Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced yesterday that Japan would remove caps on international travelers and visa restrictions on countries such as the US in three weeks’s time. That effectively means Japan will allow tourists back in starting October 11. However, if you can’t wait that long to visit Nissan’s Zama Heritage Collection, the company has conducted another virtual video tour.
Technically Zama is still closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and it’s not clear when it will reopen. So even if you were to visit Japan after October 11, this virtual tour may still be the only way to see the collection. Some may recall that back when the coronavirus first struck in March 2020, Nissan already offered a virtual tour of the garage. This is a different one that Nissan says highlights some of the more unique cars that can’t be found anywhere else.
The tour starts with pre-war Datsuns of the 1930s, much like the one that was recently donated to a top Japanese engineering school. It gives a great company history lesson using cars to walk us through the milestones. The best part about it is that once you get past the introductory banter between the host and the history officer, the rest of the tour is subtitled in English. The tour is about two hours long, so it’s definitely something you’ll want to block off some time for, maybe in a comfortable armchair with a nice glass of Nikka Single Malt Yoichi in hand.
I hope they are open to the public by April.
I’m super excited that we’ll finally be able to go on the trip we planned for Spring 2020. It’s hard for me to believe it’s been 6 years since we were there last.
I visited Zama in 2017 and wanted to go back with the DSport Tour again last year but that didn’t pan out due to the pandemic. I lucked out though and Nissan NA let me check out their own collection which isn’t nearly as large but it was still a worthwhile substitute. In fact I finally finished my own video of my visit: