Tarzan Yamada

Honestly, the combination of engineer and racing driver in one person is the kind of thing that sounds like a movie pitch, but here we are — Tarzan Yamada, born 1962, apparently living two lives that most people couldn't pull off separately. The engineering brain that understands exactly why a machine does what it does, paired with the instinct to push that same machine to its absolute limit on a track — that's a rare overlap. Most racers trust the engineers; most engineers trust the data. This guy apparently had to argue with both sides of himself. He got the nickname from a magazine editor who thought his long, messy hair and rural Nara roots called for "Tarzan" — and when your name is Tarzan and your resume is that unusual, you don't need a social media presence to be interesting.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Tarzan Yamada (born 1962) is a Japanese engineer and racing driver whose real name is Eiji Yamada. He is known by his English nickname Tarzan Yamada, which he uses professionally. From Oyodo, Nara Prefecture, he made his name in magazine time-attack features, has raced in the JGTC and the Japanese Touring Car Championship, and is now a judge at Formula D events in the United States.

Name (English)

Tarzan Yamada

Name (Japanese)

山田英二

Reading

やまだ えいじ

Born

April 25, 1962 (age 64)

Origin

Oyodo, Nara Prefecture, Japan

Occupation

Engineer / Racing Driver

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Taurus / Tiger

• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B1%B1%E7%94%B0%E8%8B%B1%E4%BA%8C
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7687021

Tags

• Engineer
• Racing Driver

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.