“IT HAS BECOME ALMOST RELIGIOUS FOR PEOPLE TO USE MOTUL IN THEIR SUBARUS”

Subifest is a regular gathering of Subarus in the United States. At the last event of the year in Florida, Tomioka Racing and Motul brought along a real JDM race car and three cars that were powered by Motul. We caught up with Anthony Unger from Tomioka Racing to find out more.
 

ANTHONY, WHAT EXACTLY IS SUBIFEST?

This is pretty much a US traveling car show, strictly based on the Subaru base platform. So everything from 1960s original Subarus, all the way up to the newest models that are out there on the market. It travels among the main markets in US, and hits every corner of the country, to cater to as many Subaru owners as possible. A lot of people travel through three or four states to attend a show. Each show will see attendance of between 2,500 and 4,000 people. The highest we’ve ever seen was 5,000.
 

AND WHY THE FOCUS ON SUBARU IN PARTICULAR?

Our main market for Tomioka Racing turbos has always been Subaru. We started off with Subaru, tuning and turbo charging them in the early 2000s. And then we decided to make our own turbo brand in 2006. And we just stuck with Subarus from there. With Motul’s collaboration with Subaru of America and everything that they do with all the race teams, it made more sense to get really heavily involved with that brand.
 

CAN YOU TELL US A BIT MORE ABOUT TOMIOKA RACING?

The owners created Tomioka Racing with the intent to create our own turbo brand. We’d been using a bunch of different turbo brands, so we felt we wanted to get into the market in 2006. It felt like the right time to do a lot of testing and development. We were already running a race plan with a company called Zero Motorsports based in Japan. We did a lot of STIs and WRX Subarus with them.
 

WHAT’S MOTUL’S INVOLVEMENT IN THE SUBIFEST EVENTS?

Motul teamed up with Tomioka Racing. We did a collab called TR Motul for all the Subaru events. As we’ve worked so closely with Motul for 12 years from a distribution side, they gave us the leeway to go out there and represent them as best we can, because we have a lot of knowledge behind each Motul product. We talk to the customers, let them know who we and Motul is, and the collaboration in development and testing of Motul products.
 

HOW DO YOU FIND MOTUL’S PRODUCTS WITH YOUR TURBOS AND PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENTS FOR SUBARU?

Yes. We only use Motul for all of our cars. We also have a Supra and a BMW M2CS. We’ve been running Motul in all our cars since we started selling Motul 12 years ago. When we pick up products and work with companies, we make sure that we know the products inside out before we offer it to our customers. When customers buy a turbo from us, we send out free oil, and recommend the continued use of Motul.
 

WHAT DO YOUR CUSTOMERS THINK OF MOTUL’S PRODUCTS?

I think they love it from everything that we hear. Motul has become the Subaru brand oil for everyone, and it has become almost religious for people to use Motul in their Subarus. In fact, it’s such a good product that if you don’t use Motul in your Subaru, you’re probably using the wrong or an inferior product.