RIP Yatabe Test Course

For the past 10 years or so racing circuits like Tsukuba and Fuji have been the biggest proving grounds for both Japanese OEM performance and for the tuning industry. But it hasn't always been this way. There was a time when Japan's tuners yearned for flat-out speed alone, and at the center of this movement was the famous Yatabe test course.

Following the rapid growth of the Japanese auto industry in the '60s, the Japan Automobile Research Institute (JARI) facility at Yatabe (now part of Tsukuba city) was opened in 1964 as a high speed test facility for automakers and for the government to gather data on various automobiles. The 5km banked oval allowed maximum speeds to be achieved. Of course, the thought of a closed oval located a short distance outside of Tokyo also caused Japan's growing tuning industry to take notice.

Starting around the early 1980's, tuners from all over Japan would gather at Yatabe to try their machines on the massive banked course. Early tuning pioneers brought out their hopped up S30 and S130 Z's and SA22C RX7's to clock top speed and acceleration records. These exploits are chronicled in the excellent "Legend of Option" magazines.

In the 1990's the Yatabe speed trials drew top tuners like JUN, Top Secret, Waste Sports, Fuji Dynamics and Veilside who brought out their GT-R's to battle for supremacy in the 0-300km acceleration test.
These gatherings got a lot of exposure mid to late '90s Option videos.

Here is a an R32 sedan GT-R conversion from ATTKD running the course in 1997.

The early 2000's would see the growth of Tsukuba city and a new express rail line would be opened connecting Tsukuba to Tokyo. The route for the new line would cut directly through the Yatabe test course. Around the same time JARI opened it's new test facility in the more isolated location of Shirosato, a little north of Tsukuba. 

This spelled the end of the historic Yatabe test area and the course was officially closed in 2005. With the addition of the Tsukuba Express the city has expanded and the former course area is now filled with a train station, shopping malls, apartment buildings and restraints.

For a while, parts of the old track remained and there are a few pictures of the abandoned banked sections on some Japanese blogs.

In this picture you can see the vegetation that is already starting to reclaim the old track.

It's hard to imagine this was once a place where super cars blasted by at 300kph.

The site of the old Yatabe course is only about 10 minutes away from where I am living now. But by now it looks like all of the old track sections have been removed and the only signs left of its existence are some odd clearings in the trees.

In this photo from Google Earth you can see the outline of the course and the new development including the rail line. Actually, there has been even more houses and buildings constructed since this photo was taken. The funny looking white building is JARI's crash test facility which is still being used.

It's hard to think that every time I hop on the train to Tokyo that I'm traveling through what once was an isolated high speed race track in the middle of nowhere. RIP Yatabe.

Comments

[P]

So bad.

[Rob]

soo sad :(

[EJ25RUN]

Great great great article.............More stuff like this. This is becoming my favorite site. I gotta check it first thing.

I always thought the test coarse from Gran Turismo 2 was based on Yatabe.

[Burabuda]

reminds me of what happened to historic riverside raceway in socal:
http://home.san.rr.com/fsheff/rirpicts.htm

btw, the prince r380 pic reminds me a youtube vid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwfjAXNQNC8

[garage_86]

Its like the old Brands Hatch in europe..if you guys know

[leongsoon]

It must feel a bit surreal travelling through the course in a train :)

[Gordon]

Oh man... I grew up with those 90's Option videos. I never thought this would happen. It feels so nostalgic for some reason.

[Maxwell Kennedy]

Hello,
i am hoping you could give me the web address on google earth or google maps for the yatabe facility, and also wondering whether anyone knows how the facility was used during WWII?
thanks.
Max

[ranny]

Many similar episodes are covered in bbc films - http://file.sh/bbc+torrent.html . People should pay more attention to such things, to my mind...