Perhaps the ultimate – and undoubtedly the first – JDM Supercar, the Toyota 2000GT has in the past few years become more well known and appreciated outside of Japan, sending its value through the roof. Not that it was ever cheap. When it was released in the late 60s it was priced at about 30% more than a Jaguar E-Type, or almost double a Corvette. It’s price was largely the reason only 337 were ever built from 1967-1970.
Each year, the Goodwood Festival of Speed pays tribute to the featured marque by suspending an assortment of its million-dollar race cars several stories above ground on a huge piece of outdoor art. With Toyota taking the honors this year, we’ve been graced with something that resembles either a suspension bridge or the world’s most expensive Newton’s Cradle. From this puny pic, we can only tell that a.) the mixed media consist of an F1 car, some other open-wheel racer (Indy?), a TS020 GT-One, a Group C prototype, and a Celica rally car; and b.) it looks like rain.
We seriously considered jumping on a redeye to attend this event, but logic prevailed. Scientists of the world, get cracking on the transporter!
Image courtesy of Goodwood.co.uk.
Probably one of the more distinctively recognised and admirably styled models among the Trueno/Corolla range, the TE27 Trueno Levin GT was built from the E20 series – the second generation of the Trueno. Read on for a little more info, and some photos!
If you were an Earl with an impossibly big plot of land near the southern coast of of England, what would you do with it? Why, invite the world’s most famous drivers and gather the planet’s fastest racing machines to throw a colossal celebration of motorsport on your front lawn, natch.
Thus, since 1993, top automakers have brought their most prized examples of rolling history to West Sussex, whether for flat-out hill climbing, romping through a forest rally stage, display, auction, or simply suspension from a giant piece of modern art. Race cars of every stripe – F1, rally, drag, land speed record, vintage – are let loose on the grounds of the Goodwood House, usually at the hands of a world-renowned driver.
This year, the Festival’s Honoured Manufacturer title goes to Toyota, which is observing its 50th year in motorsport. As you can see, the program(me) cover honors Toyota with a gorgeous rendition of the 1999 Le Mans runner up TS020 driven by Ukyo Katayama, Toshio Suzuki and Keiichi Tsuchiya.
With 2007 being the 40th anniversary of the rotary engine, Mazda will also be present with a display of great pistonless cars. A tentative list of Japanese cars slated to appear include the following:
Toyota
1957 Toyota Crown Mobilgas rally
1970 Toyota 7
Pike’s Peak Celica
Pike’s Peak Tacoma
Toyota Celica ST165 GT-Four rally
Toyota Celica ST185 GT-Four rally
1997 TOM’S Castrol Supra JGTC
Toyota TF106 F1
Toyota TF107 F1
unspecified Group C racer
Toyota FT-HS Concept
Toyota I-Swing Concept
Honda
1967 Honda RA300 F1
Honda RA107 F1
Williams-Honda FW11 F1
Williams-Honda FW11B F1
Honda Civic Type-R
Honda Small Hybrid Sports Concept
a small army of racing motorcycles
ASIMO
Nissan
1973 Datsun 240Z rally
Nissan 240RS Group B rally
Nissan R90 Group C
Nissan 350Z GT500
Nissan Primera
Nissan Pivo Concept
Mazda
1967 Cosmo Sport 110S
1991 Mazda 787B Le Mans
Mazda FD RX-7
Mazda RX-8 Hydrogen Concept
Mazda RX-8 40 th Anniversary Concept
Mazda 2
Mazda Hakaze concept
Subaru
Subaru Impreza WRC rally
Suzuki
Pikes Peak Escudo
Sadly, because human society is still largely based on a monetary system, we will not be able to attend the Festival in person. We will, however, glue ourselves to the news and keep you updated as news filters in throughout the weekend.
Click here for an article about Toyota’s involvement as 2007’s featured marque.
Click here to instantly tempt yourself into buying plane tickets to England.
One of the best things about car musuems in Japan, other than the fact that they’re museums, situated in Japan, and chock full of classic Japanese cars, is that they aren’t afraid to showcase vehicles made by their competitors.
Case in point: in 2003 the Honda Collection Hall had a special exhibit devoted to the early post-war vehicles that put the nation on wheels. Smack dab in the middle of the gallery were a pair of – gasp – Toyotas, a gray Publica followed by a silver Sports 800 to be precise. Other non-Honda (Nonda?) marques at the exhibit included Subaru, Mazda, Suzuki, and Yamaha. Respeck!
