Here’s something for the Subie heads. Last weekend Fuji Heavy Industries officially celebrated the 50th anniversary of its automaking arm with the Fan! Fan! Festival, held in Yokohama. Here’s the only shot we could find of some truly old school Subes, a Sambar and a 360. Currently, the festival is touring across Japan. Incidentally, this year is Subaru USA’s 40th anniversary. Where’s our party?
[Image: Subaru]
One of the funniest thing about today’s highly recommended episode of BBC Top Gear was the fact that throughout the epic cross-Japan race that pitted Jeremy Clarkson in a Nissan GT-R against James May and Richard Hammond in a bullet train, Hamster kept calling it a Datsun. Continue reading
Not only is the Day of Too Many Events coming up this weekend, but our former masters across the pond are brewing up the Goodwood Festival of Speed. One of the first photos to filter in from this year’s event are from the chaps at Speedhunters. The lucky blokes captured this hakosuka GT-R G.C. replica on the hillclimb. As you know from last year when Toyota was the featured marque, we haven’t wanted to go anywhere this badly since we begged our parents to takes us to Disney World at age eight but we just don’t have the budget or time.
Seeing the original GT-R in action in England just makes this next bit of news all the more fitting. We’re big fans of BBC Top Gear, and this weekend takes the gang to Japan, where another one of their epic races will ensue. The contestants? New GT-R vs. Bullet Train. Banzai!
When we first started, all we had to our name was this measly website. We were JapaneseNostalgicCar.com, a bunch of ones and zeros floating around on the hard drive of some distant server. The first sticker we made reflected that sad fact, but now that we’re a magazine too, we thought we’d replace the “.com” part of the logo with something as equally evocative of nostalgics as the existing four-spoke wheel and elderly driver’s mark – a fender mirror. The logo looks a bit different in other respects to, but that’s because it’s been touched by the hand of Van.
We’re down to the last few “.com” stickers so we’re putting the redesigned logo on new stickers and T-shirts, which are available in the Shop section. One complaint about the old one old sticker was that it took up too much real estate, so we’ve made the new one a bit smaller (which also saves you .0000000001 ounces in dead weight :P). Thanks for your continued support. We love you guys!
[JNC Shop]
Speaking of events, not all of them happen on the west coast. From the Tony Soprano Bureau, JNCer pumaone brings us a trunkload of photos from last weekend’s Puerto Rico vs. mainland USA battle in Englishtown, New Joisey. Check out his post in our forum for a gallery of serious drag machines lining up to the Christmas tree at Raceway Park. Thanks, pumaone!
The annual gathering at Mitsubishi Motors North America HQ in Cypress, CA will be not this weekend (thankfully) but next Saturday, July 19. Although this has mostly been an event for Evo and Eclipse owners, a small but strong contingent of triple diamond mafia elders have been known to make an appearance. Mitsu themselves have also been known to dust off some museum pieces from their personal collection as well. More details here.
We’re trying to announce of every show we hear about on the blog but even so we can’t get to everything in a timely manner, so please check the Events, Meets & Gatherings section of our forum regularly for all the latest notices and post-event pics contributed by our wonderful JNCers.
The notice was so short on this one we don’t even have a pic to put up, but there will be a pre-1986 imports meet a the Japanese Gardens at 6100 Woodley Ave, Van Nuys, CA on July 12 from 12-6pm. This, in addition to the Ove Andersson tribute and Super Autobacs show, this Saturday is shaping up to be the Day of Too Many Events. We want nothing more than to help you connect with other nostalgic car fans, so if you have any events you’d like us to announce, just let us know or post it in the Events section of our forum.
Thanks to PERTANO for the tip!
Loyal JNCers will know that Toyopet Crown came ashore in 1957, making it the first Toyota and first Japanese car to arrive in the US. If not, then you need to read our premiere issue, which looks back at the early days of Toyota USA, along with its trials and tribulations.
Fresh off the boat in Long Beach, the car received a small and rather unremarkable ceremony before being promptly whisked to the Los Angeles DMV by Toyota execs. After it was registered, this historic photo to the right was taken.
But apparently, if you zoom in for a closer look at the license plate, you can see that it actually reads “’56” in the upper right corner. So what gives?
One of the greatest gearhead events on the planet will commence this Friday. The Goodwood Festival of Speed is exactly what all of us would be doing if we were so stinking rich that we could invite manufacturers, car collectors and the world’s top drivers to our huge estate, complete with its own hillclimb course, forest rally stage and concours lawn. It’s al going down July 11 through 13 somewhere in England. And once again, we’ll be staying on this side of the Atlantic, envying the limey bastards from afar. Exactly which cars Japanese will emerge from their slumbers in museums and warehouses to make an appearance are not yet fully known.
