One of the cool things about going to Japan is just walking into a suburban toystore and spending a few hours discovering all the cool JDM toys (and also rediscovering the fact that you may not be as grown-up as you think you are as you stumble to the checkout with an armful of children’s toys for yourself).
And probably the biggest JDM toymaker is Takara Tomy (just check out their huge range of products)! There’s constantly something cool being released.
When our windows machine died an untimely death earlier this year, we made the jump to Apple. The the guy in this video is partially responsible. There’s no doubt by now that you’ve seen the 80s-rific commercial in which Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak hawks the 280ZX resurface on auto and tech blog alike a few months back, and then again when he recently announced he was auctioning off his 2005 350Z for charity.
We have to hand it to the guy, rather than shy away from a 30 second yearbook photo The Woz embraces it fully and self-parodies, uh, himself. Weird Al Yankovic’s “White & Nerdy” even plays as he’s pulling away. When the news first broke he was asking a round $100,000, but the price has now been reduced to about half that. Sale of the century? Well, a brand new NISMO 350Z starts at $38,070, so it’s really like the car plus 20 grand for lunch at Wozniak’s house and the warm fuzzy feeling you’ll get knowing that he’s donating it to a charity, if UC Berkeley can be called that. The new video can be seen here.
Remember Power Wheels, those battery-powered kid-mobiles with big plastic wheels that inevitably deformed and cracked if the car was anywhere but the kitchen floor? In the US we can recall two flavors – Jeep and Corvette – but as with so many childhood wishes these also passed us by. Our parents could barely afford to keep their actual cars running, much less buy cough up a Benjamin for a glorified plastic bucket with a max speed barely higher than stationary.
Tikes in the land of the rising sun can pick from R34 Skyline GT-Rs for mock JGTC racing, 350Zs or Celicas for toddler touge runs, Celsiors for the aspiring corporate CEO, or even the Nissan March for the economy-minded rugrat. Apparently, Japan’s access to the coolest wheeled contraptions isn’t just limited to 1:1 scale cars.
We are just back from the Big Apple and the New York International Auto Show. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much news about nostalgics, like Detroit had with the 1974 Safari Rally Lancer, but here’s a few blurbs about some cars that owe a lot to their predecessors:
Honda revealed the last (at least for the AP1 chassis) and latest in its abbreviated line of S-cars, the S2000 CR which stands for Club Racer. Limited to only 2000 units, the lightened and tightened version of high-revving roadster comes with a quicker steering ratio, tweaked suspension, no a/c or radio in the base version, chassis stiffening, and functional but garish aero parts. The Honda accessories aluminum hardtop comes standard; gone is the motorized softtop. The US-only edition will has no engine mods, but will come in 4 colors, the Apex Blue on the show car being exclusive to the CR.
Toyota had on display their 50th Anniversary Toyota Camry Hybrid, celebrating the marque’s half century in the States, which comes with a Blizzard White paint scheme and 16″ wheels unique to the special edition.
Nissan showed a gorgeous example of the latest NISMO-tuned 350Z, replete with special suspension tuning, aero parts, chassis stiffening, wheels and elongated nose. Four colors – red, silver, black and white – from the standard palette will be available. No engine mods on this on either, but a NISMO exhaust will surely accentuate the already hearty exhaust note.
Nissan’s upscale brand Infiniti took the wraps off the next generation Skyline coupe, or G37 in American-speak. Naturally, the car looks beautiful and the extra 0.2 liters will give it an estimated 330hp and 270 lb-ft of torque.
And that about does it. Rain fell incessantly during Day 1, a condition not at all remedied by the leaky roof of the Javits Center. Audi looked as if plastic buckets of water would play a key role in their 2007 lineup. Speaking of leaks, how many New York Subway stations smell like urine? Answer: All of them.
