JapaneseNostalgicCar have put together a short video made up of shots of achingly hot classic JDM doing not much more than just cruising around. Might not sound amazing, but just you watch it and see for yourself. Backed by a perfectly picked soundtrack, this is a top way to spend exactly two minutes.
Now Playing, JNC: The Movie
In a distant land…
Strange machines prowl the streets…
But now, a dying breed, they are slowly disappearing…
Who will save them?
Critics are already hailing Japanese Nostalgic Car: The Movie as the defining film of the twentieth century. “Two fender mirrors up!” says Ebert and Roper. “Five out of five Star Sharks!” raves Variety.
See it now, on computer near you!
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Toyota Five-O
Regular readers might know that we are pretty puzzled as to why Toyota hasn’t been making a bigger fuss about it’s 50 years in America. As the anniversary draws ever nearer, news on the company’s golden anniversary has gone from a cold drip to a full-blown media trickle.
Video and images are being slowly added to the Toyota 50th website, which comes with a countdown timer to the actual moment that the Big T will have been stateside for a half century. As of this writing, 97 days, 10 hours, 58 minutes, and 52 seconds remain until Toyota’s 50th Anniversary.
Then there’s this page at ToMoCo’s main web address, but only the smallest of text links from Toyota.com hints that there’s a 50th birthday coming up.
Don’t get us wrong. We love Toyotas. We’re just left completely baffled as to why they aren’t playing up their history more. Are you reading this, Toyota marketing department?
Posted in toyota
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Racing the Rotary (Part 2)
From 1969 to 1970, Mazda had a successful foray into European touring car racing, where their Euro counterparts had been caught off guard. The screaming little Familia Coupes were not short of power and if it weren’t for a lack of reliability, Mazda would have returned to Japan in triumph with a lot of prestigious silverware too.
Bring us Your Tired and Huddled Zeds
Every now and then, a thought comes to me. If there were X amounts of a certain car sold in a particular country 30 years ago… Where are they all now? In the case of the 240Z, it’s not a difficult guess – they’re sitting on someone’s farm, or in someone’s back yard, rusted and virtually unrecognisable or unrecoverable. If not that, they’ve been bought up as parts cars. It’s not unusual these days for it to take three beatup Zeds to make one good example. Sure, there’s quite a few still on the roads, in varying states of care, but that’s definitely a fraction of the original amount.
So when I stumbled across this old article this morning about a farmer in rural Victoria (Australia) with nearly 20 examples – mostly in need of a lot of work, but not remotely beyond saving – sitting in a few sheds on his property, my heart skipped a beat. It’s a great read, so check it out!
Posted in nissan
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The SR5 Club Speaks
It’s a retrospective bonanza! Hot off the heels of our profile on Mike McGinnis about his days working at a Datsun dealership in th 1970s, Automotive News has published an article about Toyota’s early years and the many hardships that almost caused them to fail miserably in the US market.
Accompanying the piece is a video interview with several members of the SR5 Club, a group of Toyota retirees who hold their meetings at the Toyota Museum in Torrance, CA. It’s interesting to note that although companies like Toyota and Nissan now seem impossibly massive, in their heyday it was still easy to catch the ear of upper management, as both McGinnis and these retirees can attest to. The stories they recount are entertaining to hear, and the one in which the former employees asks where the “bay of pigs” is located illustrates a lot about why Japanese automakers have come as far as they have.
Posted in toyota
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More Z-car Love
Autoblog has returned with their “Reader Ride of the Day” feature after a brief hiatus, and are kicking it off with a 1972 Datsun 240Z. With only 40,000 miles and some funky pinstripes, the car was undergoing a restoration when the owner, Victor Vazquez, sadly passed away. Now the car is in the care of his brother, who carries on the torch in Victor’s spirit.
In the past, Autoblog has asked readers to vote for their favorite ride at the end of the week. We know we don’t even need to see the rest to know which one we’ll be punching a chad for.
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Racing the Rotary (Part 1)
Mazda was one of the many car companies that paid Dr Felix Wankel and the NSU car company to buy a license to produce the rotary engine. And while many other licensees (including Citroen and GM…and eventually NSU itself) struggled to make the rotary a viable engine for a production car, Mazda saw it as the key to a glorious future, and is the only car company to remain loyal to the design after so many decades. Mazda was so bullish about the prospects of the rotary that it once said that “the rotary engine is a young 24 year old man with great promise, whereas the piston engine is an old man”.
