At a current bid of $8,100 is yesterday’s Kidney Car a bit too rich for your blood? Perhaps then a Hot Wheels Subaru BRAT would be kinder to your wallet. Though slated for later this year, renderings have been leaked to the intarwebs. The little Gipper-mobile appears to have rollbar spotlights, roo bars and a slight lift.
MA61 fans should also hold on to their collective pants right now, because renderings for a second-gen Celica Supra have also hit the Series of Tubes. Continue reading
Here in SoCal, the one marque of nostalgic we rarely see is Subaru. There just wasn’t much need for 4WD passenger vehicles in the perpetually sunny climes of Los Angeles. Subaru BRATs occasionally show up in junkyards — and judging by the layers of dust only after sitting immobile for years — but I can’t even remember the last time I saw one on the street. That’s why this all-original 1979 with just 44,726 miles on the clock just blows my mind. Continue reading
Okay, so you’ve invented that time machine. Oddly, it can only serve one purpose — to put you in the cockpit of any classic Japanese motorsports machine.
What nostalgic race car would you have driven?
The JNC staff (except Kev) chose to zap themselves behind the wheel of the famous KPGC10 hakosuka GT-R, for the reasons of 1.) its legendary status, 2.) the fact that it played a key role in defining the culture we revere today, and 3.) we have a Hot Wheels of it. Kev, on the other hand, chose the bonkers KDR30 Skyline Silhouette Group 5 racer (something about him owning a hako already, the bastard). What say you, dear reader?
As always, the most entertaining, well-written, or inspiring comment will receive a random JDM toy of some kind. Click through to see the winner of last week’s question, “What is the ugliest Japanese car?” Continue reading
Now that Nissan CEO Mr. Bean has revived the Datsun brand, it’s probably appropriate that he visit the Zama warehouse, where the company’s legendary collection of 400-plus classic and racing vehicles are stored. Continue reading
SoCal may have its drawbacks, but there aren’t many places where you can put the call out for a hachiroku party and have over 100 cars show up. AE86 Nights has been doing this almost every Saturday night since April of 2007, making this past weekend their five-year anniversary. Continue reading
The S130 Fairlady Z is by no means an ugly car. In fact it was once considered the must-have car of its time. Yet nowadays it gets little to no love from the Z-car crowd, whose legion of newcomers much prefer the lighter, purer, and more O.G. S30 chassis. But just look at this photo from a Japanese S130 catalog! It’s got everything — a cool car, amazing lighting, a hot chick in a racing suit, and a damn puma. Continue reading
It’s as if the planets have aligned. Just as we posed a QotW about Japan’s ugliest car, a reader unearths this long-forgotten piece of motoring history. Behold, the Datsun 210ZX! Continue reading
Without even reading the title, you can probably guess what this week’s QotW is just by photo alone.
What is the ugliest Japanese car?
Sorry Kev, but I’m going to have to make an executive decision on this one. The 1988 Autech Stelvio is both proof that the Italians were not infallible when it came to good design, and that there was once a time when Nissan was indeed crazy enough to green-light something like this. One of the automotive world’s great tragedies is that a road as incredible as the Stelvio Pass must now share a name with this abomination. Underneath, it’s an ¥18 million F31 Leopard/Infiniti M30, albeit one with 320hp, but as Kev has noted you could buy two NSX-Rs for that price.
As usual, the best (not the most-correct, but the most entertaining/well-written/inspiring) comment will receive a random JDM toy in the mail. Click through to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “What is the most beautiful Japanese car?” Continue reading
Drop the song title “Z-Zuke” into a translator and you get “pickled Z.” While it is true that in Japanese zuke means “pickled” as delicious in tsukemono, this little ditty is not about making a jar of preserved vegetables from your S30. Zuke also means “to absorb oneself in” (ie, to be obsessed with) as in “JNCers are all kyuusha-zuke!”
Sadly, one can get a bit too absorbed, and whoever composed this over-sugared, seizure-inducing techno tune appears to have let their love of a good G-nose completely warp their sanity. We can’t really describe the video per se, as we woke up in a puddle of our own drool after blacking out for three days, before which our last conscious thought might have been that despite a 2007 release, Z-Zuke’s production values appear to be more appropriate for a cable access show circa 1982. All we can really say is proceed to watch it at your own risk. And though it’s no Far East Movement, should the urge to listen to this song more than once actually strike you, here it is on Amazon Japan. Continue reading
What in holy hell is going on here? A zokusha a police car? It’s topsy-turvy, man. Like cats playing with dogs! Shouldn’t the lowered, widened rides of the OG Japanese bad boys be the very antithesis of law-and-order establishment enforcers from one of the world’s most law abiding nations? Continue reading
More good news comes pouring from the C-level offices of our beloved automakers. The latest word from Japan is that Toyota has given its product development techniques a makeover so that they’ll result in less boring cars. It appears that over the decades, the number of executives signing off on each vehicle has ballooned to anywhere from 80 to 100! Continue reading
Over the weekend design chief Shiro Nakamura told the Sydney Morning Herald that Nissan is looking to downsize its sports cars. “I much prefer smaller sports car,” he was quoted as saying. “It is the time to look at [smaller engines]. With 370Z, we still don’t know next generation will have a larger or smaller engine.” Nakamura-san noted the importance of lightness, which would allow smaller-displacement engines for similar performance.
