He’re a peculiar public service announcement from the Danish government. Apparently, it’s a message about seat belt safety, in which an extremely skilled stunt-driver set world record for two-wheeled driving in an AE86 Corolla only to endure a dark, M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist at the end.
Source: [Jalopnik]
Toyota celebrates many milestones this year, including their 50th year of sales in the US and their 50th year in motorsports. But perhaps the most significant one of all, not just to Toyota but the entire automotive industry, is the 30th anniversary of the English publication of the Toyota Production System, or TPS.
Also known as Lean Production or Just-in-Time Production, TPS is very difficult to explain in a short blog entry, but the basic idea is to have all your inventory, parts, assembly line, workers, and machines synced in complete harmony, like a giant choreographed orchestra that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The deli in the Visa Check Card commercial above can probably better illustrate it than any words.
It also gave factory floor workers an individual voice for the very first time in history. Whereas in US plants, workers were under the gun of productivity and only foremen were allowed to stop production, Toyota management routinely asked linemen for suggestions and gave them the power to pull the entire line to a halt if a defect was noticed.
According to the book The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production, the leap from Henry Ford’s assembly line to TPS was as significant as the leap from having one craftsman build an entire car to Ford’s assembly line, where each man specialized in one part. The industry’s Journal of Production Research calls it “one of the most significant industrial innovations of the 20th century.”
TPS gave Toyota a fighting chance despite having only a fraction of the resources of GM or Ford, and was eventually adopted by not only all of the auto industry, but all industries. The full name of the revolutionary paper is “Toyota Production System and Kanban System: Materialization of Just-in-Time and Respect-for-Human System” by Y. Sugimori, K. Kusunoki, F. Cho, S. Uchikawa.
Source: [ReliablePlant.com; The Machine That Changed the World: The Story of Lean Production by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, Daniel Roos]
Here’s an interesting site, the Car CM Database. There, you can see screenshots of your favorite cars, both old and new, starring in their own Japanese TV commercials. From wacky non sequiturs and nutty taglines to cameos by Western actors that never thought their million dollar paychecks would migrate to this side of the Pacific, this site has it all. Commercials are sorted by manufacturer and model, and are not limited to Japanese marques.
When we were kids, we’d scuff up furniture, walls, floors, ceilings and anything else our parents valued with hundreds of little metal cars. Of course, in the US that meant Matchbox or Hot Wheels, and for a brief while, Pocket Cars. Of course, Pocket Cars was the American market name for Tomica, a Japanese line of diecast cars that, unlike their 1:1 scale counterparts, had a very little success in the US, due mainly to their higher cost and lack of recognizable models (to American eyes, at least).
In Japan, however, Tomicas thrived and in 2004, parent company Tomy launched a new lineup called Tomica Limited Vintage, a line of highly detailed cars based on nostalgics! Cars range from Prince Skylines to Mazda K360 three-wheelers to Toyota Crowns. Prices start at ¥790 for a small car like Subaru 360 Wagon and cap out at ¥3000 for a Hino RB10 Bus. All models are 1/64 scale.
New article here, about the recent trip taken to attend the Monterey Historics.
Oh jeez. If there’s one reason I can think of for me to learn Japanese, it’s so I can read all these amazing looking manga comics. I mentioned Garage Restore 251 not long ago, and Auto Otaku has put together a list of other relevant manga titles. We need to get a planet-wide common language, stat! In the meantime, I guess I’m just gonna have to drool over the few shots shown here.
Who knows what Toyotas lurk in the hearts of barns? The Toyotageek knows!
The world is big. Cars are small. You just never know what’s out there, waiting for a Nostalgia Jones to unearth it, and with a length of less than 12 feet and a width under 5, the Toyota Sports 800 occupies, well, a very small portion of the Earth’s 52 million square miles of land. And according to Toyotageek.com’s estimates, only about half of the 3,100 cars built remain, adding even more hay to the stack.