History would later prove the folly of those words as keeping the rotary viable was a burden that nearly bankrupted Mazda itself.
Profiles: 1978 Datsun 280Z
Our latest Profile has been posted. I’m sure those in the Z Car community have heard of Mike McGinnis, Z-car restorer and guru extraordinaire. He’s a great guy who has witnessed a lot of interesting stuff in his lifetime, including the humble beginnings of Nissan’s dealerships.
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Long Beach USA JDM Classic Car Slideshow
The japanese hold some awesome classic car meets (gotta go to one one-day) but the JDM events in the USA run them pretty close in terms of quality, if not quite quantity.
Here’s a sublime slideshow of an event in 2006, at Long Beach, California. Feel the Nissan love! The site for the event is here and the next one is scheduled for October 07.
Posted in events, Video, Websites
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Initial Publica Offering
One of the rarest cars in the US is going up for auction on eBay: a 1965 UP10 Toyota Publica Deluxe. Only four are known to exist here, and according to its current owner, Steve Kopito of TORC, the other two were in junkyards and the third was sold for parts to restore a Sports 800 with.
The Publica came into existence when Toyota conceived a car to comply with the Ministry of International Trade and Industry decree for a People’s Car and named it by combining the words “public” and “car”. In stock form, its 697cc two-cylinder boxer engine produced 28hp, and came in a variety of body styles, including a convertible, wagon, and El Camino-esque pickup. The racier Sports 800 was derived from this platform.
Thanks to the Classic Toyota Town group for the tip!
Posted in for sale, toyota
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Minkara – Japan’s CarDomain
It’s one thing to search all the western websites for classic JDM cars, but that usually only leads you to cars that are in the west. Minkara is basically Japan’s version of CarDomain, so it’s a great place to jump over to and do a bit of a search for your favourite oldskool J-spec. Using the search box at the top-right, just enter the model number of your choice – C110 for example – and you’re away.
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Import Bible – JDM Inspired Apparel
As much as we live and breathe classic Japanese cars here at grandJDM, we’ve definitely got no shortage of love for the newer stock. We try not to let it take over the site, but every now and then we just have to indulge ourselves.
Our friends over at Import Bible have been making massive headway with their range of t-shirts inspired by the more popular JDM cars running around the western world, but we thought a link here might help them get a little more exposure.
Kyoru assures me that he’s thinking about doing one or two classic JDM inspired tees, but he’s a little worried about the marketability – so if you reckon you’d sport a tee emblazoned with a slick 240Z or something similar, shoot them an email and tell ’em what you think!
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Featured Car: Jerry’s Mazda RX-3
There are few classic Japanese cars that are instantly recognisable to anyone in the Western world without an intimate knowledge of the genre, but the RX-3 is most surely among them. Experiencing massive sales success all throughout the 70s, it was known in its homeland as the Savanna, and was offered in coupe, sedan, and wagon variants. It’s the coupe that most enthusiasts know and love, and it’s Jerry Acdan’s coupe that we’re looking at today.
Posted in Featured Cars, mazda
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JNCM: Pre-Kenmeri Ken and Mary
Although we know the third-gen Skyline as the Hakosuka and its descendant fourth-gen as the Kenmeri, here we can see the happy couple wooing both each other and customers longing for a C10 GT-X Hardtop. Some of the scenes are sappier than a Canadian maple forest, but hey, it sold cars.
Check out carcm555‘s videos for lots more JDM CMs.
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Stylistically, This is JDM Muscle.
While it may technically only be packing a 2ltr engine, stylistically the ’72 GL-6 Laurel has all the looks one expects from an American muscle car – but in that uniquely Japanese way. I’ve been digging these things for a while now, and it turns out that J-Spec – an Australian importer with a worldwide customer base – have got a perfect example in their stock list. I’m not stoked about the brown interior, but everything else about this car is aces. Great ride height, great wheels. Can you imagine it with some tightly stretched tyres pulled over those rims? These whips have so much potential.
Posted in Businesses, nissan
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Randomly Hot: C211 1978 Skyline
Stumbled across these shots a little while ago, and just had to share them. I’d love to feature this car, but the owner’s been hard to get a hold of! Ah well, tough break for us. Gotta share the photos though, it’s just too damn mental to leave out.
