This is why we love Cali. We’re in San Francisco to attend Motoring J Style this weekend, and within seconds of picking up our rental car (alas, a Ford Focus), we exited the airport to see this mint beauty in the lot. If you do happen to see a one of these third-gen Celicas back east that’s not riddled with dings or participating in a weight loss program courtesy of rust. And they’re not even that old! If anyone from the east coast owns a similarly pristine third-gen Celica, we dare ya to post it up in our forum.
I forgot to post my shot of the week on Wednesday! So here you are, a beautiful example of a 240Z showing its little brother how it’s done. And before you ask, no I don’t have a bigger version of this image. Wish I did though, what a hell of a wallpaper that’d make!
JapaneseNostalgicCar have put together a short video made up of shots of achingly hot classic JDM doing not much more than just cruising around. Might not sound amazing, but just you watch it and see for yourself. Backed by a perfectly picked soundtrack, this is a top way to spend exactly two minutes.
But now, a dying breed, they are slowly disappearing…
Who will save them?
Critics are already hailing Japanese Nostalgic Car: The Movie as the defining film of the twentieth century. “Two fender mirrors up!” says Ebert and Roper. “Five out of five Star Sharks!” raves Variety.
Regular readers might know that we are pretty puzzled as to why Toyota hasn’t been making a bigger fuss about it’s 50 years in America. As the anniversary draws ever nearer, news on the company’s golden anniversary has gone from a cold drip to a full-blown mediatrickle.
Video and images are being slowly added to the Toyota 50th website, which comes with a countdown timer to the actual moment that the Big T will have been stateside for a half century. As of this writing, 97 days, 10 hours, 58 minutes, and 52 seconds remain until Toyota’s 50th Anniversary.
Then there’s this page at ToMoCo’s main web address, but only the smallest of text links from Toyota.com hints that there’s a 50th birthday coming up.
Don’t get us wrong. We love Toyotas. We’re just left completely baffled as to why they aren’t playing up their history more. Are you reading this, Toyota marketing department?
From 1969 to 1970, Mazda had a successful foray into European touring car racing, where their Euro counterparts had been caught off guard. The screaming little Familia Coupes were not short of power and if it weren’t for a lack of reliability, Mazda would have returned to Japan in triumph with a lot of prestigious silverware too.
Every now and then, a thought comes to me. If there were X amounts of a certain car sold in a particular country 30 years ago… Where are they all now? In the case of the 240Z, it’s not a difficult guess - they’re sitting on someone’s farm, or in someone’s back yard, rusted and virtually unrecognisable or unrecoverable. If not that, they’ve been bought up as parts cars. It’s not unusual these days for it to take three beatup Zeds to make one good example. Sure, there’s quite a few still on the roads, in varying states of care, but that’s definitely a fraction of the original amount.
So when I stumbled across this old article this morning about a farmer in rural Victoria (Australia) with nearly 20 examples - mostly in need of a lot of work, but not remotely beyond saving - sitting in a few sheds on his property, my heart skipped a beat. It’s a great read, so check it out!
This is why we love Cali. We’re in San Francisco to attend Motoring J Style this weekend, and within seconds of picking up our rental car (alas, a Ford Focus), we exited the airport to see this mint beauty in the lot. If you do happen to see a one of these third-gen Celicas back east that’s not riddled with dings or participating in a weight loss program courtesy of rust. And they’re not even that old! If anyone from the east coast owns a similarly pristine third-gen Celica, we dare ya to post it up in our forum.
Regular readers might know that we are pretty 
