First and Forgotten: HKS M300

Ayyy i’m back writing articles again (like my previous articles were famous anyway, but nevermind). Without further chit-chatter, let’s just get into it.

The Japanese love themselves some high speed runs, and many tune their cars to specifically race in very high speed and maintain said speed for many minutes. Mid Night Club were the most famous example of this kind of racers. Back in the 90s, most of their cars can easily breach 300 km/h, Japanese or imports. Today, most car would easily exceed the 322 km/h (200 mph) mark stock or tuned, but back then, it was a different story.

We travel back to the early 80s, precisely 1981. Back then, there’s a car that started all of this endurance high speed run culture of Japan racers, it’s the ABR tuned DeTomaso Pantera.

The Pantera managed to get 307 km/h on the Yatabe Test Course. It quickly inspired many other tuning companies to do this speed running and target that magical 300 km/h mark. While yes the Pantera reached 307 km/h and was tuned by a Japanese, it’s technically not a Japanese car and therefore, not worthy of the title first Japanese car to breach the 300 km/h mark. Here’s a short story about the Pantera. In 1982, the Pantera crashed and the owner of the car died in said crash and the Pantera was never seen again.

With the inspirer gone, many tuners got even more enthusiastic to break that 300 km/h mark like that Pantera did, and it was in 1983 where that 300 km/h barrier got broken again, and this time by a Japanese car.

The car identifies itself as HKS M300. As you may already know from the name, HKS builded this machine and it managed to breach that 300 km/h barrier. It managed to get 301 km/h at Yatabe, just 1 km/h of said barrier and became the first Japanese car to reach 300 km/h.

The car itself is based on the MA61 Celica Supra. It was all custom build entirely by HKS. Since the car is pretty much long forgotten, the exact specs is unknown to the public of present day, but here’s what we know.

The engine is a 5M-G. It used triple carbs, twin turbos, and many awesome stuff that i don’t know exactly what it is, and it generates approximately 600 hp. That was back in 1983 mind you. So if you have a Cressida or a Crown or even a MA61 Celica Supra with a 5M engine and people said it’s a worthless engine, just show them this and they won’t call your 5M powered car rubbish anymore.

This car while it is technically the first Japanese car to reach 300 km/h, it’s unfortunately forgotten by the people. Most people of this era doesn’t even know that this car existed, and the car’s whereabouts itself is pretty much unknown and will most likely never be seen again.