Gasp, Foreign Street Rod! Anyone who’s been to Toyotafest or JCCS has seen the Mooneyes Toyopet Crown V8, but once upon a time it was a cover car for Custom Rodder magazine. However, the entire article is spent defending the very idea of an Japanese rod with no background on the S30 Crown itself. Yes, kids, it was a time when custom imports were simply unthinkable, and that time was, uh, 1996, actually. Read the whole article on Riverside.
[Hat tip to Zeb Lux]
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Kazuhiro Ikeda is one of Japan’s most well-known automotive artists. Going by his pen name BOW, he has drawn for Car, Car Graphic, Cycle World, and many others. Not only do his drawings of vintage machines look fanciful and fantastic, they drip with Rockwellian nostalgia. Honda Japan has a huge wallpaper gallery where you can download his illustrations of Hondas old and new, everything from S600 to S2000, or the mighty NSX to an unassuming lawn mower.
Students of automotive design and history advise us that the death of the rear-engine air-cooled car was dictated by a number of changing fashions and requirements. Pollution and noise requirements ensured two-strokes, with their oil-burning lubrication systems, were phased out and still more stringent regulations in many jurisdictions started to enforce additional requirements. Continue reading
In the 80s, Los Angeles’ Mulholland Drive was the site of some epic street racing. As these videos on Jalopnik show, its winding canyon path was the perfect setting for cat-mouse chases. Datsun 510s and S30 Zs battling it out with Detroit iron. Touge in Hollywood, anyone? Several years ago, we got a letter from Winston Lieu, an old schooler who used to take his 510 up there. This card was attached: Continue reading
In honor of Mazda’s 90th Anniversary, here’s the complete genealogy of every Mazda from 1960 to present day. Three-wheeled pickups from the early days are absent, but those were commercial vehicles. This family tree contains all the passenger cars, stretching from the 1960 Mazda R360 kei car to the bizarro Biante JDM minivan. You can click the image for a larger size or visit an interactive version on Mazda’s Japanese website, along with a portait gallery.
[Mazda]
It’s kind of hard to believe we’ve gone this long without any mention of the Freeway Speedway series. The six films followed a young driver making his way in the illegal Shutoku battle scene of the 80s and 90s. At the time, night-time racing around Tokyo’s Shuto expressway loop was at its peak and lawbreaking displays of speed were practically a nightly occurrence.
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A few months ago we embarked on a dusty pilgrimage to an Inland Empire junkyard. We were in search of a motor mount for a 1986 Toyota Cressida, but accidentally found enlightenment instead.
After trudging through the umpteenth corridor of sun-baked Camry skeletons, we caught a glint of chrome bumper. It was attached to a Subaru GL. Most items of value had already been plundered by earlier treasure hunters, but we were drawn to an emblem depicting the constellation Pleiades.
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We’re getting all sorts of goodies from Nippon this week. Our Japanese operative, known only as “Turbo,” snapped these photos last weekend at Nos2Days, the two-day car show put on by Japan’s OG classic car mag, Nostalgic Hero. Onto the pics! Continue reading
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This week’s contest winning photo proves that the JNC sticker can look just as cool on a modern car as it does on a classic.
Submitted by forum member mommabear. To enter our weekly JNC Stamp Contest, enter HERE.
Past winners.
You know that work of art we posted a couple of weeks ago? Here’s what it looks like on the outside. The Honda 1300 Coupe 9 was Old Soichiro’s front-wheeled, air-cooled, quad-carbed answer to the Toyota Corona and Nissan Bluebird, and now it can be yours. There looks to be the typical points of rust on the rear quarter panels and the bottom of the fenders near the rocker panels, but $5500 isn’t a bad price to have the only Honda guaranteed to be without a twin at the next Hot Import Nights. More pics after the jump. Continue reading
JNC Blog is proud to present a new blogger, Skorj, aka kuroneko, a photojournalist that we know very little about, except that he just cold waltzed in here and wowed everybody with a bunch of killer snaps. Oh yeah, he lives in Japan and has a penchant for sniffing out J-tin relics. What more could you ask for? So without further ado, let’s get to his first post. -Ben
A Lone Sunny.
Nestled in the hills of Tochigi, perhaps three hundred kilometers from Tokyo is the old copper mining town of Mato. With the mines closed, and literally the last station at the end of the line, it does not get many visitors any more. Continue reading
Look what April Fools Santa Claus brought us yesterday. Could there be a more appropriate gift for the occasion? An operative in Indonesia managed to track down some counterfeit JNC stickers for us. The JNC staff is already calling dibs on them and upping the ante in Giga Pudding trades for different colored ones.
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so, uh, thanks? If you want to represent JNC on your car you now have two great choices: 1.) Book a flight to Soekarno-Hatta International Airport and make your way by taxi to the heart of the city where you can hire a local guide to help you scour the mean streets of Jakarta for underground Indonesian sticker pirates, or 2.) Spend $1.99 at the JNC shop. Your call.
The platypus-looking Lotus Europa is exactly the kind of oddball foreign car that the Japanese go nuts over. We’ve never see one in the flesh in the US, but we’ve seen several in Nippon. Is that weird?
Anyway, here’s two clips from Circuit Wolf, a live-action adaptation of the manga of the same name. The hero hoons a Europa on public streets while a mean, old, no-fun Jun Q. Law pursues him in a Nissan Fairlady Z patrol car. Though it seems the copper bests him in the first clip, they meet again later in the hills of Hakone and the tables are turned. Watch the videos below the fold. Continue reading
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We’re at a total loss for words right now, and needless to say Kev is just about devastated. Let this be a lesson: if you’re going to let your friends drive your baby, make sure they know how to handle an old, rear-wheel-drive car that does not have the benefit of electronic traction control. Continue reading
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Not just a kidney, but you’ll probably need to part with a retina and a lung or two. For $285,000 you get a slice of motorsports history — the Datsun 240Z that straight up won the IMSA GT/U 2.5-liter championship in 1976. Along the way, it’s been touched by the the legends of American racing. Brad Frisselle, an accomplished driver who went on to race for Mazda, piloted the car. Aerodynamics expert Yoshi Suzuki, who would go on to design the legendary Nissan GTP cars of the early 90s, shaped this yellow and orange bullet. John Knepp and Mac Tilton of BRE fame built the engine and suspension. Dave Kent constructed it (and would later go on to build IMSA Mazda RX-7s). Even BRE driver John Morton took a spin during its championship season. And oh yeah, it makes 400hp. Can we strap a dialysis machine to it?
If you have the dough, contact the Canepa Collection. More photos below the fold, including some from its glory days. Continue reading
Remember when everyone and their cousin was driving an AE82 Toyota Corolla/Chevy Nova? They were coming from Fremont, California’s NUMMI, birthing ground of more than 8 million cars, and it will build its last one tomorrow.
Twenty-six years ago, Toyota and General Motors entered into the joint venture during the height of the import wars. The Big T was destroying GM in quality and growing rapidly in market share. But in an unprecedented move, Toyota invited the General into its factories to observe exactly how every Corolla was built to such high-quality standards, and even trained GM workers in “The Toyota Way.”
Why did the Japanese company open its doors to its biggest competitor? Why did it take so long for GM to learn the lessons? If you keep up with industry news, you’ll likely know the answers — to learn how to build factories in the US; the UAW and GM management — but you’ll probably still learn something by listening to This American Life‘s fascinating hour-long podcast about the factory.
[Image: minkara]