One of grandJDM’s valued contributors and go-to guys for those (many) moments when we can’t figure out what model JDM we’re looking at, recently took a trip to Japan, ostensibly for work, but you can be sure he got in a bit of leisure time as well! He brought back a couple of great items for us here at grandJDM.
What a day! We’ve taken a few photos of the contents, which you can check out by clicking the “continue” link.
Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got some reading and watching to do!
We’d first stumbled across the website for aftermarket manufacturer/restorer “Restored” a number of months ago, but chance brought us to it again today, so we thought we should share it!
Specialising in carbon fibre replacement parts for classic JDM cars, Restored have helped not only to alleviate the pains of replacing rusty or beaten up panels, but also to bring a welcome boost to the performance aspect – courtesy of carbon fibre’s massive weight reduction benefits when compared to the original steel panels.
You can check out their website here.
We know there’s nothing like a low-slung coupe with fender mirrors but one of the most sought-after nostalgics lies on the exact opposite side of the automotive spectrum. The Toyota Land Cruiser boasts one of the largest followings of any Japanese marque, has been around since 1951, and has even spawned a modern successor using its chassis code as the model name.
That descendant would be the 2007 FJ Cruiser, and to promote the heritage of this off-roader, Toyota has launched a mini-site dedicated to the many incarnations of Land Cruiser over the ages. Set to an Indiana-Jonesish pulp novel explorer’s club motif, the site compiles old videos, commercials, and photos from all seven continents where the Land Cruiser has cruised.
Click here to be amazed at the Land Cruiser’s ruggedness.
Two Wangan Midnight entries in a row? What the hell’s going on? What can we say, the Wangan anime is the flavour of the moment!
Japan’s well known and universally admired video magazine (basically a monthly DVD) Best Motoring have staged a battle between the hero cars of the Wangan Midnight anime, through their Hot Version imprint. We’re yet to view it – though we do have a copy on the way to grandJDM HQ – but we’ve got no doubt it’ll be a brilliant spectacle!
You can check out the website here, and you can try a translated version of it by clicking here. You can also read a little more about Best Motoring International right here. The website for BMI’s English version can be found here.
Remember Power Wheels, those battery-powered kid-mobiles with big plastic wheels that inevitably deformed and cracked if the car was anywhere but the kitchen floor? In the US we can recall two flavors – Jeep and Corvette – but as with so many childhood wishes these also passed us by. Our parents could barely afford to keep their actual cars running, much less buy cough up a Benjamin for a glorified plastic bucket with a max speed barely higher than stationary.
Tikes in the land of the rising sun can pick from R34 Skyline GT-Rs for mock JGTC racing, 350Zs or Celicas for toddler touge runs, Celsiors for the aspiring corporate CEO, or even the Nissan March for the economy-minded rugrat. Apparently, Japan’s access to the coolest wheeled contraptions isn’t just limited to 1:1 scale cars.
Wangan Midnight is, well, a lot of things! Starting out as a manga (Japanese comics) series in 1992, it has since spawned arcade and home console video games, audio soundtracks to buy, a range of merchandise, and now in June 2007 – right now – an anime (Japanese animation) series has been launched by OP Planning, the producers of the popular Initial D anime.
grandJDM now has a Flickr group, so if you’ve got a Flickr account and you’re known to fill it with classic JDM – or even if you’ve only got a few shots in your album – go ahead and join our group!
Japan’s popular Top Secret tuning house are best known for their top of the line work on the more modern cars, along the lines of Supras and Skylines. However, as this article at Japanese Nostalgic Car shows, boss Smokey Nagata’s love for classic JDM is as strong as his well known (and well documented) love for speed.
What we have here then, is potentially the most outstanding example of a modern workshop’s ability to get the most out of a car never intended to undergo such treatment. While you may find classier examples of the RA28 Celica, you’ll likely never find one as mental as this.
Click through to Japanese Nostalgic Car for the article and a bevy of images.
If there’s one thing we see a lot of when it comes to modern JDM, it’s professional photography. Whether it’s in a magazine, or simply a proud owner organising some perfect photos of his perfect car, there’s no shortage of brilliant photography. Unfortunately, this isn’t so true when it comes to classic JDM. So when we came across these shots of a pristine KPGC10 Skyline GT-R, we had to share them with you! It’s just a shame we couldn’t find any in a higher resolution – they’d make damn hot wallpapers.
