While this isn’t exactly a car, we like how Suzuki has recalled its historic triple blue on white racing livery for a new special edition GSX1400Z. With fuel costs going through the ceiling, motorbikes are looking more and more appealing as an alternative to four wheeled travel. Unfortunately, like many great Japanese vehicles, this one is unavailable in North America. Australian, European and Japanese readers can bike all they want.

With major Japanese manufacturers like Honda and Yamaha going retro with their motorcycles, why not some throwback cars as well?

[The Motor Report]

There’s so little Suzuki news that we like to throw this marque a little love whenever the occasion presents itself. A while back, one such occasion did, when a minty fresh Suzuki LJ20 appeared on eBay. Now it’s successor, the LJ80, has appeared on Jalopnik’s “Down on the Street” series in pickup form. To say that the interior is spartan would be like saying the ocean is a bit damp. Check out the full gallery here.

[Jalopnik]

In these days of skyrocketing gas prices where you have to take out a mortgage just to fill up your Escalade, how about a 4×4 with two-speed transfer case that gets 50mpg? If you don’t mind putting up with a 358cc two-stroke engine, here’s the SUV for you, a 1972 Suzuki LJ20. At least its 1300lb curb weight won’t hold back the trucklet’s 32hp for a top speed of 55mph. It was never officially imported into the US, but its descendants, the Samurai/Jimny, were until Consumer Reports deemed it rollover prone.

Anyhow, this LJ20 is for sale on eBay right now and has only 25,300 miles on the clock. According to the owner, it’s got no rust, no bondo, and has been kept in a heated garage. Everything works, even the dome light and it’s still wearing shiny, original paint. This baby might be mint, but for some reason we have a sudden craving for mustard.

[Source: eBay via Winding Road]

A couple of years ago Peugeot released the 1007, which is a funky subcompact city car with a unique feature: double sliding doors. So instead of conventional doors, you get van-like sliding doors which whizz back and forth electrically. Cool idea, the concept behind the 1007 being to allow easier ingress to the car in typically tight Euro cities.

Great idea….but just so you know, JDM did it first…

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As the unveils at the Tokyo Motor Show enters its second day, the dearth of nostalgics and any reference to them continues.  We’ve seen cars that are soft to the touch and glow in the dark, ones that swivel 360 degrees with a R2-D2-like copilot, a rotary-powered landspeeder a futuristic COE battering ram and three retro bikes, but zero classic cars.  Well, there was one, but it was a Volvo.

So instead, we’ll just show you the Suzuki LC from the 2005 ToMoShow, a retro concept that hearkens back to the company’s first car, the 1955 Suzulight.  Check out the stubby bullet fender mirrors, the plaid-on-red upholstery and the whitewall tires, all in a package cute enough to be a Sanrio character.  Sadly, it never made it into production, but we want to love it and pet it and call it George.

After seeing the carbon fiber Honda Z600 that wowed the JCCS crowd over the weekend, we wondered - out loud and to the dismay/puzzlement of other post office patrons waiting in line with us - what is the fastest Honda Z600 the world has to offer?

First, we have “Evil Tweety,” holder of the J/Pro record at the Bonneville Salt Flats with a 99.299 mph run, though its fastest time clocked is 101.5 mph. According to its owner, it retains its naturally aspirated air-cooled 2-cylinder underhood, albeit stroked to 700cc with Electromotive fuel injection, open exhaust, very high compression and a mild racing cam. Ladies and gentlemen, Evil Tweety.

Next up, courtesy of the Gebrüder Dorsch blog, a German entrant that appears to have a jet engine protruding from das boot. We turn to Babelfish to discover that, “These vehicles do hurt… One should possibly drastic penalties, when people of such cultural goods to make a mistake.” We think this means the Brothers Dorsch disapprove of the butchered Z600’s ersatz motor. They continue: “The poor little Honda Z600 a jet engine in the ****.” We would have to agree that jet engines in the **** should be strictly verboten. We imagine that any attempt at turning during full throttle in this thing would be as well.

Finally, we have the latest Frankensteinian Z600, the one that started this pointless line of questioning, a full-on race car built for solo B-mod with a Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle engine mounted between the front and rear axles, precisely in the driver’s right ear. And when you’re rebodying the entire car in carbon fiber, why not go with the widest widebody you can fit wheels under? This also gets bonus points for looking terrifying.

Well, we have no idea which one is fastest, but all of them are probably plenty scary, so we put the question to you, dear reader, how would you rather face death?

1.) Hurtling across the remains of an Ice Age lake ensconced in a 37-year old sheet of tin.

2.) Going warp speed in a home-built jet car that, despite its German engineering, is probably one-use-only.

3.) Snapping your neck with a quick flick of the steering wheel in something possessing the power-to-weight ratio of an electron.

Sound off in the comments.

[Sources: Jalopnik, Dorsch.com]

Here’s a post about a marque not often discussed in the nostalgic world, Suzuki. Like Toyota, the company started out making automatic looms. Like Honda, their first vehicles were motorized bicycles. And like Mazda, their first mass produced car heeded the call of the government’s mandate for a People’s Car. The 1955 Suzulight (pictured) was one of the first cars in Japan to feature front wheel drive, four-wheel independent suspension and rack and pinion steering, and slotted neatly into the kei class with its two-stroke 360cc engine.

More of Suzuki’s history can be found at SuzukiAuto.com.