R/C Cars Pulling A Hilux - Amazing videos are here

When were were young all we got in terms of radio controlled vehicles was a crappy G.I. Joe-branded Jeep that broke within three hours of its emergence from the box. It sat there, mocking us with its uselessness, for the rest of our childhood and was probably the reason we never got into hard core r/c-ing. Fortunately, not all of our readers had such poor experiences with their EM wave-guided minicars.

From the JNC Tasmanian Devil Bureau, seventhskyline brings us news that the Tamiya 3-speed Hilux is back. We have to admit we didn’t even know it was here the first time, but apparently it had such a following that even after it went out of production it was still trading as high as $1200 Australian, which at today’s exchange rates equals about, oh, $1200 American. Then stationwagonguy went and dug up this awesome vintage commercial in which 14 Tamiya Hiluxes pull one 1:1 scale Hilux. Dammit, G.I. Joe Jeep, see what you made us miss out on?

Also, first JNC’er who can name the white car in the Tamiya building parking lot gets an invisible cookie.

To celebrate our recent magazine launch, we’re giving away a few little trinkets that we picked up from our trip to Japan. Nothing special, just a few super deformed pullback cars that fly across your kitchen floor like a startled roach. Those who have subscribed to the magazine will see another contest in the pages of the first issue whose prizes are valued at $100

The three larger ones are mystery boxes from the History of Celica & Supra collection, and their unknown contents can range anywhere from a TA22 Celica to a JZA80 Supra. The three smaller cars are Choro-Qs, a white Datsun Cherry Coupe X1-R, beige Toyota A40 Supra Liftback, and gold Honda N360.

Just send us an email to the feedback address at the bottom of this page with “CONTEST” as the subject and your name and address where you’d like the prize to be sent (which will be kept strictly confidential). On Friday, April 18 at 11:59pm US Eastern Time, we will randomly pick the winners and send out the prizes on Saturday, April 19. If you have a preference as to which car you’d like, put it in the email but the first winner will have first choice. Thanks and good luck!

No, we haven’t come to an untimely death by offending the wrong yakuza lieutenant, accidentally driving down the wrong side of the wangan, or eating ill-prepared fugu. Much to the chagrin of some, we are very much alive, but our last day in Japan was largely uneventful. We spent our single day of downtime meeting up with friends, collecting JDM brochures and getting fingerprints all over the cars at Toyota’s Amlux showroom in Ikebukuro and Nissan’s showroom in Ginza.

Amlux is a 10 minute walk from the JR Ikebukuro station. Exit on the Seibu side. You have to cross under an elevated highway to get to it, so this is the best exterior shot we could manage.

Six stories of Toyota goodness.

The Nostalgic Car set of R/C vintage Skylines at a Japanese Toys R Us.

Nissan’s Ginza showroom. Beware, weary traveler, for there are two Ginza showrooms. This, the smaller one, is near the Tokyo Metro Ginza Line station. It’s only big enough to house two cars and a gift shop.

The GT-R on display with the Intima concept.

The engine room of the starship Enterprise.

For some reason, you can buy Nissan Heritage Collection goods there.

This is the real showroom, which is a 10 minute walk or a quick shuttle bus ride away. Blade Runner on the outside…

… Logan’s Run on the inside.

Ben stinking up the GT-R. This is the first one we’ve seen in person that wasn’t silver. Red looks mighty purdy on this beast.

In Japan, white taxis (usually with blue stripe) are privately owned. This cabbie clearly loves his Cima (Infiniti Q45). We wanted to jump in and and say, “To Yokohama, stat!” just to see how quickly he’d get us there.

We went to sample some local fare with our friend Kats. Unfortunately, he didn’t tell us that one of the fares was beef colon soup from the Kyushu region. In case you’re wondering, it’s gamy, chewy, and not something we’d order again. Fortunately, we had several pints of smooth, delicious Suntory beer to wash it down. JNC: sampling the beef colon so you don’t have to!

Not beef colon.