More photos after the jump.
G’Day blokes and Sheilas, welcome to part two of our news from Australia. This time, we’re here to inform you of a new site called grandJDM, a new Aussie site about – what else – vintage Japanese cars!
Enthusiasm for nostalgics is growing worldwide and will soon become an unstoppable force, like an 18-wheel tanker full of sand barreling down on a leather clad, post-apocalyptic biker gang. The site has pictures and posts about the rare classic stuff one can find in the southern hemisphere. Of course, this does absolutely nothing to stem our coveting of a place where, not only do women glow and men plunder, but old J-tin pops out like koalas from a eucalyptus tree everywhere you look. Proximity to Japan and driving on the right helped them land the big catch, and they’re not sharing! Well, at least we can read about them now.
Check out grandJDM here.
Break out the vegemite and bog in, mate. Hear that didgeridoo? It’s time for a pair of posts from the land down under. First up, a couple of weekends ago, the Gold Coast held its annual WinterSun Festival (the southern hemisphere is on winter time right now), which includes a car cruise and drag race. Of course, jet-setting proprietor of Mooneyes, Shige Suganuma, was there to witness the madness and has it all covered on his blog.
In addition to some truly bonzer drag cars like this bitumen-walloping Mitsubishi Arrow (Lancer Celeste), he also visited a Toyota Australia “Toyota Day” held at a dealer training center where heaps of Coronas and Crowns, including this roo-bar wearing kujira, came to celebrate.
They don’t call it the Lucky Country for nothing. Will our raging jealousy over their well-preserved crop of RHD nostalgics ever subside? Not bloody loikley.
Check out Suganuma-san’s blog for more pictures of Wintersun drag cars and Aussie Toyotas. Stay tuned for part two of our news from Oz, but until then we’re off like a bucket of prawns in the sun.
grandJDM has so far been one of those things that you do because you have this massive urge to do it. The kind of urge that strikes you suddenly, from out of nowhere. Our plan at this point is to merely post images of sexy classic JDM, with the odd in-depth post thrown in here and there (case in point).
But we thought it’d be a good idea to ask you what you’d like to see here at grandJDM. So if you have any ideas or requests, feel free to squirt an email in our general direction, and hopefully we’ll be able to build up a good list of features and content as suggested by our readers!
We just posted about Wangan Midnight and the Devil Z a few days ago, but could this be the real thing? This downright evil-looking Fairlady Z was spotted in the Tokyo metro area, where it appears to be in cahoots with a seriously sick VIP’d Cima (Infiniti Q45), no doubt plotting the apocalypse or some similarly dastardly deed. If the sight of a car like this doesn’t strike instant fear into your heart, perhaps you should look into the career of vampire hunting.
Here we’ve got a spankin’ hot example of what you can do when you want a C110 Skyline GT-R, but all you can get your hands on – and perhaps all you can afford! – is a Datsun 240K (although it was known as the C110 Skyline in JDMland). More pics and info after the jump! Continue reading
After a long week of showcasing its corporate master’s wares, the Honda Japanese website likes to shed the work duds and have some fun. Cometh each weekend, the home page transforms into a bizarre yet beautiful and rich world of the most mesmerizing pixel art we’ve seen.
To get to various sections of the site, users must now navigate a strange, isometric world of blocky gardens, futuristic labs and cubic canals populated by boxy denizens doing everyday activities as if inside a digital Where’s Waldo? page. Can you spot the scuba diver, the kid with the radio control Civic, the kangaroo? Naturally, Honda products both old and new, like ASIMO or the T360 truck (pictured), are part of the fun sprinkled throughout.
The whole effect is rather surreal and enchanting, and we’ve even discovered some mini-games hidden in the rectilinear universe – the golfer, the color-changing dog. And as the girl with the blue balloon hints, the site was created by the renowned pixel art team eBoy.
If this isn’t enough quadratic quirk for you, head on over to the Icon Museum, where you can download your very own pixellated Hondas, whether you fancy Step Van or NSX or anything in between. The icons will stay around 24/7, but come Monday, the main page puts the suit back on and returns for another week.
