In the late 80s much of Seibu Keisatsu‘s original production team, actors, and directors reunited to create a new TV show. Gorilla: Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Investigation Unit 8 sought to recapture the feel, action and popularity of Japan’s most famous police action series. Complete with plenty of gunfights and car chases, it even occupied the same time slot as Seibu. This time around Mitsubishi Motors, not Nissan, was the sponsor, and supplied fleets of cars as fodder for the action sequences.
The premise of Gorilla is that the Tokyo Metropolitan Police formed a secret elite squad that responds to particularly violent crimes. Only the top officers know of them, and they operate out of a headquarters separate from the established police stations.
Following in Seibu Keisatsu‘s format, the hero cops naturally have a stable of ultra-cool vehicles at their disposal. With Mitsubishi as the sponsor, those include a Galant VR-4, Pajero, Mirage Cyborg, and Debonair V V6 3000 Royal AMG AT. The star of the show, however, is a black Starion pursuit vehicle that’s been modified with gull-wing doors.
The car chases weren’t quite as ambitious as Seibu Keisatsu‘s but there were plenty of explosions in which regular black and whites, usually Galant Sigmas, get blown to bits. Some scenes, like one in which dozens of patrol cars swarm a live construction site, get pretty ridiculous, seemingly becoming an excuse to destroy cars like a kid playing with Tomica.
Gorilla didn’t quite reach the success that Seibu Keisatsu enjoyed, but it did have a strong fanbase. It ran for 46 episodes from April 1989 to April 1990. Some of the main cars like the Galant VR-4, Starion, Pajero, Debonair, and an Eclipse introduced later in the series still exist, and are occasionally brought out for special events.
