There are more events for you east coasters this weekend! Take the midnight train to Georgia and meet up with Zero Garage, our favorite band of Peach State bandits at Road Atlanta! They will be repping J-tin at the Mitty, so be sure to check it out. Go to Import Atlanta for details.
[Image: Puregroove.org]
Holy moly! The Carpocalypse has claimed another victim, but this time it’s not an automaker.
Remember back in November when Sport Compact Car folded? Well now its parent company, Source Interlink, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. As of yet there’s no word on how this will affect their other titles, which range from Motor Trend and Automobile to Hot Rod and Super Street.
It’s a tough climate for everyone, and the company’s ad sales were down 20% compared to this same quarter in 2008. The company has claimed a debt of $1.9 billion and assets of $2.4 billion. Side note: those numbers make our jaws drop here at JNC headquarters, where we subsist solely on a diet of Cup Noodle and Giga Pudding. We will keep you posted as news unfolds.
Here’s another event for you east coasters. The Maryland Z Club will be hosting a gathering of Datsuns and Nissans at Frederick Nissan in Frederick, MD. They are a great group of guys and are very supportive of the old school movement. The show will be this Sunday, May 3. For more info go to the Maryland Z Club website.
One of the cars that seems to have been a little left out by the whole J-nostalgic movement is the SA22C RX-7 (or FB as you’d know it in the States). It seems to straddle the 70s era of fender mirrors and chrome and the 80s period where everything seemed to have turbos, fuel injection and digital dashes. In its driving qualities it’s a lot closer to the old school than it is to the 80s FC RX-7, while its styling and amenities are more in line with the later era. So to me, they’ve always had tons of appeal, and it’s only a matter of time before people start to take notice and values rise. The fact that they were built in serious numbers makes them a much more practical resto proposition than an RX-3 too. But while everybody wants a period-look RX-3 or RX-2 with flares and dished Watanabes, I’ve always thought that in Japan the SA22C is a little unfairly ignored.
So it was great to find an awesome enthusiast site for the marque at 22C Works.com. It’s an excellent community of SA22 junkies in Japan and just check out their awesome photo galleries. The site also has a big section on modification and upgrade tips, and a great resource for vintage car commercials here. Let’s hope that we’ll start to see more SA22Cs in the nostalgic style.
Well as all you japanophiles know, Japanese TV really exists in its own parallel universe. So it shouldn’t surprise that even kids shows in Japan will have you scratching your head as to what the heck is going on. But in the case of a particular episode of Hirake! Ponkiki, this is weirdness on a good level! Watch in amazement as the furry green giant-headed Gachapin dons an oversize helmet and puts an S2000 and Integra through their paces at Twin Ring Motegi.
…and try not to laugh out loud at the 2:05 min mark!
Before attending Nos2Days, we had no idea that the F31 Nissan Leopard enjoyed such a strong following. But once Seibu Keisatsu ended in its run in 1984, there was a cop show void that needed to be filled. Enter Abunai Deka, an 80s buddy cop series that started in 1986, featuring the then-new Nissan Leopard (later imported to the US as the Infiniti M30). If car chases with Toyota Mark IIs and shootouts at marinas set to an over-synthesized post-disco soundtrack don’t make you want to break out the Nagel prints, we don’t know what will.
One of the oldest and most well loved series of racing games is Need for Speed. And like all the latest generation driving games, the next NFS game, Need for Speed SHIFT, promises even more amazing graphics and immersive gameplay. NFS piqued our interest recently when it released news of the KPGC10’s inclusion in the next game. I think maybe the taillight placement isn’t quite right but who’s complaining?
Watch the trailer after the jump and salivate at the opportunity to drive a hakosuka in a properly immersive driving sim (and crash it without having to worry about where the parts are going to come from).
Don’t feel left out by SoCal’s Datsun Weekend, east coasters. The Old School Toyota Club of Bridgeport, CT is having a swap meet on Sunday, April 26. So while the Solvang Roadster Classic and Z Car West Coast Nationals are in full swing this Saturday and Sunday, you can be hunting for parts to go on your nostalgic. For more information check this thread in the JNC forum. Photos from last year’s swap meet can be found here.
Man, this ad for the Nissan Bluebird 510 is groovy, baby! The sound barrier breaking motif tied in nicely with the car’s sleek, post-jet age styling. In fact, the character line that extends down the side of the body is called the “supersonic line.” The helmeted woman and the go-go beat totally reminded us of the Maruzen Oil ad of the same era, though the latter is just slightly more infectious.
Part two of the SoCal Datsun weekend is the Motorsport Auto Z Car West Coast Nationals. Festivities kick off Friday night, followed by a performance driving event on Saturday and Sunday the 26th is the big day of the car show. JNC will have a booth there so stop by and stay hello!
For more information, visit Motorsport Auto. Also, check out coverage from the 2008 and 2007 shows.
Get ready for the 22nd Annual Datsun Roadster Classic in Solvang, CA. The party kicks off on Friday, April 24 with the show on the following Saturday, April 25. You can find out more at SolvangShow.com. Also, check out coverage from the 2008 and 2007 shows.
