Mazda Cosmo Sports Monster Fighter!
It’s Friday and you’ve made it through another week. We thought we’d end this one with another old Japanese clip featuring a nostalgic car. This time it’s Return of Ultraman, the fourth in the tokusatsu television series, running from 1971-72. If you’re not familiar with Ultraman he’s basically a regular bloke who, when needed, can transform into a 150-foot tall giant with superpowers to fight off monsters attacking Japan.
And what car does such a hero drive off to save the day in? Why, a Mazda Cosmo Sports, of course! Only the first ever mass-produced car with a rotary engine could be futuristic enough for a story that takes place in what seemed very far away at the time – 1993. A pity they didn’t foresee the FD RX-7! Also, in case you were wondering what the MAT logo emblazoned on the door stands for, it’s “Monster Attack Team.” Have a great weekend, everybody!
February 6th, 2009 at 1:59 am
Haha, what a coincidence! I posted today on my blog about the car usage in Tokusatsu series:
http://www.banpei.net/blog/hilarious-car-usage-tokusatsu
Funny thing is during my “investigation” I came to the conclusion that most Tokusatsu drive Mazda. Could the rotary aspect of those car have to do anything with that?
February 6th, 2009 at 3:31 am
Ultraman geek and rotary nerd here!
The MAT Cosmo is easily the best vehicle among the other kaiju squads, also Ultraman’s human alter ego in this series is a racer.
A 1980 RX-7 is used in the aptly named Ultraman 80 show.
February 6th, 2009 at 3:39 am
Where do you find this stuff honestly?
I love it how it was meant to be 1993.
February 6th, 2009 at 11:37 am
j_c – Please tell me you have a pic of that RX-7!
banpei – My knowledge of tokusatsu shows is very poor… maybe they’re all from the same production company. If so, they might have had sponsorship from Mazda.
In later years another Ultraman series had the Machine Zellet, a BB6 Honda Prelude, which is a car very popular in America but wholly unloved in Japan. In that case maybe they were just going for something weird…
February 6th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
What a perfect car for Ultraman to drive!
February 8th, 2009 at 11:01 pm
I saw some sort of model kit for an Ultraman show on ebay, looked like some sort of really horribly customized early ’60s Chrysler Imperial 4-door. Can someone explain where this slots into everything?
http://www.ms-plus.net/images_item/0000/971.jpg
February 8th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
That’s from Ultraseven, and it looks like an Imperial to me too. Beyond that, I’m just as lost!
February 11th, 2009 at 7:10 am
late reply, here’s screen shot of the SA22 from Ultraman 80. UGM stands for Utility Government Members. quality ain’t that great because it’s off a VCD.
http://homepage.mac.com/jolocho/SA22UGM.jpg
February 11th, 2009 at 10:03 am
awesome, thanks! seems like this was one of the less popular ultraman cars though, eh?
February 11th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I think it was the series that was less popular. Return of Ultraman was only the 3rd show, so things weren’t as formulaic by the time 80 showed up. And I suppose the RX-7 didn’t look radically different from other cars of the era, and the rotary engine was 10 years old by that time, so it wasn’t as special as the Cosmo.
October 3rd, 2009 at 5:06 pm
ultraseven’s pointer tdf po-1 is the best car of all for me!
November 9th, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Friends:
Which is the original car modified to achieve the TDF PO-1 of Ultra Seven of 1967-1968?
I live in Lima Peru and in all Latin America there is many fans of all the Ultraman!