Contributor: 'The Fast and the Furious' took the Asians out of an Asian American story
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For my 50th birthday, I bought a Toyota Corolla.Wait.
Is my midlife crisis car really a Corolla, the best selling and most boring model of all time?Well, yes.And no.I have “modded” it, or in layman’s terms, modified the stock components and tuned the engine.
This is not your aunt’s Corolla.When I hit the gas, the car pulls hard and the engine buzzes as if it’s powered by a hive of killer bees.I get thumbs-ups from Mustang drivers and cool head nods from Challenger owners.
My favorite is when kids at red lights ask me to rev the engine like I’m F1 driver Lewis Hamilton.Probably a lot of my drive-by admirers are fans of the movie “The Fast and the Furious,” which was released 25 years ago this month.Fans of modified Japanese import cars, like me, have a love-hate relationship with the $7 billion “Fast and Furious” franchise.
On one hand, the movies helped popularize modified Japanese cars.People all over the world fell in love with them and the import car culture they publicized.On the other hand, the movies left out so, so much of the story.In Southern California in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, people lived, for the most part, phone-free.
The internet was nascent — a repository for flyers and ’zines — and most websites looked like Tetris.The fashion was baggy everything for guys and short shorts, midriffs and little backpacks for girls.The hair was outrageous.
And the cars, especially Japanese import cars, had reached the pinnacle of automotive engineering.During this era, I was in college at UCLA.I saved up and bought a red 1989 Honda CRX Si.
It also had a slick five-speed manual transmission, peppy engine and nimble steering.That car got me to work and through college, and from the mountains of California to the border of Oregon.
It probably helped me get girlfriends.It consoled me through breakups.
It helped me move to the San Francisco Bay Ar...