Here’s what Initial D would look like if it took place in America

The web has countless works of art inspired by Initial D, but here’s a completely original take on the seminal anime. A “what if” short imagines what the touge racing tale would look like if it took place in America. Instead of a Toyota AE86, we get the quintessential 1980s street machine, a Fox Body Mustang — and not the showy GT, but the sleeper LX 5.0.

The star car is just a part of it. The video, by Project33, is packed with details that make the transition to an American setting perfect. Instead of a tofu shop on Mt Akina, the RS Watanabe-clad ‘Stang hails from a milk farm along North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Parkway. Roadside detritus includes McDonalds bags and Mountain Dew cans, while the soundtrack consists of a eurobeat remix of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird”.

Sadly, the all-too-brief video appears to be a one-off  experimenting with 3D graphics rendering. We’d love to see a longer version of it, perhaps with Nakazoto in a Buick Grand National, or the Takahashi brothers in third- and fourth-gen Camaros, hailing from the Tail of the Dragon. The possibilities are endless.