Don’t let its humble physique and faded pumpkin orange paint fool you. Long before legions of metallic blue Imprezas, this was the first Fuji Heavy to rally in North America. The Subaru FF-1 took on the Baja 500, baby, and it wasn’t even all wheel drive! Continue reading
Quick Pic: Collection of Mitsubishi Badges
This collection of nostalgic Mitsubishi badges is on display at their corporate museum in Okazaki, Japan.
Posted in mitsubishi, museums, quick pic
Tagged badges, colt, fto, mitsubishi, museum, quick pic
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Activision Enduro Datsun 280ZX Pace Car Contest
Hey, remember Enduro? Neither do we. But apparently it was the freakin’ Forza Motorsport of 1983, made for the Atari system. There was a contest where you could win a Datsun 280ZX Turbo pace car in the vein of the Star Wars Toyota Celica giveaway. Not that there was an actual S130 Z in the game: the “spectacular graphics” of the day made your car indistinguishable from a twelve-pixel fiddler crab scurrying across the bottom of your screen.
The pace car served at the Caesar’s Palace Grand Prix, an actual stop on the Formula 1 circuit for 1981-82. The race, which Nissan officially sponsored both times, took place in the casino parking lot. Along with the Z, the winner also got a trip for two to watch the event in Las Vegas. For those not quite as lucky, second place was a Datsun 200SX SL. Ouch, S110 fans. Check out the real car in the video after the jump and “shift into awesome.” Continue reading
Posted in cm, datsun, nissan, Video Games
Tagged 280zx, activision, caesar's palace grand prix, campaign, contest, datsun, enduro, fairlady z, las vegas grand prix, nissan, pace car, race for riches, s130
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This week’s contest winning photo is actually a screenshot from Forza 3 for Xbox 360. If you play the game, you can now get a JNC Stamp Logo sticker for your ride!
Goto the storefront and search for “Paul Newman” or “Japanese Nostalgic Car”
Submitted by forum member Datsun-San. To enter our weekly JNC Stamp Contest, enter HERE.
Past winners.
Posted in contests, jnc, JNC Stamp Contest, nostalgic gear
Tagged contest, jnc, jnc stamp, JNC Stamp Contest, stamp
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No More Quarter Pounders: Replace Those Panels
The quarter panel is probably the most daunting section of body to replace on a car. But it doesn’t have to be that way. RatDat has a great how-to write up that makes it seem, well, slightly less daunting.
Friday Video: 1973 Mustang vs Motorcycle
Well now that we know the 1973 Ford Mustang was a real cop car in Japan, here’s a cop show chase involving one. Continue reading
Posted in Video Games
Tagged abunai deka, car chase, ford, japanese cop show, mustang, police car
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Sliding Sunnys
The title says it all. Vids below the fold. Continue reading
Datsun 610 and My Adidas Do the Illest Things
How fresh is this? A new Adidas commercial prominently features a Datsun 610 Coupe, fender mirrors and all, beside a bird dancing in pajamas. We’ve been documenting the appearance of J-tin in advertisements for a while now because, well, it’s like a cultural signifier, especially when they appear in fashion commercials. Vid after the jump (Warning or perhaps encouragement: safe for work, but a gaggle of dancing women). Continue reading
The First Sporting Skyline
You know what, we really don’t see enough pre-hakosuka Skylines either. Here’s a Prince Skyline 2000 GT from the New Year Meeting. Would you believe these were raced against the Porsche 904? Though it swept 2nd through 6th at the 1964 Japan Grand Prix beating Japanese and British entries, it lost to the mid-engined Porsche. Which motivated a slightly more aerodynamic Prince R380 the next time around.
[Minkara]
Hondas at the Gate: A JDM Civic pace car with a grid full of vintage Hondas illustrates Jalopnik‘s model bloat theory.
