The most complete story behind the groundbreaking old school sportscar that never got its chance.
The two met in the early ‘80s, while Kaira was working for Dome. Tomita, who was a friend of Minoru Hayashi, joined the team for 1980 Le Mans 24h, helping the logistics (like carrying a differential on the plane to Germany). Tommy kaira was born in Kyoto in 1986 as a brand to mark the original products of Tomita Auto Co. Ltd. (http://www.tomitaauto.com).
Yoshikazu baptizes the new adventure by designing and raising the new building for his activities, called "Yume Koujou" (Dream Factory), near the Temple of the Golden Pavilion (Kinkaku-ji) in Kyoto.
The symbol of Tommykaira is rather unusual: a stylized turtle, "filled" with the texture of an air filter. Just as Aesop's fable tortoise achieves its goal slowly but relentlessly, the logo summarizes the entire professional journey of Yoshikazu who, after years of hard work, finally reaches the dream he had as a young guy: building the car of his dreams.
There’s a debate on how the firm is meant to be written. There are many facts in support of the two-word lettering:
all the trademark registrations stored in TMview before 2010 show that Tomita and Komura always applied for a two-word script, even when the turtle logo was registered in 1995. Only after 2010, when the trademark was lent to ER Corporation, the script became one-word, but the font is different and the script is all uppercase. After ER dismissed the trademark, another logo+script trademark was registered, and this shows the two-word writing.
the writing on the logos theirselves suggests that the script is made of two words: in the old logo the two words are in different fonts and size, while in the turtle logo the Y and the K aren’t tied, while all the others conversely do.
While in support of the one-word script there are two other observations:
in many translators, the one-word script is translated correctly as トミーカイラ, which is the wording always used to refer to the manufacturer itself. If we try to translate the two-word script, sometimes a dot divides the two word. The dot is used to separate two foreign words, so that japanese readers know when the first word ends and the next starts.
The script in the logo could have been conceived without the word division issue in mind, so that, even if the words are separated, they could actually be intended to be joined together. If this was true, the script trademarked could be covering only the words in the logo, but not the word of the manufacturer itself, which would be Tommykaira.
Tomita began his experience in tuning in late seventies, when he was still importing luxury cars and sportscars. Inspired by the famous SEL “Red Pig” that owned the Spa24H, he took his 350SL and upgraded its suspensions and steering, discovering the potential of that car. Later he developed a bolt-on turbocharger kit together with BAE (Bob's Automotive Engineering, a company specialised in turbo kits), the “Turbo Hayate”, for the Mercedes SEC.
He moved on to importing AMG, since 1980. The choice fell on AMG as Yoshikazu admired the German company for selling road legal tuned cars, which in turn had bad reputation in Japan. The agreement with AMG was signed on the road back home from the Le Mans 24h 1980, which Tomita attended along with the Dome team. In the picture, you can see from left to right: journalist Giancarlo Perini (translating from English to German), Hans-Werner Aufrecht (AMG manager), Masahiko Kaneko (translating from Japanese to English) and Yoshikazu Tomita.
Within a few years the agreement failed due to image issues, so around 1984 Tomita began importing Hartge BMWs as Hartge Japan Co. Ltd. He was team principal of the Auto Beurex team with which the BMW 635 CSi won the JTC title in 1985.
If you remember, Yoshikazu worked for a Kyoto Nissan dealership in his twenties. He became really close with the boss, who was also president of the Kyoto Association of Corporate Executives, he considered him as an elder brother. It was his friend who recommended Tomita to Nissan.
One day in 1985 Yoshikazu was in Tokyo for a business trip and he got a call warning that a team of Nissan executives was waiting for him in Kyoto. They waited for him in a high end restaurant, and among those there were his friend and Nissan chairman Takashi Ishihara. He was designated to develop the Sunny and the Skyline that would have gone into Nissan’s European Collection. He and Kaira were invited to Nissan design facilities, where Yoshikazu was appointed for interior mods, while Kikuo for test driving. They also were developing tuned versions of the Sunny B12 for its 20th anniversary in 1986, one Hartge and one for the European Collection.
At the same time, Tomita and Kaira were developing their own tuned Skyline for Hartge Japan Co., but Nismo’s Yasuharu Nanba declared Hartge as enemies for defeating Nismo in the 1985 Japanese TouringCar Championship (JTC). So, the European Collection R31 was given to Nismo, which turned it into the GTS Nismo Early Version, and then into the GTS-R. The Hartge HS30 was developed independently by Tomita Auto, but since Tomita wanted to retain the agreement with Nissan he had to drop the Hartge brand, and this was the chance to create Tommy kaira.
Since the Skyline needed more development, Tomita launched his new brand with a tuned Mercedes 190E 2.0, called the Tommy kaira M19. Tomita says that his M19 outran the 190E 2.3 Cosworth of the Yakuza.
The tuned Skyline introduced in 1987 became the second model offered: the 240HP and 300Nm M30, based on the R31 Skyline GTS, faster than the GTS-R. Only a few details were modified compared to the Hartge variant: the darker color and the badge with the script of the model, which however retained a font similar to the BMW one that was used for the Hartges.
The Tommy Kaira M30 was therefore the first officially recognized tuned car of Japan, and it vastly helped in improving the image of the modified car in the country, seen by the others as an object for hooligans up to that moment.
Tommy Kaira production ranged from minivans such as the Pleo and the Cube, going through the March, then the Forester, the Legacy, the Cima, the Impreza, the Silvia, the Stagea, the Fairlady Z and finally the Skyline.
Thanks to its widespread presence in the catalogs, the brand became popular not only among the top performing car enthusiasts such as the Skyline and the Fairlady Z, but also among the modest cars owners, who could feel special without having to commit to a vehicle outside their reach.
The M30 was so successful among Nissan dealers that Tommy Kaira was given the chance to showcase their new March-based M13 at the Nissan Gallery in Ginza.
For the March and the ER34 GT Turbo, Tomita had even managed to insert its parts in the official catalogs of some Nissan Prince Stores, as options available at the time of purchase, helping both Nissan and Tommy Kaira sales, which in 1994 exceeded a thousand models.
Tomita says that the 1991 350HP Z32 M30Z was the first production car to reach 290 kilometers per hour in the Yatabe ring, and in fact it was the first Japanese sportscar to "break" the 280PS agreement.
The Skyline became the flagship model of Tommy Kaira, both in 2.0 (R31 and R32) and 3.0 (R31) and in 2.5 (rear-wheel drive top trim) and 2.6 (GT-R) versions. It was even shown to Nissan Tokyo factory workers by Nissan theirselves.
The R was brought in 2001 at the Autobacs Greeting Day at Twin Ring Motegi, where, according to Tomita, Aguri Suzuki praised the car since it felt exactly like its Super Taikyu counterpart, but with road usable brakes, and that Keiichi Tsuchiya was amazed by its balance.