This led to speculation that the the Silvia would return, and we’re going to fuel that particular fire even more. Our contact tells us the word from inside Nissan is that the Silvia S16 has in fact been given the green light (again). Continue reading
This week’s QotW is one that anyone can answer, as it requires no knowledge of history, obscure Japanese trivia, or even an ability to differentiate between a sparkplug and a lug nut. All it takes is a pair of eyes.
What is the most beautiful Japanese car?
For our suggestion, we turn to JNC‘s art director and Art Center College of Design alum Yee Chan, who says that the 1967 Toyota 2000GT is not only the most beautiful car from Japan, but among the top five most beautiful cars ever built, period. It looks stunning from every angle, and the orgy of compound curves makes the sheetmetal dance before your very eyes as you walk around the car.
What do you, dear readers, think? As usual, best comment will receive a random JDM toy in the mail. Last week’s QotW, “What is Japan’s proudest marque?” raised much debate in the comments as well as at the JNC water cooler. Click through for the answer below. Continue reading
Out of all the Japanese automakers we’d vote Isuzu, hands down, as the marque least likely scour the attic for a heritage hyping infodump of family photos in the name of advertising. Sure we’ve seen history-laden campaigns from the likes of Toyota, Nissan, Mazda and Subaru, but Isuzu? Continue reading
Actually, the road-mopping tsurikawa is laying flat with the help of a carabiner, but the point is nevertheless made. This super slammed A40 Celica honestly couldn’t be any lower without that rear diffuser getting caught on a manhole cover, but is this considered cheating?
[via Riverside]
Since Tomica‘s sponsorship of Masahiro Hasemi‘s actual Group 5 R30 Skyline Super Silhouette back in the early 80s, the insanely be-winged racer has been replicated in countless forms. The latest iteration will be released this May in Tomytec‘s Tomica Limited Vintage Neo lineup and — with full interior, bespoke wheels, and a removable nose just like the real thing — promises to be one of the most detailed 1:64 scale model cars ever made. Continue reading
Actually, it’ll take more than a kidney to get your grubby little paws on this sub-18,000-mile 1973 Datsun 510, because it’s not even for sale. Despite many inquiries, it’s stayed in the same family for 40 years and three generations. Think of this post as more of an inspirational tale, one that offers hope to those trying to find an unmolested example of the quintessential Japanese sport sedan before the rat rodders and engine swappers have their way with it. See, Virginia, mint 510s do exist (as long as you don’t mind a slushbox)! Even if the owner insists on hanging on to this heirloom, isn’t it nice to know that it’s out there? For more photos, visit our friends at TTAC.
The winner of last week’s QotW, “What 1987 car will be the next classic?” by a slim margin is Isaac with his short-but-simple answer, “’87 Mazda RX-7 Turbo II.” They were criticized in-period for looking too much like a Porsche 944, but if anything the styling has aged more gracefully than the front-engined German, and it had class-leading performance and handling for the Japanese market in the late 80s. Add in increasing rarity due to drifters smushing them into trees and the cost of rotary engine rebuilds is making restoration uneconomic — the perfect ingredients for an up-and-coming classic.
Plus, the FC3S continued Mazda’s long tradition of dominating IMSA endurance races that began with the first RX-7, which leads us to our next QotW.
What is the Japan’s proudest marque?
Even up until the mid-2000s Japan was swarming with sleek, souped up performance machines that would give any JDM nut seizures of joy. A stroll down any major street was like tracking a pre-race establishing shot from Tokyo Drift. The current and former AE86 owners on the JNC staff were waxing nostalgic about videos like the one above, with Keiichi Tsuchiya going hell for leather on a winding road in a pretty stock hachiroku.
But talk to anyone embedded in Nihon’s car culture today and they’ll give you the same doom-and-gloom scenario: the Japanese auto enthusiast is dying. Sports cars are too expensive for kids today, who are mostly interested in cellphones and electronic gadgets anyway. Continue reading
Laugh all you want at our super-strict smog tests, but at the end of the day SoCal has at least one redeeming trait — enough nostalgics to hold a regular swap meet. Here’s what you missed from the recent Eagle Rock Datsun-Nippon Swap Meet. Continue reading
