Initial D will forever be tied to the image of an unassuming panda scheme Toyota Trueno AE86 racing downhill and blowing past higher spec’d challengers who had underestimated the skills of Takumi Fujiwara behind the wheel, honed from years of driving the winding mountain pass roads as part of a daily grind. But it would only be one half of the story without the yellow Mazda RX-7 FD3S of Keisuke Takahashi, one half of the Keisuke ‘Rotary Brothers’ who run the Red Suns racing team from a neighboring town.
Keisuke was your typical over aggressive bad boy, who through his older brother’s tutelage and competing against AND with Takumi, learned discipline, self belief, teamwork, mechanical proficiency and mastery of street racing tactics.
As much as I loved the older straightforward styling of the Savanna RX-7 from my own childhood exposure, the compelling character development and personal journey of Keisuke gradually warmed me over to the charms of the FD3S variant. There are many miniatures available of the now iconic yellow car with crimson RED SUN decals, but I found the ones made by Kyosho and Real-X to emphasize greater accuracy for little details like the wheel trim.
With the Mazda RX-7 lineage as the reigning (only) champion of Wankel’s rotary engine concept, I thought it was fitting that I paired it with the recently minted Lamy Safari KURU TOGA INSIDE pencil, tricked out with black accent parts, and powered by its own ‘rotary engine’ with an equally bright crimson ‘pulse’ peeking through its chassis.
Not sure if I’ll do more Initial D pencil tributes but we’ll see 