Let’s face it, blowing up real cars is not only expensive, but cringe-inducing. We can’t help but wince when a perfectly good nostalgic gets wadded up, even if the car was new and plentiful at the time of the stunt. Luckily, this week’s Friday video captures all the danger and excitement of Seibu Keisatsu without the actual vehicular carnage.
A youtuber by the name of Luxe37 has created an incredible series of stop-motion car chases using Tomica nostalgics and some awesome sound effects. We like parts VI and VII, in which the bad guys run an armored wagon off the road, steal its cargo and make their getaway in a Fairlady Z. Check out the conclusion after the jump. Continue reading
Tired of the same old auto sites gushing nonstop about Porsche this, Ferrari that, ZR1 WTF OMG!? Enter Clunkbucket, an automotive site catering to the most unloved, obscure and forgotten specimens of the vehicular kingdom. Naturally, that includes a healthy dose of Japanese iron, like the Suzuki Cervo. But a typical Clunkbucket cross section also includes homage to motoring luminaries such as the Fiat Multipla, Citroen SM and 1971 Lincoln Continental Mark III. Also, the man behind the site, our buddy Mike Bumbeck, has excellent taste in personal transport with his Toyota Starlet and Mitsubishi Starion. Seriously, who needs another Bentley review when you have the Saab Sonnet?
And now for your viewing pleasure, a video packed with fantastic footage as it covers the history of rotary-equipped Mazdas in racing. Part 1 is an overview that culminates with the FC RX-7, apparently the newest rotary car at the time the video was made. Part 2 really gets cooking as the Savanna RX-3 takes on the hakosuka Skyline GT-R. In Part 3 we see the Savanna RX-7’s rise to international glory in the IMSA series, which just happens to be the subject of JNC magazine’s Issue 3 cover story. Parts 2 and 3 after the jump. Continue reading
Japanese Nostalgic Car Issue 3 has shipped! Thanks again to Dan, Kev and John for all their hard work and for all you readers out there waiting patiently. You should be receiving them in your mailboxes any day now. Enjoy!
The Japanese are truly car crazy. In addition to all their wonderful domestic steel, during our recent Japan trip we saw more Lamborghinis and Ferraris in a couple of commutes along the Tokyo-Yokohama wangan than we see in the States all year. We also encountered obscure marques and models that we’ve never seen in the US, period, such as Autobianchis, Ginettas and Lotus Europas. And only in Japan can you have magazines like Garage Life, devoted to the art of the perfect garage.
But if all that isn’t enough for you, there’s the upcoming Garaging Expo 2009. The three-day event is a show dedicated solely to building, designing and accessorizing your dream garage. Not cars, just the room where the cars sleep at night. Someday after we win the lottery, we will attend this show. Then we will finally learn how to upgrade our oil-stained concrete floors and wobbly workbenches to one of these glass-walled Garage Mahals that let us view our hakosuka GT-R from the comfort of our living room.
Yabba dabba doo, it’s the weekend! Time for your Friday video. Here’s another gem from Seibu Keisatsu, the ass-kickingest, Nissan-wreckingest cop show around. In this clip, the bad guys bust into police HQ in a shootout reminiscent of Heat and jack some kind of police-issue armored Nissan Gloria Wagon. A massive chase ensues, with all the requisite crashes, jumps, and toppled fruit stands. As our heroes get picked off one by one, Daimon is the only one left to pursue the perps in his 230 Cedric. But it appears that this time, the criminals get away… for now.
We love to see pics from gatherings, no matter how small. Sometimes it’s easy to miss one so we just wanted to make sure you didn’t pass by Australian JNCer RestoreMaz’s post of a local Mazda gathering in Sydney, Australia. Even though you could count the number of cars on your fingers, their quality was simply off the charts. And be sure to check the Events section of the forum to find local meets in your area.
On a trip to California in the late 60s, Jack Safro was introduced to the RT40 Toyota Corona, a car then unheard of in his native Wisconsin. But everyone in California seemed to know it, and a dealer told him the quality was so good customers weren’t even bringing them in for the 1000-mile service. Before long, Safro had his own Toyota dealership back in Milwaukee.
According to this article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, his franchise sold just 42 Coronas their first year, but it was enough to make Safro Toyota the midwest’s largest Toyota dealer. Continue reading
Who says there are no nostalgics left on the east coast? In recent weeks both the Washington and New York Times have published stories about owners of J-tin on opposite ends of the mileage spectrum. First up is Linda Smith, owner of a 1972 Toyota Corona that she purchased with only 1900 miles on the clock. The trip home to DC from Florida almost doubled the odometer reading. Her husband offered this unfortunate truism about old Japanese cars: “Their sheer reliability meant most of them racked up hundreds of thousands of miles before finally going to the scrap yeards [sic].”
A couple hundred miles north in the Big Apple is Morton Ash’s one-owner 1975 Datsun 280Z. At over 330,000 miles on the clock, it has 100 times the mileage of Smith’s Corona but Ash still drives it at least once a week in the city known for some of the nation’s worst roads.
Both articles are worth a read for their insight into the owners as much as the cars themselves. Also, it’s nice to see newspapers paying attention to old school Japanese cars and bringing such stories to a mainstream audience.