Fun fact: 80% of Tokyo’s mass consists of vending machines, convenience stores, and arcades with coin-operated capsule dispensers. This is all an effort to drive the sales of mystery boxes, which ranks 4th in Japan’s top 10 industries, right between consumer electronics and shipbuilding. For the uninitiated (consider yourselves lucky), mystery boxes are little collectible toys with a common theme and several different items to complete the series (in the case of vending machines, the toys come attached to your refreshing beverage). But, rather than doing something useful like actually showing you what you’re going to get, the box is sealed, making the entire enterprise a lottery, like baseball cards or things at the bottom of cereal boxes. Of course, the ultimate goal is to get you to buy ever more mystery boxes and to drive OCD types insane.

While stopping into one of Japan’s 9 billion 7-11s, lo and behold, what did we find but a Nissan Skyline 50th Anniversary mystery box. As you can see from the packaging, we had only a 1 in 6 chance of getting something really cool and nostalgic, and for 500 yen (about $5), they weren’t exactly a cheap gamble. Nevertheless, we bit. And check out what we got on our first try:

Kenmeri GT-R, baby! And it’s superdeformed to boot!

It was a great start to a day filled with Nissans that all began behind this nondescript door.

This is the Zama warehouse, where almost the entirety of Nissan’s automotive and racing history is kept. It was like the lost Nazi-looted Russian Amber Room, Bruce Wayne’s garage, and the room at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark all rolled into one.

After that, we ate lunch at the Nissan employee cafeteria. The food was pretty damn good. No rubbery pizza tiles here!

We also stopped by Honda’s showroom in Aoyama Itchome, which you may recognize from the Tokyo Route 246 track in Gran Turismo 4.

More to come…

Special thanks to Mr. “Itchy” for being our guide!

If there’s one thing the Japanese love, it’s superdeformation. Do not be alarmed. That simply means the superdeformee’s features are exaggerated to give it a cartoonish, caricatured look. Everything from animals to anime characters get the treatment, and even inanimate objects can’t escape the process, with several whole toy car lines dedicated to it, like Maruka’s Drive Town and Takara’s Choro-Q, the latter of which you may remember as Penny Racers here in the States.

There’s just something indescribably cute about these cars, so please excuse us while we shout “Kawaiiiiii!” like a 12-year-old Japanese girl at Sanrio Puroland. Now, for your viewing pleasure, here are some 3D rendered versions, which, if not for their distorted proportions, would look entirely real. In fact, art66 has a whole gallery of these, along with other vehicular works of art in the form of shadowboxes, 2D illustrations, and that other Japanese favorite, papercraft. Check them out, adore them, and maybe create some lolcars. Kthxbai.

When we were kids, we’d scuff up furniture, walls, floors, ceilings and anything else our parents valued with hundreds of little metal cars. Of course, in the US that meant Matchbox or Hot Wheels, and for a brief while, Pocket Cars. Of course, Pocket Cars was the American market name for Tomica, a Japanese line of diecast cars that, unlike their 1:1 scale counterparts, had a very little success in the US, due mainly to their higher cost and lack of recognizable models (to American eyes, at least).

In Japan, however, Tomicas thrived and in 2004, parent company Tomy launched a new lineup called Tomica Limited Vintage, a line of highly detailed cars based on nostalgics! Cars range from Prince Skylines to Mazda K360 three-wheelers to Toyota Crowns. Prices start at ¥790 for a small car like Subaru 360 Wagon and cap out at ¥3000 for a Hino RB10 Bus. All models are 1/64 scale.

Look closely. Closer. Notice something? If you can believe it, these are not images of real cars. Their creator, known only as pcman, is one of the most talented scale model builders we have ever seen, through a glue-induced haze or otherwise. The photos of this TE27 and AE86 look flat out real, and many of the kits and accessories on his cars, from braided lines to body kits to million-point roll cages, are custom made from scratch. Check out his astoundng galleries of wild bosozoku pimpmobiles and race-ready hachirokus here and here. He even offers step-by-step DIY photos for those curious about his mad skills.

For some excellent masterpieces by our very own JNC’ers, check out this forum thread.

Source: [pcman]