The ASL Garaiya Was A Sports Car Built By The Japanese Version Of Halfords

Automotive history is littered with niche and might-have-been sports car projects, many of which would probably be totally lost to time if they hadn’t been immortalised in video games. The Gran Turismo series is responsible for keeping the memory of lots of these alive – the Tommykaira ZZ-I, the Oullim Spirra, the Hommell Berlinette, to name just a few. Today, though, we want to look at one of the most enigmatic of all – the ASL Garaiya.

That’s not ASL as in a questionable abbreviation you might have whipped out in the early days of internet chat rooms, but as in Autobacs Sportscar Laboratory. And yes, that’s the same Autobacs that operates Japan’s biggest (and the world’s coolest) chain of car parts stores. Basically, imagine if Halfords had decided to take on the Lotus Elise – that’s what this was.

In fact, the Garaiya has a connection to another of those sports cars that would have been lost to time if it weren’t for Gran Turismo, because ASL was formed when Autobacs bought out a bankrupt Tommykaira. The company had plans to put the R34 Skyline-powered ZZII into production as the RS01, and the Garaiya would have sat below it as a lower-priced sports car.

Not only that, but it was essentially a very heavily updated version of the Tommykaira ZZ-I. It used the same aluminium tub and mid-mounted 2.0-litre Nissan SR20 four-pot engine, making around 200bhp and mated to a six-speed manual.

Where the ZZ-I had looked a bit like it had been cobbled together in a shed, though (because it had), the Garaiya looked for all the world like a junior supercar, right down to its Lambo-esque scissor doors. Oh, and if the tail lights look strangely familiar, it’s because they’ve been pinched from the Alfa Romeo 147.

The Garaiya debuted at the 2002 Tokyo Motor Show, alongside the RS01 (the rebadged ZZII, in case you’ve lost track). Plans for small-scale production were announced, and although it was a Japanese-designed car produced by a Japanese company and likely to find most of its sales in Japan, production was planned for somewhere that was very much not Japan.

No, much as its ZZ-I forebear had been, it was to be built in the spiritual home of the lightweight sports car, Norfolk, England. But in case the use of terms like ‘production was planned’ and ‘it was to be built’ didn’t give it away, that planned production run never happened. The reasons why aren’t clear, but the Garaiya project was shelved in 2005 after only a few prototypes had been built. The RS01 never saw the light of day either, with ASL eventually being wound up.

Thanks to the series’ PS3-era tactic of recycling older models to boost car counts, Gran Turismo kept the Garaiya fresh in people’s memories right up to 2013’s GT6, although in later titles it swapped out the defunct ASL branding for that of Autobacs’ ARTA racing team.

That racing team is relevant because it also helped the car live on in that safe haven for obscure Japanese sports cars, the GT300 class of the Super GT series. Here, a modified Garaiya competed on and off between 2003 and 2012, its competition highlight being the runner-up position in the 2004 GT300 championship.

Amazingly, though, this still isn’t the end of the Garaiya’s story. With the small handful of prototypes made bouncing around various Autobacs outlets as display cars, one eventually found its way into the hands of Osaka Sangyo University, where it had an electric powertrain dropped into it.

Then, in 2024 – some 22 years after the debut of the original Garaiya, another EV-swapped one appeared at the Tokyo Auto Salon. This one was converted by Autobacs itself as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, although not a lot’s been seen or heard of it since.

And that pretty much brings us up to speed on the Garaiya. For now, anyway. Given its weird habit of reappearing at random points, who knows if and when we’ll see it pop up again? All in all, it’s had some staying power for something conceived 23 years ago and shelved before it ever managed to make production.