Based out of Fukuoka-Prefecture in Southern Japan, Garage Active is one of the most renown GT-R tuners in Japan. They gained national recognition in the 90s during the height of drag racing popularity. Piloted by the shop’s director Kazushige Sakamoto, the Active BCNR33 Skyline became of one of the fastest GT-Rs in Japan. Unfortunately, the popularity of drag racing has died off with the closing of major tracks like Sendai High-Land, but Garage Active kept going strong. These shots are from a visit made nearly a decade ago, and before Active burst back on the scene in a big way with their full-carbon GTRs.

Being the top GT-R tuner in Southern Japan there is always a queue of customer cars waiting for a variety of work from basic maintenance to full track-spec builds.

Most Japanese tuning shops are surprisingly small in terms of available space. In contrast, Active is pretty big. Their work shop has multiple lifts and room for plenty of cars. They also have an attached building with an AWD dyno where all the tuning happens.

They’re a dealer for all the big brands and have their own line of parts for GT-Rs so stock is stacked up everywhere.

GT-Rs are absolutely everywhere. They not only tune GT-Rs, but they sell them as well. GT-Rs are absolutely everywhere. From customer cars to their own for sale or in the queue for restoration and upgrades before being put up for sale.

The shop is a multi-level steel frame building so you’ll find GT-Rs on the second floor as well. The shot above was taken on the second floor right outside the main office and customer lounge.

If you asked me what a Japanese tuning shop office or customer lounge looked like this is what I’d describe. No big parts showroom, just some desks a couch and nifty Recaro roller chairs. You may have noticed all the trophies in the back. Sakamoto-san has had a very accomplished career in motor sports.

Lots of magazines for customers to flip through while waiting. G-Active has a long relationship with Work Wheels as you can tell by all the Meisters.

After seeing the main shop, Sakamoto-san was nice enough to take host a tour of his private warehouse a few minutes away…

This is where he keeps his personal collection of GT-R and some of the more expensive GT-Rs he has for sale. The collection is jaw-dropping.

Garage Active street-drag BNR32 GT-R. The first thing that may catch your eye are the red TE37 wheels,.. or is it the monster tachometer and shift light mounted on the dash?

Under the hood it’s quite a site to behold. The RB26 is bumped up to 2.8L with an HKS stroker kit like all of their demo cars. Instead of the big single you’d see these days, a twin setup is still being used. It’s also running nitrous, which is’t very common in Japan. The titanium strut bar is a Garage Active piece.

Now this is nasty. A black KPGC110 Skyline GT-R with flares and black wheels. I can’t even imagine what the value of this has skyrocketed to over the last few years.

It’s undeniably cool. The front lip, fender flare and rear spoiler are all carbon. At the time of the picture it was still registered for the street. I’d be shocked if it’s driven these days considering it’s probably worth over six figures.

The interior was as clean as the exterior. I’d love to own an old Skyline, but their values have gone through the roof. Even the R31 Skyline is getting ridiculously expensive.

In general, I don’t like R33 Skylines, but the black on gold Regamasters makes this one decent. I wonder how much the value of these is going to climb now that they’re becoming legal for the US market?

This is the car that put G-Active on the map, their Pro Drag BCNR33 GT-R. It’s still one of the fastest GT-Rs in Japan with a best time of 8.256 seconds in the quarter mile.

Big Hoosier slicks in the rear and aluminum drag wing. All the carbon pieces from the hood, trunk and lip spoiler are G-Active pieces.

HKS 2.8L stroker with two big ass IHI turbochargers. I’d guess they’re equivalent in size to Trust T88s. I couldn’t find information on the power output, but it’s either pushing 1,000 or close to it.

Check out the video above to see the Active GT-R in action. You’ll notice that most of the footage is from drag strips setup using the main straights of tracks like Central Circuit.

This is another of their demo cars, which they refer to as the “Active Visual Special” R34 GT-R. It was built to be a great looking street car and show off some of their own parts. The Active lineup has gotten much bigger over the last couple of years. They made a big splash at Tokyo Auto Salon when they showed off their new carbon widebody kit for the R32 GT-R and they’ve just released one for the R33 GT-R.

You can find more information about Garage Active on their website at http://www.g-active.co.jp/. I’ll have some more tuning shop content coming soon including posts about Zenitani and Kid’s Heart.