I grew up in the Seattle in the 80s/90s and the first fast and the furious wasn't released until 2001. The concept of the Japanese sleeper car was already popular in my area almost 10 years before the movie came out. If people didn't do the performance mods, the custom sound system was the next big thing with the ricer owners. IMO the whole ricer culture sprouted from the asian kids wanting to have something comparable to the 'Merikan muscle cars like Mustang GT's, Camaro RS, Trans AMs, etc that were being released around that time and as far back as the late 60s. The caucasian community wasn't exactly nice to the asian community and a lot of racial sterotypes like 'oriental' and jokes like 'if you come up on someone doing 15 mph under the speed limit on the freeway its a FOB (fresh of the boat, as in human trafficking ship)' So the younger kids that were my age, first gen, maybe second gen immigrants all got into the rice racers.
The thing is kids have been racing cars forever. My dad had a souped up Ford Fairlane that he would race people stoplight to stoplight in the 60s. His friend died in a roll over accident when he was 18. Basically race/ethnicity and time/era doesn't matter in this equation. People will always have cars, people will always find a way to make them go faster and some people will die in the process. Until our ability to drive is taken away and the Google Self-Driving Car is imposed on all of us, we will be doing what we can for a thrill behind the wheel.
