While life gives us LeMons here in the colonies, it doles out bangers in the UK, where before a car is put out to pasture, it’s put on a tear through a pasture. The long held tradition of taking an old car to a muddy field and letting it go out in style, or at least like a heifer with mad cow disease, is practically a British way of life, right up there with afternoon tea and bowler hats.
Take a long, painful look at The A to Z of Banger Racing to see what kind of machinery is meeting its demise at the hands of a bunch of sadistic Brits. There’s Corollas, Crowns, Laurels, Cedrics, and basically a whole smattering of awesome J-tin that we’d kill to get our hands on - even a Nissan President and a hearse. Savages! Perhaps our readers from the UK can rescue some of these barges. Otherwise, we might have to call in William Wallace to give you a good trashing. He was also The Road Warrior, you know.
This week’s news segment on the most hilariousest motoring show in TV-dom, Top Gear, has a guide to presents for the holidays. Unfortunately, despite the speed of teh Internets, by the time this could get across the Atlantic from the from the soccer-is-football bureau courtesy of tipster Madflava, it was too late for most major observances descended from druid solstice festivals.
Still, we couldn’t help but notice the lineup of Nissan paraphernalia, including a sled, Z-car aloha shirt, and - wait for it - a bobblehead of Yutaka Katayama! Yes kids, now you can have your very own desktop figurine of Mr. K, the man who brought you the 510, 240Z and a series of zany mid-90s car commercials, complete with cane and Cosby vest!
On the latest episode of BBC Top Gear, Jezza, the Hamster and Captain Slow celebrate the 40th anniversary of British Leyland in one of their famous cheap car challenges. Armed with 1200 pounds sterling, each of them is sent to buy the best BL manufactured car they can find, and then subject it to a barrage of challenges to test speed, durability, and humiliation.
Most embarrassingly of all, the Queen’s honor was put up against a 69hp lime green Datsun 120Y (aka B210, Sunny), complete with honeycomb hubcaps, piloted by The Stig. According to the lads, this model was the car that showed Britain automobiles could be reliable and expected to start on the first try.
The following are the presenters and their weapons of choice:
(May) Let it never be said that Fairlady is a silly, girly name for a car when the English have named a car the Austin Princess despite their first language being, in fact, English.
(Hammond) Or the Dolly Sprint. Well, to be fair, the real name is the Triumph Dolomite Sprint, which sounds like some kind of Olympic track and field event involving blaxploitation but is actually a pretty cool little car. DO-LO-MIIITE!
(Clarkson) The Rover SD1 was equipped with a 3.5L V8 and looks like a Clark Kent version of the Renault Alpine A310. Does it have what it takes to school a 1.2L Japanese four-cylinder of the same era?
We won’t spoil the ending for you, but it’s good to see a country that can joke about its own auto industry, and in the immortal words of James May, “Brown is a seventies color. This is a 1978 car. It’s very interesting.” So without further ado, here are the clips courtesy of YouTube: parts 1, 2, 3 and 4. Thanks to MadFlava for the tip!
Sorry about the lack of updates. Our computer suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure that we’ll be slowly recovering from. In the meantime, enjoy this video, in which Top Gear’s Jeremy Clarkson lines up almost every iteration of a Z-car ever made in one big drag race. The winner, not surprisingly, is a 1990 300ZX twin-turbo, which Clarkson calls an 80s car. Perhaps he was just phoning it in, since the rest of the show looks like the detritus that ended up Top Gear’s editing floor, but it’s entertaining nonetheless. The Z-cars are at 4:13. Thanks to Madflava for the tip!
UPDATE: The operatives at MI6 have taken down the videos to defend the honor of the Queen and the BBC. Luckily, tipster J found this link to the video on YouTube.
Three chaps from the Uke bought a 1982 Nissan Laurel for a hundred pounds sterling, or just under 200 US dollars. That may not seem like breaking news, but these gents intend to drive their banger saloon from Calais, France to Rimini, Italy as part of the 2007 Scally Rally, a trans-Europe voyage that passes through several sovereign nations, the Alps, and some truly gorgeous terrain, all in the name of charity. With their bargain mule, you’d think it’d be easier just to ditch it on the Italian coast and jet home, but the trio plans to drive the car back to whence it came, totaling 3,000 plus miles overall and putting our Cressida jaunt to shame. Well done, lads!
The team is rallying for Ulverston’s St Mary’s Hospice and emerges from the Chunnel on September 14 to commence Alpine antics.
Europe’s acceptance of minicars has allowed Daihatsu, Japan’s specialist of small, to thrive. Whereas they packed up their subcompacts (possibly in suitcases) and left the US and Australian markets in 1992 and 2006, the Old World still gets the new stuff.
2007 marks Daihatsu’s 100th year in business, and the company is offering Centenary editions of many of its cars. In the UK, you can get a Sirion (Daihatsu Boon/Toyota Passo in Japan) Centenary Edition that comes in silver and has alloy wheels, power mirrors and Y-axis driver’s seat adjustability. The Terios (Daihatsu Be-Go/Toyota Rush) micro 4×4 comes also in silver and alloy wheels, but receives a leather steering wheel, fog lamps and roof rails. Just 100 of each will go on sale in September.
In Germany, you can get also get a 100th Anniversary Copen (pictured), the kei-sized hardtop roadster, which comes in either silver or gray with a red interior or dark green with a beige one. Extras include an upgraded head unit, aluminum trim and a Momo steering wheel. The Deutsch special edition Sirion comes in black.
Check out Daihatsu’s 100th Anniversary sites in the UK and Germany. Earlier this year, Daihatsu opened a museum in Osaka.
While looking through the photos from the UK’s recent Retro Rides Show on Old Japanese Car, this hakosuka Skyline GT-R done up in the paint scheme of the legendary Grand Champion series car that took the checkered flag at Fuji on October 10, 1971 caught our eye. We didn’t know if it was a replica or what, but now the car’s background has been revealed by its owner in our Forum and it is an astounding story. Read the full explanation here.
While life gives us LeMons here in the colonies, it doles out bangers in the UK, where before a car is put out to pasture, it’s put on a tear through a pasture. The long held tradition of taking an old car to a muddy field and letting it go out in style, or at least like a heifer with mad cow disease, is practically a British way of life, right up there with afternoon tea and bowler hats.
On the latest episode of BBC Top Gear, Jezza, the Hamster and Captain Slow celebrate the 40th anniversary of British Leyland in one of their famous cheap car challenges. Armed with 1200 pounds sterling, each of them is sent to buy the best BL manufactured car they can find, and then subject it to a barrage of challenges to test speed, durability, and humiliation.
Sorry about the lack of updates. Our computer suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure that we’ll be slowly recovering from. In the meantime, enjoy this 
Three chaps from the Uke bought a 1982 Nissan Laurel for a hundred pounds sterling, or just under 200 US dollars. That may not seem like breaking news, but these gents intend to drive their banger saloon from Calais, France to Rimini, Italy as part of the 2007 
Europe’s acceptance of minicars has allowed Daihatsu, Japan’s specialist of small, to thrive. Whereas they packed up their subcompacts (possibly in suitcases) and left the US and Australian markets in 1992 and 2006, the Old World still gets the new stuff.
While looking through the photos from the UK’s recent 