As you may have heard, a torrential rainstorm struck central Japan on September 8, flooding towns, triggering landslides, and halting service on Japan’s famously resilient transportation infrastructure. There has been heartbreaking footage of cars being swept up in the deluge, but for those who want to protect their cars from this poor hardtop NA Roadster‘s sad fate, there’s a potential solution from an unlikely source: Pikes Peak Hillclimb legend Nobuhiro “Monster” Tajima.
During the record-breaking downpour an observation station in Nagoya registered over four inches of rain in a single hour, with 8.4 inches falling in a 12-hour period. It’s the highest rate of rainfall ever logged since the city began keeping records in 1890. Underground plazas were transformed into rivers and rail service stopped for the day.
Many car owners, like the Civic Type R and Toyota Crown owners in the video above, were caught off guard. One lucky 1964 Toyota Corona driver was fortunate enough to evacuate his car to higher ground, but another was stuck fiddling with their Supra in the midst of shin-high waters. Though the vehicle toll isn’t known yet, last month a different rainstorm struck Chiba prefecture, damaging 2500 vehicles on city streets alone.
Turns out, there’s a specific invention for exactly this scenario. It’s called the Monarte Floating Floor, and it was revealed at the Tokyo Auto Salon earlier this year. It’s essentially a flat parking surface made of a foam core and coated in polyurea, a waterproofing resin. Under normal circumstances, it just acts as a gray parking pad. But in case of a flood, as the water level rises, the buoyant parking surface rises along with it. “It’s not the car that floats, but the floor on which the car is parked that floats,” the marketing materials state.
Steel piles on one end act as guides to keep the platform level and in place, and to prevent it from drifting away. The Floating Floor can hold up to 3000 kg (approximately 6600 pounds), which is more than enough for most vehicles.
Monarte, the company that created the Floating Floor, is a subsidiary of Tajima Motor Corporation, founded by the legendary Pikes Peak Hillclimb record holder of the same name. You may remember Monster Tajima as the driver of the Pikes Peak Suzuki Escudo made famous by Gran Turismo, or the man who broke the 10-minute barrier at the Pikes Peak International Hillclimb in 2011.
In addition to building Monster Tajima’s race cars and parts, Tajima Motor also sells aftermarket parts for Suzuki cars, and sells electric delivery vehicles. Its Monarte sub-brand specializes in disaster prevention products like the Floating Floor, but also makes similar platforms for securing valuables like computer servers in warehouses and data centers. It also manufactures large floating and waterproof sheds for storing valuables, documents, and supplies in case of floods or tsunamis.
It’s a niche business, but flooding seems to be an increasingly frequent and severe problem in Japan. The Japan Meteorological Agency measures flood risk by the frequency of concentrated heavy downpours, defined as rain exceeding 80 mm (3.15 inches) per hour or over 300 mm (11.8 inches) in a single day. Over the past 40 years, the annual frequency of these extreme, flood-triggering weather events has risen by 110 percent. The world certainly doesn’t need another source of automotive attrition, so perhaps Tajima’s Floating Floor can help stem the loss of Japan’s classic cars.
