Video Option

Video Option (ビデオオプション, Bideo Opushon^?) was a monthly direct-to-video magazine version of the long-running Option magazine introduced in March 1988 by Sunpro.

The video has always been presented by Daijiro Inada, who did many of the tuner car road tests, either on a test track, on public road with Daijiro's adventures at Bonneville. During the video early days, the series used to cover illegal races usually in expressways, which is sometimes contributed by an anonymous figure called "Chiba Kun". Nowadays the series features Wangan competitions and unlike the rival Best Motoring series, the show is more focused on drift, drag, time attack, speed tests and mountains rather than pro racing techniques or circuit practises.

The series also covers Inada's escapade at the Silver State Classic from the unfortunate (1999), to having narrowly escaped (2003) and the unintentionally hilarious (2005)

Option Video has always covered drifting, even hosting one of the first drift contests in 1989 with Keiichi Tsuchiya called the Ikaten. Option would continue to cover drift events especially their own Ikaten, until in October 2000, they would introduce the D1 Grand Prix which appears exclusively on the videos. They also gave the Americans their very first drifting events in 1996 at Willow Springs International Raceway, California, which incidentally was won by a Honda Civic, it was not until seven years later Option gave them their first oversea D1 Grand Prix event. In 2005, the video series followed the season of former judge turned competitor Manabu Orido in his quest to compete in D1. Other highlights in the show includes the owner of tuner Top Secret, Kazuhiko "Smokey" Nagata run-ins with the law in both the UK and New Zealand in 1998 and 2000 and the video contribution of Chiba-Kun and his exploits in his Nissan Skyline GT-R at the Bayside (Wangan) line of the Shuto Expressway especially his run-ins with the law.

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Wikipedia