Tag Archives: subaru 360
NIHON LIFE: A kei car Sunday
For a number of years we’ve passed a lone Subaru 360 perched atop a rack built from scaffold over a similar-age Sambar truck. I kept thinking, “I must stop and photograph it before it disappears.” Like a Honda S500 no … Continue reading →
EVENTS: 2015 New Year Meeting Part 07 — Compact Flash
Today (no pun intended!) we take a look at the classic city cars that showed up at the New Year Meeting. Some, like this happy red Honda Today, are kei cars, but not all. As you might remember, the Today was the star car in You’re Under … Continue reading →
EVENTS: 2014 Meiji Jingu Classic Car Festival, Part 02
The annual Meiji Jingu Classic Car Festival offers something few other shows can claim: the chance to see its cars driving through public streets. It’s not simply witnessing them in motion, though It’s the fact that those public streets are in Tokyo, in some of the … Continue reading →
EVENTS: 2014 Meiji Jingu Classic Car Festival, Part 01
Unlike last year‘s clear blue skies and balmy weather, this year’s Meiji Jingu Classic Car Festival was held on a cool, wet Saturday. The annual event, put on by the Toyota Automobile museum, welcomes all marques and takes place in a … Continue reading →
EVENTS: Showa Kinen Park Car Show
Today’s guest writer is Chris Nicholson, who keeps the cars running at the Lane Motor Museum. Chris recently attended a classic car show in Showa Kinen Park. Every trip to Japan is full of wonder, and every trip to Japan is too … Continue reading →
JNC THEATER: Operation: Mystery! and the Tortoise
Kaiki Daisakusen (or Operation: Mystery! in English) was a 26-episode Japanese TV series about a team of investigators dispatched to solve cases involving supernatural phenomena. The SRI, or Science Research Institute may have been Japan’s 1960s counterpart to the FBI’s X-Files department, but Mulder and Scully never had … Continue reading →
Happy Valentine’s Day from JNC
Valentine’s Day. Unavoidable and yet oh-so-little to do with cars. That is, unless you’re lucky enough to receive one of these kyuusha-shaped Tomica chocolates. For 2014, they’ve added an adorable cocoa Subaru 360 to the set. How cute is that? I … Continue reading →
ART CORNER: Ryuji Tsugihara’s Yoroshiku Mechadoc
There are countless manga devoted to the subject of cars, but rarely do they leap off their comic book pages into the world of anime. Any self-respecting JNCer knows a few, but before Initial D or Wangan Midnight, before even Shakotan Boogie, there … Continue reading →
EVENTS: Meiji Jingu Classic Car Festival & Parade, Part 01
We’re extremely lucky to attend as many J-tin filled shows as we do, so it might sound like a first world problem when we say there’s always one teensy issue: The cars are stationary. That’s why when the Toyota Automobile … Continue reading →
VIDEO: Subaru Vintage Garage explores Fuji Rabbit, 360
Subaru has been making a concerted effort to promote its history as of late. Timed perfectly with our visit to the Subaru History Collection is the debut of a video series called Subaru Vintage Garage. Watch these bite-size history lessons … Continue reading →
GRAND TOURING: Journey to Subaru of America’s History Collection, Part 01
You’d never guess as you drove by, but in a nondescript warehouse just across the Delaware river from Philadelphia lies the most eclectic stash of boxer motored, all-wheel-drive vehicles in the US. Earlier this year, we at JNC had the rare opportunity … Continue reading →
NEWS: Happy 60th birthday to Fuji Heavy Industries
Rejoice, Subarites, for it is the 60th birthday of your beloved parent company. Fuji Heavy Industries was founded on July 15, 1953, formed when five former companies of the disbanded Nakajima Aircraft Company. The new logo showed five smaller stars … Continue reading →
VIDEO: Crashing Classic Subarus
And now for your viewing pleasure, Subarus crashing into walls. When we started JNC in 2006, you couldn’t get a Japanese automaker to cough up some vintage footage if your threatened the CEO’s grandchildren at gunpoint. Nowadays, they’re more than happy to … Continue reading →
GRAND TOURING: Shio no Michi, the Salt Road — Part 01
Having not been away in a few weeks, we decided to take a Monday off and spend three days exploring Nagano Prefecture and some of the less traveled valleys near the Northern Alps. Using our usual form of taking the main … Continue reading →
EVENTS: Mooneyes Hot Rod & Custom Show
There’s no event on Earth that captures the the fusion of Japano-American car culture quite like the Mooneyes Hot Rod & Custom Show. Everything from Baja Bugs to T-Buckets are represented, with the majority of cars shown are imports to … Continue reading →
EVENTS: 2012 Japanese Classic Car Show, Part 09: Editors’ Choice
It should be no surprise by now that the Japanese Classic Car Show continues to grow each year, but we still weren’t quite prepared for just how much bigger and better it was for 2012. Let’s recap some of the highlights … Continue reading →
Grand Touring: The Kii Peninsula via the newly opened Shin-Tomei Expressway
Earlier this year the first section of the Shin-Tomei Expressway opened for traffic, marking a new era for Japan’s highway system. Naturally we went exploring, taking this newest road to one of the oldest inhabited regions of Japan, the Kii Peninsula.
Grand Touring: A Weekend in Nagano Prefecture
Eight-and-a-half feet of reliable snowfall blankets the mountains of Nagano Prefecture each winter, transforming quaint and quiet towns into temporary getaways for Tokyo-ites. When the snows disappear so do the downhill skiers and onsen soakers, but local FJ40 Land Cruisers stay to witness the spring thaw. … Continue reading →
Lexus LFA engineer Chiharu Tamura drives a Subaru 360
Chiharu Tamura may be a hero to many for his work as Deputy Chief Engineer of the Lexus LFA. To us, it’s because he drives a 1968 Subaru 360. Not even 27 of these 20PS kei jidosha would equal a single LFA’s output, … Continue reading →