Thought this was an interesting read that some of you may already be aware of.
Most people who play video games have played “Midnight Club,” where you race around the city at night, collecting cars, cash, and parts to make your collection different from everybody else’s. That game originated from the real Mid Night (note the space in between the words) Club, in which members of Japan’s finest tuners would drive at full throttle down the Bayshore Route (Wangan) highway deep into the wee hours of the morning.
As much fun as Midnight Club the game is, it is not even remotely similar to the real events which happened between early 1988 and mid 1999…
In the late 80s, amid the re-spawn of tye dye shirts, and big shoulder pads, there was a group which was starting to come up through the woodwork in Japan. We have seen this group before, with their wild cars, and they were called the Bosozoku. The Bosozoku were an ambitious group, one of sporadic violence, and at the time they would deliberately try to scare drivers who were only on their nightly commute to work, by speeding down the highway at violent speeds on motorcycles.
These Bosozoku however had some trouble with owners of high end sports cars, who would get overtaken by a few violent jokers on motorcycles, and would floor it, only to watch the motorcyclists disappear in the rear view mirror.
Such anger was ensued, that a club was formed that would go out and race both for fun and for rivalry. This club of high end supercar owners were called the Mid Night Club.
The typical markings of Mid Night Club car owners were at first nothing more then simple bumper stickers, but after they figured out that Bosozoku couldn’t read that from looking behind them on their bikes, they applied them (properly I might add, not reversed like on an Ambulance) to their windshields. That way, as the rider of a Bosozoku was riding, he/she could swivel their heads and see what was trailing them.
Cars in the club were originally Porsche 911s, Ferraris, and other such machines, but as the tuning culture increased, so did the variety of their cars. Soon, Skylines, Supras, and RX-7s were made into Wangan terrors, as they were much cheaper to buy, and could be modified to be much faster then most motorcycles.
By the mid-90s, Mid Night had about 75 members, and it was looking pretty strong. But new laws in Japan started to pin down on them for street racing, and soon the club dwindled down to only about 40 members. They still would meet up every Friday night, at a popular gas station off the Tomei route, in order to organize races, and they would be seen coming in and out of the Daikoku Futo from time to time, looking for challengers.
One night however, in 1999, the group would see its final hurrah.
At approximately 3am on an unknown Friday night in 1999, a member of Bosozoku was driving recklessly down the Wangan, whilst the scared drivers of motorcars were swerving out of his way. The Mid Night Club just happened to be racing in this area, and while he caught up to them, they blinked their lights, unbeknown to the fact that the rider of the motorcycle was in fact drunk.
As they proceeded to race through the traffic, in excess of 160 miles per hour, the Bosozoku rider lost control, and hit a motorist. The motorist crashed into the barricade, dying instantly. The Mid Night Club racers slowed down, and noticed that the Bosozoku rider was also in fact dead.
Due to a policy that the Mid Night Club had organized at their start up, the group disbanded. Their rule was simple, if anyone was to die during the existence of the club, whether a racer, or a motorist, or whether it was indirect or directly the clubs fault, they would disband.
And that they did.
There have been numerous imitators over the years, yet none have lived up to the true stature of the original Mid Night Club. I’ve posted here a very rare picture of a Mid Night Club member car (An all carbon R32 GT-R), and if anyone would like to know of one member of the original club, the most famous of them all, Mr. Smokey Nagata San of TOP SECRET Co. Fame will happily tell anyone about the adventures he had while he was part of the club.
Happy and safe driving to everyone out there.
http://blog.cardomain.com/2009/01/19/the-mid-night-club/#more-9301
