- Japanese tuner Liberty Walk has stunned the world repeatedly with its wild takes on modified classics.
- This new livery gives the two Andretti Formula E cars a dash of modified Nissan R34 Skyline.
- This new livery will appear at Japan's first night race for Formula E, adding a frisson of old-school street-racing hijinks.
Fast movers hitting the roads around Tokyo Bay have been part of automotive legend since the earliest days of digital media, low-res captures of hopped-up Supras clocking past 180 mph at midnight. Speed cameras and enforcement have mostly put paid to extra-legal shenanigans, but this month sees the racing go legit, with Formula E staging its first Tokyo night race.
Running third in the Formula E team championship race, Andretti is coming on strong, and is perhaps looking to leverage a little local luck with their livery choice for the Tokyo race. Both of the Gen3 racing cars entered by the team are wearing chrome silver-and-blue liveries designed in collaboration with Liberty Walk, the notorious Nagoya-based tuner.
Founded in the early 1990s, Liberty Walk is one of the more delightfully heretical tuning companies out there, not just taking the scalpel and pop-riveter to Toyotas and Nissans, but also messing with the classics. Nothing is safe, from the Lamborghini Miura to the Ferrari F40, all fair game for widebody modifications and slammed suspensions that would ground out on a sheet of A4 printer paper.
Most of Liberty Walk's recent efforts have adopted a signature look of all-white paintwork with a red "Rising Sun" roundel, peppered with sponsor script like a pre-tattoo-removal Pete Davidson. The silver-and-blue look is a bit more of a throwback, and also channels the R34 Skyline as driven by Paul Walker in 2 Fast 2 Furious.
The Tokyo course should be a challenging one, though at least there will be no cargo trucks on the road at the same time the racing occurs. With 18 turns in 1.6 miles, and unforgiving Armco barriers eager to clip an overeager driver's wings, precision driving will be as important as pace.
Altogether, the time and place should add a nitro shot of excitement into a sport that's still trying to grow its audience. Liberty Walk has a bit of an advantage in that its builds don't even have to move to look thrilling. Andretti's two Formula-E cars have to be both fast and furious-looking.
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Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki's half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels.
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