Japanese Nostalgic Car

Last week Dave wrote about M2, the Mazda specialty shop designed to hear feedback delivered directly from the customer’s mouth. If only more companies would do that.

What would you tell automakers to do?

Japanese automakers once made the most perfectly ergonomic dashboards known to man. Some still do, but the one automaker that’s fallen farthest from its heyday tree is Honda. Look upon in wonder at this Honda dashboard from the days when Old Man Soichiro still had a hand in his company: the thin-spoked steering wheel, the trio of logical gauges, the well-bolstered and gorgeously upholstered seats. Compared to modern-day Honda’s Romulan warbird consoles it is a thing of utter beauty, so minimalist and functional, and even has a small tray formed by negative space. All this in an Accord, no less! And if you ask us, there’s a tragic dearth of blue interiors these days. So yeah, we’d tell Honda to make more of these, less of those.

What say you, dear reader? As always, the most entertaining comment by next Monday will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of the last QotW, “What’s your favorite period-correct license plate for your JNC?”  Continue reading →

Thanks to California’s Legacy License Plate program we’ve been talking a lot about the proper period-correct license plates for your JNC recently. We’ve been Cali-centric, but we’d like to open the question up to our readers worldwide.

What’s your favorite period-correct license plate for your JNC?

A visit to Nissan resto-mod specialist Rocky Auto last year revealed a hakosuka GT-R with a a very unique plate. To quote David, “In Japan, whenever a car changes owners or is de-registered its plates are sent in to the rikuunkyoku, or vehicle registration center, and subsequently destroyed, whereupon new plates are made and re-issued. This plate, however, was the original plate, with only one digit on top rather than three, from when the car was brand new. That means that this KPGC10 GT-R is a one owner car!”

What say you, dear reader? As always, the most entertaining comment by next Monday will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of the last QotW, “Just the tip of the iceberg, or last of a dying breed?“  Continue reading →