Dane Matsubara is the grandson of the late West Los Angeles drag racer, Sush Matsubara. Sush grew up in the Sawtelle neighborhood, working at local gas stations, before joining the wave of drag racing fanatics. In the mid/late 1960s, Sush was part of the (Joe) Mondello-Matsubara team that raced altered Fiat Topolinos. In the early/mid 1970s, he switched to racing funny cars with Joe Pisano, most famously in a yellow and red-flame 1974 Chevy Vega sponsored by the model toy kit company, Revell.
Dane learned about his grandfather’s exploits in the last few years of Sush’s life—he passed in 2006—and Dane and his father Gary eventually tracked down the first Mondello-Matsubara Fiat in Mississippi and brought it back to Los Angeles where Dane is in the middle of restoring the car. Outside of that project, Dane also works on other vintage cars, including building WWII-era roadsters.
We asked him to share this testimonial about his family’s long legacy in Los Angeles car scenes.
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When I was a kid, I would help my dad work on his cars and on holidays we would go to my grandpa’s house where, in his office, hung a picture of two cars drag racing. As a kid, neither working on cars nor the picture that hung in my grandpa’s office interested me very much.
It wasn’t until I became a teenager that both things started to become more interesting to me. My dad started to give me more challenging tasks with the car and I started to research cars to try to learn more about them. My parents took me to museums to see different kinds of cars, but this gradually transitioned to attending car shows. It was through attending car shows that I formed a preference for classic cars.
I had begun to ask my dad questions about the cars in the picture at my grandpa’s house and he told me that one was a car that my grandpa used to race when my dad was a kid. When I was in 8th grade, my dad told me that some guys had found the car from the picture and they were going to be showing it at an event called the California Hot Rod Reunion in Bakersfield. I eagerly agreed and we made plans to attend the event.
When we got to Bakersfield, the first thing we did was walk through the grove to meet with my grandpa and see the car for the first time. It was my first time seeing the Fiat and the first time my dad and grandpa had seen it in 35 years. I still had a hard time picturing my grandpa driving this car over 200 MPH, but seeing him talk to the car’s owner, Karpo Murkjanian, seemed to corroborate what my dad had told me. Meeting Karpo, Pete Eastwood, and Derek Bower and seeing how knowledgeable and welcoming they were left an indelible impression on our family.
More so than seeing the car, my most cherished memory from that day was sitting and watching the drag races with my dad, grandpa and our close family friend, Roland Leong. My dad and grandpa hadn’t been to the drag races since my grandpa retired from racing in the 70s and now they were returning as spectators rather than participants. It was an amazing experience to be able to sit with these people I had grown up with and learn about something that had been such a big part of their lives well before I was born.
I had never been to a drag race before, so seeing and hearing nostalgia funny cars, fuel altereds and front engine dragsters accelerating to over 200 MPH in less than 7 seconds blew my mind. Watching them turn massive tires into billowing white smoke and then launching off the line shooting flames out of the headers was unlike anything I had ever seen before.
The highlight of the event was the “cacklefest,” the finale of the event on Saturday night. All the restored dragsters and fuel altered were push started down the return road, right in front of the grandstands. These cars were not only striking in terms of the amount of noise they made, but also in the fascinating contrast of their beautiful styling and amazing performance. After an immersive day watching the races, I had a newfound appreciation for the cars guys like my grandpa and Roland had raced in the 1960s. My dad and I were blown away by the experience and vowed to make it an annual tradition.
Aside from drag racing, the other draw of the California Hot Rod Reunion was the car show. This was my first time seeing traditional hot rods and custom cars. I found the “survivor” cars to be the most interesting as they showed the innovative way that people were modifying their cars for speed and looks in the mid-twentieth century. Much more personal than a car that had been restored to dealer showroom condition, each car represented the tastes of their owner with the intention of making a car that didn’t look or perform like anyone else’s. The rarity of the survivors was supplemented by the presence of period correct cars: cars that emulated the survivors in looks, but were built much more recently.
In an event full of firsts and big impressions, one incident happened on the way home that cemented that day as one that changed the course of my life. While we were driving home, we passed a group of hot rods driving south on the 5. Seeing them flying down the freeway made me want to own and drive an old hot rod of my own.
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Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community, an exhibition presented by the Japanese American National Museum, has been extended and will be on view until December 14, 2025, at the Peter and Merle Mullin Gallery at ArtCenter College of Design, 1111 South Arroyo Parkway, Pasadena, CA 91105. Learn more.
© 2025 Dane Matsubara
