This year marks the 30th anniversary of Shuichi Shigeno's massively popular street racing manga, Initial D. The series centers on the life of Takumi Fujiwara, a high school student who digs high-stakes racing through narrow mountain passes.

When the manga began its run in 1995, Takumi's car of choice, the Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno that doubles as his dad's tofu delivery vehicle, became synonymous with street racing and drifting. The manga ran for 18 years in Kōdansha’s Weekly Young Magazine, and it inspired a popular animated series in 1998, several video games across numerous consoles, and a recent arcade game.

The story is about Takumi and his colleagues becoming "hashiriya," or street racers. But Takumi initially doesn't take racing or driving very seriously. If he's behind the wheel of his Sprinter Trueno, it's to make a tofu delivery for his dad to the resort at the peak of Mount Akina. That’s a fictional place, but it expertly portrays the heart-stopping twists and steep curves in the roads that snake up many real Japanese mountainsides.

Takumi often practices drifting to pass the time while he makes his deliveries. His tight handling combined with the off-white color of the Sprinter Trueno makes people in the area wonder if there’s a ghost haunting the mountain pass.

When a rival group of racers called the Agaki RedSuns move in on the mountain peak and insist they're after Akina's speed record, Takumi's senior coworker and eventual friend, Iketani Kōichirō, starts to wonder if he can track down this "ghost" and convince him to join his own team, the Speed Stars. He thinks the ghost might be Takumi's father, a former hashiriya himself.

But while Kōichirō is right about there being a phantom driver, he's wrong about who's behind the wheel: It's just Takumi making his early morning tofu deliveries. After agreeing to race, Takumi soundly beats the leader of the RedSuns, Keisuke Takahashi, by out-maneuvering him with tight hairpin turns and other near-deadly feats of driving trickery. From there, Takumi discovers his calling as a hashiriya and goes ripping down the roads for years afterward.

Initial D is still well-loved for being a bit of an underdog story. Takumi doesn't necessarily want to be a racer; things just worked out that way for him, and he decides to confront his own destiny. His dad's faithful Sprinter Trueno became a mascot for street racing in Japan and beyond. It's an underdog itself, as Takumi often finds himself up against bigger, flashier cars. But Takumi emphasizes maneuverability over power, which is how he's able to keep up with (and eventually outduel) his rivals.

Now, Toyota is paying tribute to Initial D's history and the legacy of the Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno with its GR86 RZ sports car. With its sleek, low-riding stature, it's right at home among the speed demons that populate Initial D's fast-paced world. You can even see the GR86 RZ zipping through Initial D The Arcade, a 2021 arcade racing game. In 2022, the GR86 RZ and Initial D also teamed up to make an animated commercial where Takumi engages in a stomach-dropping race up in the mountains. The rivals jostle each other until they reach the end of the line and the driver of the GR86 RZ is revealed: Takumi's own father and former street racing legend, Bunta Fujiwara.

While the AE86 and GR86 will be forever associated with Initial D, Toyota populates racetracks around the world with all kinds of vehicles. Racing fiends with pedal-to-the-metal appetites can watch Toyota Gazoo Racing's motorsports tear up the tracks worldwide, from Formula One to NASCAR and beyond. Maybe no person alive can out-drive the legendary Takumi Fujiwara, but TGR’s drivers can put on one heck of a show.

The Initial D manga’s run has been done for some time, but its spirit is alive and well — you can still see its influence in racing games and movies today as well as through motorsport divisions like TGR. Mangaka Shuichi Shigeno depicted cars in a way that made them characters themselves, proving there are many ways to make an impression on the world.