Based on the Toyota Publica platform, the Sports 800 matches an air-cooled 45hp two-cylinder to a helium-esque 1278 pounds, giving the two-seater a top speed of 90mph. Produced from 1965 to 1969, and initially called the Publica Sports, these tiny targa terrors were Toyota’s first sports car and were frequently raced in Japan.
Friends of Toyotageek discovered the proverbial barn find in California (where else?) a while back, but (spoiler alert) sadly, the contact was fleeting.
Source: [toyotageek]
This is a strange one. It’s not all that uncommon to see cross-manufacturer engine swaps, with there being a number of 2JZ/1JZ powered S30s out there, but nonetheless; this F20C-powered TA22 Celica is on the list of unexpected swaps! I can’t fault the guy’s dedication though, that is one thoroughly well planned and executed engine swap and overall restoration. Thumbs up from grandJDM!
Oh man! When I decided earlier in the year that I wanted to return to full-time study, there was one part of being a student that had somehow slipped my mind—homework! Urgh. So therein lies the reason and the apology for the lack of updates lately.
Moving on!
RB and SR powered Datsuns aren’t uncommon by any stretch of the imagination, but old Hondas with new motors—that’s something you don’t see as often. I wonder why that is? Perhaps there’s just not as much community support for these projects, so nobody wants to take the risk of being the first one to do it, and having no large knowledge-base to turn to when it all goes south.
Heading towards Laguna Seca for the Monterey Historics, you get to share the highway with some pretty choice machinery. An aggressively-driven Aston Martin DB9 came up fast from behind, but moments later this green 510 absolutely ripped past everyone and disappeared into the horizon.
Next up, a pair of resto-modded nostalgics in the form of a 240Z (hmm, is that taillight cluster a Ferrari or Skyline tribute?) and an ’81 Corolla liftback. Below that, survivior second-gen stockers: Celica and Accord.
Seriously, it’s not funny anymore. The west coast has so many old cars cruising around that at this point we think they’re just mocking us. Here’s a gallery of random roadcraft that just happened to cross our paths during a period of three or four days during our recent coverage of Motoring J Style and the Monterey Historics. This Corona wagon belongs to Alvin from the Back in Da Dayz crew, who we’ll be introducing in greater depth in a future piece.
Other gems include a two-tone Celica, a green Z, and during breezy nighttime prowls, a Subaru Brat and an dead mint Honda Accord hatchback, which we really wish we got a better shot of.
West coast, quit rubbing salt in the wound. East coast, quit rubbing salt in the roads.
Source: [Mild Winters]
Here’s a scanned photo from waaay back (as in, before the days of digital photography) from Dutch member honda-ronny at 1stgencivic.org that shows just what happens when law enforcement receives a contact high from nearby Amsterdam, or when they’re not saddled with a requirement to drive Crown Vics.
According (haha, sorry) to honda-ronny, this first generation Honda Accord hatchback was conscripted into the Rotterdam police force in the early 1980s. Koel!
Source: [1stgencivic.org]
Three chaps from the Uke bought a 1982 Nissan Laurel for a hundred pounds sterling, or just under 200 US dollars. That may not seem like breaking news, but these gents intend to drive their banger saloon from Calais, France to Rimini, Italy as part of the 2007 Scally Rally, a trans-Europe voyage that passes through several sovereign nations, the Alps, and some truly gorgeous terrain, all in the name of charity. With their bargain mule, you’d think it’d be easier just to ditch it on the Italian coast and jet home, but the trio plans to drive the car back to whence it came, totaling 3,000 plus miles overall and putting our Cressida jaunt to shame. Well done, lads!
The team is rallying for Ulverston’s St Mary’s Hospice and emerges from the Chunnel on September 14 to commence Alpine antics.
