Would you get your car serviced at a Speed Racer Service Center? I sure would. It’s an interesting gimmick by entrepreneur and former Super GT race driver Tetsuji Tamanaka, who licensed the characters from Tatsunoko Production’s venerable “Mach GoGoGo” to create a chain of Speed Racer-branded service centers, gas stations and used-car dealerships designed to bring a well-known face to the “total carlife support” they offer their customers. The familiarity of the character Go Mifune (as Speed is called in Japanese) combined with the current income level of the generation that grew up watching the original show has proven to be a big win for the company, which is opening franchise shops throughout Japan that do everything from buying used cars for sale through its national network to auto painting and that annoying sha-ken car inspection that drivers of older cars must pay $1500 for every two years. This isn’t the only company that ties anime to car culture: there’s also a chain of car repair shops that uses the famous Space Battleship Yamato logo and characters to promote themselves. These businesses are somewhat unique though: while anime is enjoyed by literally everyone at some point in their lives here, it’s not usually something you see while driving down Main Street very often. Like Cowboy Bebop and Akira, Mach GoGoGo is one of those shows that became far more popular internationally than it ever was inside of Japan, and I for one am glad to see that Speed Racer hasn’t been forgotten in the country of his birth.
Of course, they also have their own sexy Race Queens:
