Things have been pretty frantic here at JNC headquarters, so we’ve missed posting on an event or two. Most notably, from the Better Late Than Never Bureau, the Z Car Club Inland Valley’s Datsun & Nissan Car Show. Check out Dan’s fantastic pics here.
And from the Roo Bar Bureau on the other side of the world, Aussie JNCer Dave Carey attended last year’s Bay to Birdwood vintage car event with his Isuzu Bellet and wrote an excellent piece about it. Accompanied with some drool-inducing photos of Down Under J-tin that we don’t get to see in the States, we just had to post it up. Read all about it here. Thanks, Dave!
From our water chestnut bureau courtesy of RedSunday, here’s a couple of great vids featuring Mitsubishis. First, a walkthrough of some of the triple diamond mafia’s greatest hits. Though we couldn’t understand anything except that the GTO MR has “dummy” hood scoops, the FTO desperately needs to be lowered on some wide wheels, and it’s hard fully grown man to squeeze into a kei-sized Mitsu 500. How did they even sell those things? There’s also a Hino Contessa Coupe and Isuzu 117 thrown in for good measure.
Follow the jump for a bonus video of an FTO owner brazenly unconcerned about bending a control arm. (more…)
We don’t often have a lot of Isuzu news here, but the least-loved Japanese marque had some nice designs before completely falling out of the passenger car market altogether. The I-Mark was one of the first cars in the US to be branded an Isuzu, which came to the US market in 1981. Prior to that, Isuzu-built cars had been sold by GM’s Opel division through its Buick dealerships thanks to a panicked attempt to get small cars into the the lineup after the 1973 Oil Crisis. That crisis also prompted a huge influx of diesel engines into the US, since diesel fuel returned better mileage and cost less than petrol. The I-Mark coupe is a looker, and now that Isuzu has announced plans to abandon the passenger vehicle market altogether, this will soon become one of the many forgotten but quaint relics on the roadside of failed automakers. Here’s an Opel-badged version for comparison.
This two-owner car on eBay appears to be completely stock except for a tow bar in the front. According to the description, many of its miles were accumulated behind the first owner’s motor home. This is believable, as the interior wear doesn’t indicate 195,000 miles of occupation. It came from Arizona too, which means no salt but lots of sun. No top-down photos of the dash and rear parcel shelf are available, but there don’t seem to be any sun-baked cracks on either, nor on the vinyl sections of the rear seats. The auction has ended early implying that the seller cut a deal outside of eBay, so we don’t know the price it sold for, but he was looking for $3500 to BuyItNow. Thanks to David for the tip!
We’ve done a few articles on Isuzu before (here and here) and it’s quite clear that the old Japanese marque’s car-making division started to run into financial rocks in the early 90s. And now we hear that after soldiering on for years selling only rebadged GM SUVs, Isuzu is deserting its last real passenger car market, the USA (here at japanesenostalgiccar.com). However one of the standout memories from the late 80s JDM era were the extraordinarily lavish series of TV commercials for the Isuzu Gemini.
Many JDM car commercials were filmed in Europe during that time, and so it’s not surprising that the Isuzu commercials were shot in Paris. But the memorable thing about the Isuzu ads were the amazing stunts, which were performed by the Remy Julienne organisation, which also performed the stunts for the (original) Italian Job, the Taxi series, and most of the James Bond films, to name a few.
Damn, we’re out of the country for one week and the US loses an entire marque. Isuzu announced on January 31 that in one year, they will completely abandon the American passenger vehicle market after a slow and painful death. To be fair, you could see this one coming from a mile away - check out their website and you’ll see but two models, both rebadged GM trucks.
What started out in 1916 as a tie-up between Tokyo Ishikawajima Shipbuilding and Engineering Co., Ltd. and Tokyo Gas and Electric Industrial Co. to make commercial trucks was eventually renamed to the much more succinct Isuzu after the Isuzu River in Mie Prefecture. Over its tumultuous history, it forged alliances with many other automakers, including Rootes, GM, Honda and Subaru in an effort to gain a foothold into the car side of the business, but nothing really stuck.
In Japan, it’s most well-known cars are nostalgic ones - the Bellet, Florian, and 117 Coupe - but by the 90s they were selling only rebadged Honda Accords and Civics before stopping car sales altogether. In the States, the Gemini compact was sold via Buick under the Opel brand in the 70s, but the car most fondly remembered by Americans will be the 80s Impulse (aka Piazza), a wedge-shaped Giugiaro-styled RWD coupe.
Trucks, however, were always the company’s strong suit, and one of our faves was the futuristic dune-hopper Vehi-CROSS. The Trooper, Amigo and Rodeo also had strong followings, but not strong enough, apparently, to keep Isuzu afloat here in the US. Once Honda began developing its own SUVs, there was no need for the Rodeo-based Passport or Trooper-based Acura SLX, and the crowded market was simply too competitive.
The company will now focus on what it does best - commercial trucks - as the N and F-Series medium duties continue to soldier on in the American market. Sayonara, Isuzu, we’ll be thinking of you next time we’re stuck behind a flat-cabbed box van in traffic.
The other day we did a feature on the Isuzu 117 Coupe and we concluded the article with a short mention of its replacement, the Piazza. That got us to thinking about the Piazza and now that we have 20yrs worth of hindsight, I think it’s about time we examined the oft-scorned coupe.
In Australia the image of the Piazza is unambiguous: it’s a lemon. But did fate play the attractive Italian-styled coupe a bad hand? Was it really such a bad car? We at GrandJDM are willing to fire up our trusty time machine to find out!
One of the more fondly remembered classic cars in Japan today is the Isuzu 117 Coupe. An FR design, it debuted in Japan as an Italian-designed, DOHC sports coupe with an exotic pricetag to match.
A JDM car with an extraordinarily long production run (1968~1981), its swoopy European looks have ensured that the 117 still has widespread classic car appeal, long after Isuzu stopped producing cars.
Damn, we’re out of the country for one week and the US loses an entire marque. Isuzu announced on January 31 that in one year, they will completely abandon the American passenger vehicle market after a slow and painful death. To be fair, you could see this one coming from a mile away - check out their 
In Japan, it’s most well-known cars are nostalgic ones - the Bellet, Florian, and 117 Coupe - but by the 90s they were selling only rebadged Honda Accords and Civics before stopping car sales altogether. In the States, the Gemini compact was sold via Buick under the Opel brand in the 70s, but the car most fondly remembered by Americans will be the 80s Impulse (aka Piazza), a wedge-shaped Giugiaro-styled RWD coupe.
