Toshi Hayama: Host of JDM Insider, Founder of Apex'i USA, Fast and the Furious Consultant (S1E6)

Most people today recognize Toshi Hayama for his heavy involvement with the Fast and the Furious franchise movies. However, Toshi's influence on US import culture goes all the way back to the mid 90s when he started Apex'I USA. With Apex'i, he was able to broaden Apex Japan's product offering to include tuning parts for the ever popular Honda market in the USA. He brought over from Japan the Apex R33 GT-R for drag racing and ultimately the infamous FD3S driven by Yoichi Imamura for D1 Grand Prix.

[motohidemiwa]

Toshi was the eloquent guy who saved us all in that era. He represented all of us so professionally and with such heart and passion. He deserved credit for everything he gets accolades and much much more.

[ewoknative]

great podcast!!! love thinking about the early 2000’s car scene. you guys should interview Dado Carvalho from the Mischief Vidoes. when grip video, 360, and all these guys were doing the cannonball runs.

[jdmkai]

I remember watching Tokyo Drift when it first came out (2006 I believe) and saw Toshi in those cameo scenes. I was like that's Toshi from JDM Insider! After the movie I could tell he had some sort of involvement with the cars for sure.

[the.ghost.behind.u]

I was a huge fan of the JDM Insider series n it was bcuz of those I found out about Takahiro Ueno and Car Make T&E Vertex n fell in love with Vertex and the JZZ30 Soarer n just made me fall in love with jdm tuning n drifting thanks to Toshi

[bigdfitness]

I started from Episode 1 and have been working my way here. Toshi Hayama is one of the ones I was most looking forward to

[yanimator]

love the part about tokyo drift! i agree it was a little cringe when it came out back then and I think i sold my car (86) around that same time because it was getting way too popular. but now that i look back at it, it's one of my favorite "true" car FnF movies. really cool to hear Toshi's story about helping keeping the drifting facts accurate (or trying to). i cant begin to imagine how bad the movie would've been without him.

[samadmirza]

Great Work Guys, Also, if I only knew Toshi was going to sell his R34!!!! DAMN Oh well.

[gms]

Hopefully Toshi can find that lost footage and put out another JDM Insider vid.

[ryanwilson]

Absolutely loved this episode! It was super interesting hearing everyone’s take on the FNF series and being from the younger generation myself and absolutely loving Tokyo Drift growing up lol. Crazy to know that Nadine was part of it as well ! Great episode Benson 🙌🏾

[ianbhalai]

I’m just here for some vibes and I’m off from school, love this podcast. Keep it up Guys🤟🤟

[kenfuji]

3rd! 3 is the magic number!
Wish I still had my APEXI GT Spec catback on my old s13 FB. Loved it. best sounding exhaust on a SR20 ever!

[RollingDude.]

What an amazing podcast! I'm usually not much into podcasts but this one was awesome! Glad to see Toshi and learn about how all this came to be

[urbanizeddreams]

Wow, this was an amazing 2 hours! I honestly was so sad when I saw it was 1:44 and I was like NO DON'T EVER END! haha This is literally the first proper interview with Toshi and the insider information he gave in this podcast was just amazing. (You guys also asked just exactly the right questions haha)
It's funny how he says he doesn't consider himself as role model or a big figure in the industry, but for me and I think many others, I put Toshi Hayama in the realms of Tsuchiya, Orido, Tanugichi I think about drifting and JDM car culture and motorsports!

That being said, another thing I'd like to add regarding what you guys talked about was how we lost a part of the culture with the death of the DVDs in North America. I mean, just Option International, JDM Insider & Best Motoring/Hot Version International brought in so much JDM content that was later lost once everything went bust here and this gap was created.
To this day, i think the gap exists and none of the youtubers (no offense to them) have been able to fill it.
But yeah enough talk, amazing podcast, you guys were also amazing!

[Kiret]

Toshi comes across as a genuine guy, cool convo, thanks for sharing ! :D

[nismonicky]

Work stinks. This makes it much better !💙

[MarkosMylonas]

Man this one is so good! Did I see some photos of Eric Hsu with HAIR?!

Also, y’all’s cameras just keep getting better and better and better!

You should see out RJ DeVera, would love to hear his stories from the same era!

[Joolz]

This was really interesting. As a someone from the U.K, I have mostly only seen Toshi at the U.S GR Supra event videos with Tada San, great to hear stories etc.

[JolteonRacer]

Haa, you guys talked about Tokyo Drift and didn't even mention the fact that Toshi is featured in the FNF PS2 game as a rival? 😆 In all seriousness though, great to have more insight about the scene back then. As a person from Southeast Asia all info I got was just from snippets, videogames, and heck, I even watched a lot of D1 from clips from a pirated copy of the D1 PS2 game.

Didn't know that Toshi is severely underfeatured in Video Option, and that makes me kinda sad though..

[jonj]

Please get Eric on here for his XS story!

[XxsharpshooterXx]

Great Episode!! Can we get Ross Petty on the podcast?