Mazda Australia recently celebrated the opening of its new headquarters in Mulgrave, a suburb of Melbourne. While this type of news usually excites business journals more than enthusiasts, the new state-of-the-art building does have something that catches our attention: a prominent collection of classic Mazdas. Continue reading
Today is the 60th birthday of Toyota Motor Corp’s head honcho Akio Toyoda. Even at six decades old, the great-grandson of Toyota founder Sakichi Toyoda shows no signs of slowing down. Over the weekend, he was seen donning a racing suit and getting behind the wheel of a Toyota 86 rally car in Kyoto. Yesterday, he was in Kumamoto Prefecture visiting Toyota offices affected by the recent earthquake. Continue reading
Just a friendly reminder. The 21st annual Toyotafest is this Saturday, May 7.
The celebration of Toyota, Lexus and Scion cars returns to the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. Gates open at 9 am and close at 3 pm, and admission is free!
Registration sold out in 24 hours this year, so it should be an exciting event. It will also be the last time Scion is officially a sponsor, as the brand comes to a close.
JNC will be there, so be sure to stop by the booth!
Yesterday evening a fire destroyed one of the warehouses of International Vehicle Importers. The Ontario, California-based company was well known in southern California and beyond for importing unique cars from Europe and Japan, with a specialty in Skyline GT-Rs, mostly R32s. Fortunately, no one was hurt, although manager Sean Morris posted the above image to Facebook with the accompanying message: “2 dogs missing. Max and Gigi. Lost 24 cars, 3 motorbikes, about 5 motorcycles. Lots of personal items.” [UPDATE BELOW] Continue reading
This week’s QotW is a bit of a personal one, but I, the Midwest Correspondent for JNC, really do need the collective advice of the readership on what I should buy as my next car. With the pending sale of my 300,000-mile CRX Si summer driver, I have a budget of $8,000 with which to buy a vehicle that is Japanese, was launched at least 25 years ago, and that will be a fairly good investment (or at a minimum not depreciate like a haunted murder house).
Naturally, my Synthwave-addled brain has target-locked onto a zenki Z31 300ZX Turbo or a MA61 Celica Supra. My recent obsession with the Coalition of OG Minitruckin’ group on Facebook has me wondering if a Mazda B2200 or Chevy LUV could end up being an oddball collector car, or at least one that can take me to purify myself in the waters of Lake Minnetonka. The question has me performing countless thought experiments, but I just can’t decide.
What JNC should Ryan buy for $8,000?
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 the rarest JNC?” Continue reading
On the final day of our cross-Japan trip, we woke up in Okayama with a decision to make. If we stuck to the back roads, we’d end up having to travel straight through the heart of Kobe and Osaka. On any normal day that would’ve been insane enough on its own, but today was a national holiday so things would be exponentially worse. We were already exhausted after nine days on the road, and so after over 2,000 kilometers of surface roads, we hit the highway for the last part of our journey. Continue reading
Though billed as a music festival for greasers and rockabilly types, the Cannonball Festival includes an impressive car and motorcycle show as well. The show is held on opposite ends of the country, Hiroshima and Chiba, and draws a wide array of bosozoku bikes and sleds — including one of our favorites the “Charlie Brown” Mazdas inspired by the touring Savanna RX-3s of Yoshimi Katayama. Continue reading
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
