Video: Japan’s weird modified cars are the weirdest modified cars

We’ve reported on the weirder corners of Japan's car culture before. But here’s a Sunday morning meet that’ll leave you rubbing your eyes and plugging your ears.

Click play above to see a bevy of bonkers ‘Bosozoku’ cars peeling off Tokyo’s sky-high, multi-layered expressway and into the famous Daikoku parking area for a perforating early morning get-together.

It won’t take you long to notice that these cars aren’t your normal run-of-the-mill GC210 Skylines, Z10 Soarers and Toyota Chasers.

See, Bosozoku translates as ‘violent running-tribe’, but in this context is an aesthetic and car subculture with its roots in 1950s motorcycle gangs. 

Back then, to show their frustration at the new wave of social consumption, some bikers broke the strict and stringent rules of Japan by riding wildly modified, unsilenced motorbikes with crazy fairings and seatbacks like Beckham-spec wedding thrones.

This visual vibe found its way into the world of four wheels, and merged with the frowny bodywork and crazy spoilers of silhouette racers of the 70s and 80s. It then progressed further to add slammed suspension, exhausts that touch the sky, pseudo 'ground effect' overbites and oil coolers hanging off the front bumper.

But as you’ll hear, one trait has remained since the biker days: the Boso love for revving engines and sitting on the redline.

Weird good? Weird bad? Or just… weird weird?