MR TOP SECRET
Two decades after he was caught attempting 200mph on a British road, the planet’s fastest chain smoker reveals all
Or Smokey Nagata to his friends. The infamous speed (and smoke) hound tells us about that run up the A1(M)
AT AROUND 4AM ON NOVEMBER 4, 1998, KAZUHIKO ‘SMOKEY’ NAGATA PULLED OFF THE HARD SHOULDER INTO LANE TWO OF THE A1(M) AND CAME TO A STOP.
With rain falling and the mercury hovering just above freezing, he pinned the throttle, dropped the clutch and performed a monstrous burnout in the middle of the road. With the Midlands suitably sluiced in tyre smoke, he gunned his heavily modified, 1,003bhp, Japanese-registered, gold-painted Toyota Supra with one aim in mind: hitting 200mph.
Due to some complications (the engine running lean on one run, the car wanting to jettison its bonnet at 190-odd on another), he had a few attempts, but ultimately fell short of the double ton – clocking 194mph. Still a bonkers number, and more than enough to unofficially claim the dubious record of the fastest speed ever reached by a car on a UK public highway. But, ominously, the winter darkness then filled with blue lights as the police made chase, eventually nicking him, resulting in Smokey having a night at Her Majesty’s pleasure before fleeing back to Japan, worried his tuning company was going to go under. In reality, quite the opposite happened.
His escapades hit the headlines, and the grainy footage of him squirrelling down the motorway from the cameras gaffer-taped to the car went VHS viral – instantly catapulting him to legendary status within the tuning community. It was the ultimate ballsy PR tool for his company – Top Secret – proving that his cars were the real deal.
Fast-forward 20-odd years and the perpetual nature of social-media algorithms has propelled the ludicrous footage of that cold, wet night to a new generation. And it never gets any less impressive. Or mad. So, two decades on, TopGear’s come to Japan to learn a bit more about the man, the myth and the legend of that seminal night.
“What do you want to know?” Smokey says, crossing his legs while exhaling a thick cloud of smoke in front of one of his iconic cars. We’re at his tuning facility in Chiba, and I’m not afraid to admit it, I’m a little star-struck. Smokey is an OG internet celebrity to millennials; a viral superstar who predates Kim Kardashian, Ronnie Pickering and that lady who threw a cat in a bin. And it really doesn’t take long to work out why he got his nickname. He’s a proper, old-school habitual chuffer; it’s rare that the 56-year-old doesn’t have a cigarette loosely hanging from his lips.
But considering his infamy as a 200mph maniac, Smokey doesn’t have the look of a menace to society. He’s softly spoken and anxiously fidgets in conversation, often cowering back into a shell of introversion that wraps around his stunted, slight frame. But it’s unwise to judge him by his mannerisms. Inside, there’s a burning extrovert. One that doesn’t stand for social suppression or authority. Yet, weirdly, this trait is only exercised in and around cars.
“I grew up on a farm in Hokkaido,” he says, dragging in a hefty toke from his cigarette. “It’s Japan’s northernmost prefecture – so there’s not much going on. But my father loved driving fast, so I became obsessed with the sensation of speed and started tinkering with cars. I bought my first when I was 15 years old – a Mitsubishi Galant GTO. But I struggled to fix it, so a local boss at Toyota helped me get it running. When we did, I started driving it to school. But, being only 16, it was illegal. So when the teachers found out, I was expelled.”
This, as you’ll learn, won’t be Smokey’s only tussle with authority in his life.
“The boss from Toyota felt responsible, as he got the car running, so gave me a job at Toyota when I was just 16. I’m probably the youngest employee they ever had and worked really hard as a mechanic for four years. Then I got fired. I bought a Celica and started modifying it during work, so they said I had to go.”
Ah, yes. Outside work, Smokey was spending his spare time thrashing his Celica around the mountains of Hokkaido. But with a non-existent race scene, he packed his bags and moved 800 miles to Tokyo to try to fulfil his dream of becoming a race driver.
“I had no money, so joined the tuning company Trust, the company behind GReddy. I was only allowed to make mufflers and work on turbos but I wanted more. I wanted to tune for top speed. So, after hours, I would work on my own projects at the shop. The bosses found out and weren’t happy, but turned a blind eye as they didn’t want to lose me. So it was our secret. Top secret.”
Hence the name of the pioneering tuning company he set up on the sly and has been running for nearly three decades. And you can see why Nagata-san got itchy fingers at Trust – it was the early Nineties, when a perfect storm of events was brewing, eventually making for an automotive renaissance and golden era of tuning. JDM cars with massive potential and exploitable performance were being released. Cars like the Nissan R32 GT-R, Toyota Supra and Mazda RX-7.
Tuners went properly crackers at this time, uncorking them to see how fast they’d go. It compounded in a near-pathological obsession with speed. Zero-300kph run times at Yatabe’s oval proving ground became most valuable currency in the scene. Then, with the connection of new, free-running motorways, top speed runs started spilling out onto the streets, specifically the Aqua-Line, a 9.6km tunnel underneath Tokyo Bay that late at night would become Smokey’s subterranean test track.
“MY FATHER LOVED DRIVING FAST, SO I BECAME OBSESSED WITH THE SENSATION OF SPEED”