Last year Goodwood celebrated Toyota‘s 50 years in motorsports and Mazda‘s 40th anniversary of the rotary. This year the flavor taste more like Europe as both Land Rover and Porsche celebrate their 60th birthdays. In the meantime, go to the Festival of Speed’s official website and watch the mind-blowing movie to get an idea of what this event is all about.
As you know, the recent passing of Ove Andersson really hit the world of motorsports hard. If you’re in the Los Angeles area this weekend, please consider stopping by the Toyota USA Museum, where a tribute to the rally racer and founder of Toyota Team Europe will be held. Details after the jump.
Yes, it’s true. In addition to perpetually good weather, non-stop nostalgic car events and your pick of old cars on craigslist, southern California also has a Super Autobacs, the JDM aftermarket superstore. They’ll be hosting a car show this weekend and it’s free, so let’s see some old school representation.
Thanks to Burabuda for the tip.
Let’s start the week off with another WTF moment. What’s with these things? Last month we showed you a Datsun Fairlady Roadster on a Jeep CJ5 frame. Now here’s another one spotted at Pismo Beach, sent in by an alert JNCer/quickdraw cameraman, who hypothesizes that the Datsun Fairlady’s body-on-frame construction has something to do with this phenomenon. Sad but true.
Thanks for the tip, Toygarage!
We have failed you. How could we have forgotten the most famous (and most likely, only) example of a vintage Subaru painted like Old Glory? Well, our lame excuse is that we don’t get to watch much TV. Luckily, Jalopnik is posting pics of flag-themed cars like there’s no tomorrow, so here’s the BRAT from My Name Is Earl. Eat it, Union Jack-themed Jaguar! Happy Independence Day again!
Since we’re celebrating the birth of our great nation today, we thought we’d mention one of the most American things around: Hot Wheels. It’s probably safe to say that any red-blooded American who didn’t grow up playing with these small metal cars is likely some kind of terrorist. Since their debut in 1968, they’ve fueled the dreams of many a car nut, and this year is their 40th anniversary.
We had hundreds of them – still do – so we’re happy to bring you some news that made us all feel like little kids again. And that is, in 2009 some kind of vintage import is entering the Hot Wheels lineup.
This has always been a dream of ours, to take one bad ass nostalgic and go drifting, one of the few motorsports where style matters just as much as speed. The problem is, we’d never have the nerve to actually do it because 1.) we can’t drift our way out of a used kleenex and 2.) we couldn’t bear to see the toll this would take on hard-to-find body panels and trim. Luckily, Hideo Itakura and HDO Racing Service have no such reservations and have been campaigning this SR20-powered Celica Liftback in Japan’s D1GP drift series. Note the intercooler masquerading as a grille. That’s total awesome right there.
UPDATE: Check out this pic from Zulu!
Here’s some truly disturbing news for nostalgic car owners. We recently spotted a billboard portraying a Datsun B210 as a generic polluting old car while visiting NorCal for the Motoring J Style show. Turned out, it was part of a California program to buy back cars that fail the state’s infamously strict smog check. For up to $1000, these cars will be “retired” from service, meaning that the government is paying people to scrap old cars. According to a new Detroit News article, this program replaced 16,000 vehicles last year, and unfortunately for us nostalgists, the trend is growing. Continue reading
Registration has opened for the 4th annual Japanese Classic Car Show. If you want to show off your ride in front of thousands of kyusha fans sign up now because spaces fill up fast. Also remember, this year the show is in a new, bigger location in Irvine, CA. See you there!
Look what arrived in the mailbox at JNC HQ today. Nissan has finally begun sending out GT-R brochures to interested parties. In it, there’s a brief history of the Skyline GT-R and, as far as we know, it’s the first time that Nissan USA has ever officially acknowledged the 50-year history of these JDM models. And in case you were wondering: yes, we are very interested in the GT-R but no, we can’t afford one. You can get your own brochure by signing up for updates on Nissan USA’s website.
We held off talking about this car because we heard that some JNCers were considering bidding on this baby. But now the auction is over and if its description is correct, this is one of the earliest examples of any Toyota — or any Japanese car, period — to exist in the US. It’s a 1958 Toyopet Crown used by the Consulate General of Japan in San Francisco to demonstrate their home country’s top-of-the-line auto. After putting just 28,698 miles on the car, the consulate signed over to the title to the current seller in 1964 and it has sat in a garage since. This is truly an amazing piece of Japanese automotive history, and the selling price of $22,322 definitely reflects that. Let’s hope that the owner will restore it to the rightful condition it deserves.
Thanks for the tip, Toyotageek.
Image: eBay
Rotaries are big in Australia, the preferred vehicle of choice for road warriors and hoons alike. From achingly mint restorations to massive-horsepower drag monsters shod in 18-inch rims, the land down under has got it all. For a sampling of the pistonless potpourri available there, take a look at the Mazda Car Club of Queensland’s Car Show last weekend. Thanks to B1500boy from our Vegemite Sandwich Bureau, owner of over 50 nostalgic Mazdas and counting, for the pics!