The Toyota Crown Affair
Yes, we are totally stalking this car. Last night, our friends at Katysnest twisted and mashed potatoed the night away at the city of Torrance, CA’s Rock Around the Block festivities, a celebration of 1950s nostalgia put on by the Torrance Historical Society. Torrance would be an entirely unremarkable town full of strip malls and office parks were it not for the enormous, sprawling campuses of Toyota USA, Honda of America, and (until their recent move to Tennessee) Nissan USA. With Mitsubishi close by in Cypress, CA, the area is an absolute mecca.
Apparently, when a fifties shindig goes down in your own backyard, it’s a little easier to celebrate your 50th anniversary. Thanks to Katysnest, we finally have some good pictures of the 1958 Toyopet Crown that Toyota USA recently restored and featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. As you can see, taking a photo of the actual car, rather than a photo of a 13-inch countertop television, does wonders for the resolution. Beautiful! We can’t wait to see it in person at the JCCS this year.
Super Heroes: Nostalgic Hero's Top 50 Japanese Classics
Don’t know how we missed this one, but we were going through the forums the other day and discovered member pecx’s post about Nostalgic Hero‘s Best 50 nostalgic cars of all time.
It’s always risky ranking things in a formal order. This list is sure to have their detractors, but what’s a little good-natured rivalry amongst enthusiasts? In one of the most unexpected turnouts, the Nissan KPGC10 GT-R beat the world-renowned Toyota 2000GT to claim the coveted number one spot. It’s understandable, since the Skyline went on to spawn many generations of unbelievably superb machines lusted after the world over, while the 2000GT was a flash in the pan. On the other hand, the 2000GT was Japan’s first supercar, and exported to all corners of the globe to demonstrate that Japanese automobiles were a force to be reckoned with, paving the way for many lesser vehicles to come. Let the debate begin!
So without further ado, may we have the envelope, please:
1. Datsun Skyline Hakosuka KPGC10
2. Toyota 2000GT
3. Datsun Fairlady Z S30 Z432
4. Datsun Skyline Ken&Mary GT-R KPGC110
5. Honda S800m
6. Toyota Sport S800
7. Datsun Bluebird 510 HT 2dr
8. Subaru 360DX
9. Isuzu Bellet 1600 GTR
10. Datsun Skyline DR30
11. Mazda Cosmo sport
12. Isuzu 117 Coupe
13. Toyota Corolla Levin TE27
14. Toyota Celica 1600 GTV TA22
15. Datsun Skyline HGC210 HT 2dr
16. Datsun Fairlady 2000 SR311
17. Datsun Sunny Coupe B110
18. Toyota Corolla Levin AE86
19. Datsun Laurel KHC130 HT 2dr
20. Datsun Skyline HR31
21. Nissan Skyline R32
22. Honda N360DX
23. Mazda RX3 RE12 Savanna GT
24. Hino Contessa coupe PD300
25. Datsun Fairlady S130 280Z
26. Prince Skyline S54 GT-B
27. Daihatsu Midget
28. Mitsubishi Galant GTO
29. Suzuki Fronte coupe GXCF
30. Nissan Bluebird SSS P910
31. Toyota 1600GT RT55
32. Mitsubishi Starion
33. Mazda Savanna SA22C
34. Prince Gloria Super 6
35. Toyota Crown (RSD)
36. Honda Z GS N360
37. Honda Life Stepvan Super DX(VA)
38. Datsun Silvia CSP311
39. Mazda Carol
40. Subaru R-2 (K12)
41. Honda Vamos 4 (TN360)
42. Isuzu Piazza (JR130)
43. Mitsubishi Galant 1600 GSR (ไฟ L) coupe
44. Mazda R360 Coupe (KRBC)
45. Toyota Publica 800(UP20D)
46. Datsun Cedric Custom (H31)
47. Honda Symphony (H1300)
48. Honda Life Super Mini
49. Subaru a’ lacarte (D12A)
50. Honda Civic 1200RS (SB-1)
Image courtesy of pecx.
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The Most Aptly Named Website, Ever.
The online classic JDM community just keeps on growing and growing. Old Japanese Car – perhaps the most aptly named website in the history of teh intarweb – will soon be launching a full website covering all there is to know about, well, old Japanese cars. In their own words: “We aim to provide a central place where people with an interest in old Japanese cars can get together. Whether you want to share your experiences of the Mazda Montrose, ask for advice about the Honda Accord, or know of a Mitsubishi Cordia Turbo going cheap, you’re welcome here. As well as this, we intend to have interesting features, car showcases, scans of brochures/adverts from all over the world and more.”
They’ve already got a gallery or two up on their site right now, so check it out. Post haste mates.
