right.
Okay. Well, I'm Alex from Fitment Industries.
We'll see you later.