Our friends at Kousoku Yuen magazine in Japan recently published their 50th volume. The bimonthly publication, whom some of you may know as NeoClassic, specializes in Japanese cars, but you’ll rarely see a 2000GT or Hakosuka GT-R on the cover. Instead, you’re more likely to find, say, a Toyota Mark II or a well-preserved Cedric taxi gracing the front. Continue reading
The Touge California is done. We’ve covered how the epic, 8-hour, 200-mile rally went, but we also wanted to recognize all the fearless drivers, stalwart navigators, and gorgeous machines that participated. Here are the cars and teams of the 2016 JNC Touge California. Continue reading
Registration for the fourth annual Nissan Jam is open. The annual Datsun, Nissan, and Infiniti car show will be held on June 12. The event moves to a new venue this year, La Palma Park in Anaheim, California.
Thanks to the new location, the show will take place on grass rather than a dealership parking lot.
Registration is $35 for any Datsun, Nissan, or Infiniti vehicle. You can register by clicking this link.
If you’re just there to spectate, admission is free. Mark your calendars.
We realize that here at JNC we sometimes get a bit too otaku for the casual Japanese car enthusiast, with liberal use of chassis codes, Japanese nicknames, and, well, words like otaku. For those of you just joining us, Hagerty Insurance, which specializes in classic and specialty cars, has recently published a primer of sorts about what’s in hot and what’s not. You might even recognize the photography and unique writing style. Continue reading
The Group 5 Skyline Turbo is one of the most legendary race cars in Japanese motorsport history. By now you know that its extreme Super Silhouette aero inspired a whole genre of tuning, but why was it so epic? Continue reading
Touge driving is not meant to be easy. This is doubly true when the car you’re driving ranges anywhere from 30 to 50 years old. Earlier this month, 28 Japanese nostalgic cars queued up at the start of the 2016 Touge California. By the end of the grueling 8-hour, 200-mile tour, we had lost four of them. Continue reading
The Mazda MX-5 Miata (or Roadster if you’re in JDM-land), that modern symbol of the lightweight sports car, has just reached an impressive milestone: one million units produced. Continue reading
We all know there were 351 Toyota 2000GTs made, but that does not make them rare. To see one, just walk into any car museum in Japan. There’s plenty of well preserved ones at US car shows too. How about a modernized 2000GT? Did you know that Lexus made only 120 facelifted 5-speed SC 300s? That facelift occurred in 1997, the last year a manual transmission was offered in the US. On top of that, the vast majority of them have been turned into “gentleman’s Supras” or drift missiles with mods of questionable taste. That’s just one example, but we’re sure there are even more obscure cars out there.
What’s the rarest JNC?
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 last week’s QotW, “What’s your most heroic repair story?” Continue reading
With just two more days to go, our trip was winding to a close. We had just crossed from the southern island of Kyushu to Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands. Now were were headed back onto the main landmass of Honshu, but to do so we’d have to take our 1978 Isuzu 117 over a string of small islands in the Seto Inland Sea. Continue reading
In celebratin of Earth Day, here’s a rotary-powered Japanese nostalgic hybrid. The Mazda EX-005 debuted at the 1970 Tokyo Motor Show and was a bubble approximately the size of an office chair. Continue reading
Long before the Leaf — back in 1973 to be precise — Nissan had already been messing around with electric cars for decades. However, while the prevailing idea of an electric car was an office chair-sized bubble on wheels, Nissan built a space-tastic electric pickup truck. In fact, it built two. Continue reading
The artist known as Prince passed away today at the age of 57. His musical achievements are well documented, but if you were a young motorhead in 1984 when Purple Rain came out, his custom Honda was the coolest bike around. Continue reading
Normally even the most hard core Hot Wheels collectors are happy to pass the tractor trailer sets onto their kids, but fans of Japanese steel are going to want to keep their eyes peeled for the latest rig. Because Hot Wheels has gone and done the unthinkable — it has made a dekotora. Continue reading
Yellow Hat is a nationwide Japanese chain of auto service stores whose ad agency has clearly huffed one exhaust molecule too many. The completely Mr Sparkle-ized ads exist ostensibly to notify you of Yellow Hat’s tire and battery services, but the execution is a seizure-inducing, brain-melting onslaught of hyperkinetic cuts, dancing girls, pop music so sugary it’ll give you cavities, and the occasional nostalgic car. Continue reading
Mitsubishi Motors admitted publicly this morning that its employees falsified fuel economy test data for over 600,000 vehicles. Production of these vehicles has halted and an independent investigation will be conducted. Continue reading
The story of a Toyota dealership abandoned in Cyprus in the 1970s is well known to long time readers. Apparently, though, old Celicas and Corollas aren’t the only J-tin left to gather dust on the island republic. Here’s a very complete 1969 hakosuka sedan too. To be clear, it’s not within the Green Zone, the demilitarized buffer whose residents were forced to flee in 1974 (and where the Toyota dealership resides). Instead, the Skyline is just sitting in an apartment complex, seemingly abandoned, but some members of the Hakosuka Owners Club on Facebook did some investigations. Continue reading
A DR30 Skyline in signature red and black colors should be either a.) fighting crime on the mean streets of urban Japan or b.) in Hasemi livery tearing down the Fuji straight. So what’s it doing gliding down The Strip with the lights of old school Vegas bouncing off its angular body lines? The star of Petrolicious‘s latest video is friend of JNC and Sin City resident Jay Kho. With his Newman Skyline, Jay is a member of the Wild Cards, and you may have even gotten a close-up look at his car at our JCCS booth last year. If you missed it though, now you can watch it in motion. Continue reading
Here are some clips from the anime adaptation of Shakotan Boogie, which came out in the early 90s. Animation-wise, it falls somewhere between Speed Racer and the original Initial D, but I think that we can all agree, that this is the pinnacle of all that humanity has achieved in art and culture as we know it. Continue reading
The theme of this week at JNC was Things Breaking Down. Our webhosting company has installed some new software that will hopefully make things more stable from here on out but it just goes to show, not everything can be as clockwork reliable as a Toyota Camry. In fact, some of your cars have probably needed a repair or two, despite not being British. Tell us about the time you saved your family from becoming vulture food by MacGuyvering a busted timing chain with nothing but a pair of vice grips, roll of duct tape and a McDonald’s ketchup packet. We know you’re dying to tell someone.
What’s your most heroic repair story?
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 last week’s QotW, “What nostalgic-new body kit will be next?” Continue reading
In the previous installment of our cross-Japan trip, we began the northeasterly journey back home, but on a different route that would hug the southern coast of Japan. As such, we’d voyage from Kyushu to Shikoku, two of the four islands that comprise Japan’s main landmass. Distancewise, the goal was modest compared to previous days’ legs, meaning we’d have plenty of time to take it easy and give our 1978 Isuzu 117 Coupé a rest from the breakneck paces we’d be putting it through. Continue reading