Source: [North-West Evening Mail]
Europe’s acceptance of minicars has allowed Daihatsu, Japan’s specialist of small, to thrive. Whereas they packed up their subcompacts (possibly in suitcases) and left the US and Australian markets in 1992 and 2006, the Old World still gets the new stuff.
2007 marks Daihatsu’s 100th year in business, and the company is offering Centenary editions of many of its cars. In the UK, you can get a Sirion (Daihatsu Boon/Toyota Passo in Japan) Centenary Edition that comes in silver and has alloy wheels, power mirrors and Y-axis driver’s seat adjustability. The Terios (Daihatsu Be-Go/Toyota Rush) micro 4×4 comes also in silver and alloy wheels, but receives a leather steering wheel, fog lamps and roof rails. Just 100 of each will go on sale in September.
In Germany, you can get also get a 100th Anniversary Copen (pictured), the kei-sized hardtop roadster, which comes in either silver or gray with a red interior or dark green with a beige one. Extras include an upgraded head unit, aluminum trim and a Momo steering wheel. The Deutsch special edition Sirion comes in black.
Check out Daihatsu’s 100th Anniversary sites in the UK and Germany. Earlier this year, Daihatsu opened a museum in Osaka.
Source: [Daihatsu]
While looking through the photos from the UK’s recent Retro Rides Show on Old Japanese Car, this hakosuka Skyline GT-R done up in the paint scheme of the legendary Grand Champion series car that took the checkered flag at Fuji on October 10, 1971 caught our eye. We didn’t know if it was a replica or what, but now the car’s background has been revealed by its owner in our Forum and it is an astounding story. Read the full explanation here.
Image: [Old Japanese Car]
As part of Mazda’s 40th anniversary tribute to the rotary engine, the Zoom-Zoomers invited a group of renowned journalists to stuff the very cars the company would display at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca up the California coast, just in time for the 34th Rolex Monterey Historics.
So while we were tooling southward on I-5 from Seattle in a dingy Toyota Cressida station wagon toward the Mecca-like assembly of vintage autos that is Monterey’s classic car weekend, Motor Trend and Car and Driver convoyed north from Paso Robles behind the wheels of two infinitely sleeker Mazda Cosmo 110 Sports and a new US-market 40th Anniversary edition RX-8. Now that’s arriving in style. We, on the other hand, simply arrived. Click here to read about the sweetest of vintage J-treks.
Source: [Motor Trend]
Old pros Jayant Shah and HW “Lofty” Drews ran their Datsun 260Z in the Tanzanite One Arusha Rally recently, which served only as a warmup to the upcoming Kenya Airways East Africa Safari Classic Rally in November. You might remember Drews as one of the original pilots of the famous 240Z rally car who, along with Shekhar Mehta, won the original Safari Rally outright in 1973.
The Safari Classic is a vintage event held in the spirit of the event’s heyday when Datsuns, Mitsubishis and Lancias duked it out in the birthplace of humanity. To enter, your chariot of choice has to be 1974 or older. The dust clouds start billowing on November 25th in Mombasa, Kenya.
Source: [East Africa Safari Classic]
Welcome to Part 4 of our Going to Japan series! So far, we’ve covered the basics of how to get around, feed yourself, find a place to stay, see car shows, meet tuners and buy parts without JDM Tax (phew!). So the next few instalments will be a bit of a wrap-up of all the little things we wanted to include in the earlier articles (which can be found here, here and here) but couldn’t because of a lack of space or other reasons.
One of the glaring questions that we haven’t answered yet is….where do you go to see the street drifting?
Our Forum member QuasiMondo posted this thread about a classic Toyota meet that happened recently in Bridgeport, Connecticut. As you can see from these Photobucket galleries here and here, nostalgics from all Japanese marques showed up for what appears to be an awesome day of old school auto ogling. For more information, check out Bridgeport’s very own old school Toyota club page here.
Thanks for the post, QuasiMondo!
Here it is, more 2000GTs than you can shake a camshaft at. [LINK]