Event Horizon for the Weekend of Mar 26, 2010
If you know of or would like to publicize an event, send us a tip at feedback(at)japanesenostalgiccar(dot)com
This week:
- Sunday, March 28 / Issaquah, WA: Pacific Northwest Meet
- Sunday, March 28 / Los Angeles, CA: Datsun Nippon Swap Meet/Car Show
Yellow Torpedo: New Year Meeting Hino Contessa
We rarely get to post a photo of a Hino Contessa, but here’s a slick little rear-engined torpedo found at the 2010 New Year Meeting. Obligatory black Wats and a dab of drop.
[Minkara]
Ghostly 1972 Nissan Calendar Lives On
For a nation as tightly packed as Japan, there’s a surprising number of abandoned buildings. In many cases, they remain in tact for decades — no wrecking balls, no fleet of Komatsus to build a new skyscraper, just items left behind as if the inhabitants were all instantly raptured up to heaven.
A few years ago, we read an article about the discovery of an old man who had passed away quietly in his apartment. Because he had no surviving family, no one reported him missing. The owner of his building went belly up and abandoned the entire complex. When new developers finally came to tear the place down, they found everything in his unit left exactly as it was the day he died, including a newspaper and calendar dated sometime in the mid 80s. Continue reading
Datsun 510, Bob Bondurant Approved: If you attended Bob Bondurant’s School of High Performance Driving in 1973, you would have been put behind the wheel of a Datsun 510 with “minor modifications.”
[Jalopnik]
Thai Fighters: Retro Car Meet in Bangkok
The Retro Car syndicate of Thailand has routinely given us some of the raddest nostalgics outside of Japan. Not only are there apparently massive amounts of J-tin in that country, there’s a deep appreciation of the JDM modification aesthetic as evidenced by the Hayashi-shod Mazda Savanna RX-3 above. Some mean machines await beyond the jump, but be sure to see more photo sets in the JNC Forum and Bangkok Classic Car. Or see photos from previous years.
As this week’s contest winner, we couldn’t resist choosing this photo. Just look at those cute paws!
submitted by forum member e-at_me
To enter our weekly JNC Stamp Contest, enter HERE
view past winners
Posted in contests, jnc, JNC Stamp Contest, nostalgic gear
Tagged contest, jnc, jnc stamp, JNC Stamp Contest, stamp
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An Afternoon at TA Auto: Check out this amazing story on Speedhunters, where they visit Chiba’s TA Auto, an S30 Z specialist. They even meet one of the members of the original S30 Fairlady Z design team!
Hat tip to junglist.
Friday Video: Sigma Slaughterhouse
Another typical Guerilla Group 8 storyline, in which tons of Mitsubishi Sigmas get led to senseless slaughter before Watari-san saves the day by dispatching nearly all the baddies from a helicopter. Come on Daimon, pass the ball once in a while! Continue reading
Posted in mitsubishi, Video Games
Tagged guerilla group 8, guerrila: tokyo police group 8, japanese cop show, mitsubishi, sigma
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Nostalgic Japanese Police Cars
Here’s a collection of photos of nostalgic Japanese police cars strung together by an amateur, unidirectional Ken Burns. Some are equipped with high-power engine options and transmission pairings not available on civilian versions of the same model.
Sadly, Japanese patrol cars that have outlived their usefulness are scrapped when decommissioned, not auctioned off to the public like in the US. You can safely bet that only a few of these have survived, with the remaining examples locked away in museums (Nissan’s Zama collection has a genuine S30 Fairlady Z patrol car, for example). What we wouldn’t give for a kujira Crown black-and-white, an unmarked RX-4, or even that ’73 Mustang! Watch the video after the jump. Continue reading
Posted in datsun, honda, mazda, mitsubishi, nissan, suzuki, toyota
Tagged 240z, 280zx, 300zx, 911, accord, alto, bmw, capella, cedric, civic, corolla, corona mark II, cosmo, cressida, crown, datsun, dyna, e30, e70, fairlady z, gloria, honda, japanese police cars, legato, luce, mark II, mazda, mitsubishi, montero, nissan, pajero, patrol car, police car, porsche, rx-4, rx-5, s130, s30 z, skyline, suzuki, toyopet, toyota, z31
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