About US
Fujii Engineering is a car company that wants to bring joy to life through vehicles.
We make the requested car from scratch.
We repair, inspect, customise and restore.
Sometimes we get too excited and end up making some racing cars.
These days we have been crazy about developing an electric skateboard to ride legally on Japanese roads.
I, Mitsuru Fujii, Director of Fujii Engineering want to share with you a little about the story of our company that kept coming forward with a blurry line between enjoyment and work.
Our story
1994～1999
I, Mitsuru Fujii, entered Tokai University at the Department of Prime Mover Engineering in 1994. When I entered University I was really excited about studying to become an Engine Developer. But then I was shocked because it seemed like it was not the right place for that. Even having a knowledge based entrance examination, we had to take classes of (too) basic general knowledge, such as Japanese Language and Maths. I thought that it was a joke and did not make any sense. I felt it was really boring and meaningless. That is when I shift-changed my life into driving cars.
Then night after night I kept driving around places like Yabitsu Pass and Hakone roads. At that time I ended up buying a total of thirteen AE86s priced around 50,000 to 100,000 yens each.
As a result I ended up improving my driving skills somewhat, which made me change the destination at full throttle to the wrong direction. I decided to become a professional racer. And that was how I lived around my early twenties.
2001
At my racer debut I was strongly affirming to myself that I would let no one drive ahead of me. However the reality was not that easy. There were millions of racers who were much faster, smarter and richer than me. And that made me retire as a racer, leaving not my mark but much financial debt.
However, through this time of giving all of myself into racing, I had experienced an unforgettable special sensation of alignment, as being a unit with the car, that kept inspiring me when I was making cars on further days.
2Ae 5yAi3lyHができてから
2006
「After all that, while I was working as a regular company employee, I had a sudden thought of how amazing it would be to feel that sensation with a car made by myself. And not being able to hold this impulse, I shifted my career path into car marking.
After training for two years at a factory of metal sheet forming, with thirty years old I founded Fujii Engineering in 2006
2007
In the next few years I was working as a subcontractor for local metal sheet forming companies. And when things had started to get on track, I felt that it was ok to start to do the things that I desired to do. And it made me go off track hugely.
I started doing reinforcement of the body of cars, full painting and tuning. And I had also modified an AE86 engine owned by an old friend.
2008
From around that time my limiter started to malfunction little by little.
When I was tuning the AE86, I noticed that in the middle to the latter half of the corner, the traction was bad and it did slip no matter what.
So I came up with an easy thought: “It is just putting the engine in the back, isn't it?” So I cut the AE86 in half and made a new back half frame to it.
As a result it performed fairly as well as I had expected. “For speed, it is mid-ship”. I felt as if I had discovered by myself this well known truth.
So I got to the conclusion that I am not the type of person that learns from books.
And at that time my spirit of “firstly just give it a shot” was born.
2010
Getting carried away with the results of MR86, I got possessed by the dangerous idea of making cars from scratch all by myself, instead of customising the cars that were already on the market.
At that time we were facing the global financial crisis caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, so the outcome of the racing industry and also my own business were unpredictable. Even knowing that I could not control my impulse and started developing an original machine by scratch, the M01.
As you can imagine, I did not have any customers for that, so I was paying all the expenses by myself. Not having much savings from the start already, having my other incomes ceased, and also using a lot of money into this project made me feel really scared for months. Even though I could not stop myself.
Some people showed interest in this project and started to help on it. Soon, we became a huge group that was making the car every night together. Unfortunately at that time I was working so hard that I did not have any space to enjoy it. But now it is a really good memory. This photo above was taken when we were just relieved after having the engine started up for the first time.
On the last few days we were working through the whole night. And when we finally finished the M01, it worked surprisingly well and we were very impressed about how smooth it was. And at that moment I had the misconception that I may be a natural genius engineer by birth.
2012
After that we participated in K4GP with M01.
The first problem is that this machine was not developed for competing into resistance racing. The second one is that we did have the knowledge to make a resistance evaluation for each vehicle part. But we were still pushing hard to solve all the problems that were coming up. Our combustible energy was the never-give-up-spirit.
And from this experience, we noticed that even without having all the tools and parts that we ideally wanted, we can finish a project in a satisfactionary way and this lesson became one of our methodologies.
We joined Sepan 24 hours too.
We had some troubles that made us spend a lot of time in the pit. Well, at least we made it to the finish line.
2015
From 2012 to 2016 we were just doing a lot of racing.We won the 2015 Series Champion for VITA CLASS of Suzuka Clubman Race.The champion driver of this race, Keita Suzuki, joined our company later, and became the main person of composite construction and car production for us. It is really hard to stand out in races as VITA, because of the car body, engine and tire being the same. Gathering datas, contínuos trying and errors, constructing the logic step by step were essential for this project. It was the opposite approach from what is required to make a revolutionary car, but this experience made me grow immensely as an engineer.
Parallely of the racing activities, we had finished the M02T project in 2015. M02T is an original car, used as base Phase 3 of Elize Lotus. The design has inspiration on the Neo-Classic theme. From that, I have learned about how to change the style of the car without changing the wheelbase and the dreads. I still do not know how to evaluate if I did a good job, but I feel glad that the owner is still riding it nowadays. As Lotus is a great car for customising I look forward to being able to use it as a base again.
2016
Mazda Luce Rotary
This Mazda Luce Rotary came to us all rusted. We spent almost three years making it like new again. After the restorating it was evaluated as very rare and had also turned into a minicar.
2018
We started developing kickboards in 2018. The reason was because one of our employees had made an electric skateboard to go to work and enjoyed riding it a lot. He asked about making an electric kickboard that would be legal to ride on the roads. In the photo below we have our first prototype. At that time, as the wheel was only 8 inches, it did not have good running stability and the circular pipe handle post was not rigid enough. And even not having made any regular kickboards ever before, we wanted to make it with a totally original suspension. And now I think that this kind of decision is what makes people’s life harder.
After a year we started selling Sunameri, our first Kickboard.
2019
At that time. kickboards were not a well known product in Japan, so our full-carboned body kickboard was a little over the top for the market. Even though it had a good acceptance and became one of our hit products.
2020
We started selling Sunameri's little brother, Xiaomeri.We tagged with a Chinese company for the production of this new kickboard. However, just at the timing of starting production they had to shut factorie’s doors because of the COVID lockdown, and it did hugely affect our schedules.
In this project I learned a little more about the production in industrial areas of coastal China. Especially what we cannot bet and what we can.
2022
After a year of development we started selling PUFFIN. As many people said that Sunameri was really funny but difficult to ride, we decided to make an easier riding vehicle. That is how PUFFIN was created. It is also three wheeled as SUNAMERi, but it has a new suspension which is much easier to ride.
