Welcome to another edition of Daily, Garage, or Sell, JNC‘s version of FMK. We’ve asked the question of 90s roadsters, flagship sedans, 80s drifters and more, but this time we’re turning our attention to 80s toys with their own cartoon lines. Transformers, Go-Bots, and MASK competed for the after-school attention of kids by telling elaborate tales of vehicles that changed into formidable battle machines. And when the same kids went to the toy store, complex toy versions of those vehicles competed for their parents’ dollars. It was the first generation to have such an overabundance of pop culture, and it was a great time to grow up.
Daily, Garage, or Sell — Transformers, Go-Bots, or MASK
The most entertaining comment by next week will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “What’s the most scenic place you’ve driven to?“.
The responses this week gave us a good list of places to visit someday (by car, of course). It just goes to show how vast this world is, and how one could probably spend an entire lifetime traveling without taking in all there is to see.
Just in the US, there are destinations like Crater Lake, Oregon, the stretch of US 101 from Santa Barbara to Ventura, the Hwy 70 San Rafael Swell in Utah, and Interstate 90 in Upstate New York in fall, as noted by Taylor C. The drive from Fort Jackson, South Carolina to Phoenix, Arizona sounds like a grand adventure, especially when traversing it in a Honda Z600 as Fred Langille did. Similarly, Yellowstone National Park in a 1965 car, perhaps a Datsun 411, as suggested by MikeRL411, sounds like an epic run.
Expanding beyond the lower 48, we have Kyuusha Corner‘s pick of Denali National Park between Anchorage and Fairbanks, and dankan‘s nomination of Mount Tremblant. In the Old World al suggested Basque country in Spain.
Over in Japan, we’ve now put dankan‘s Shirai-no-taki on the list, as well as Negishi no Keibajo‘s Japan Route 1. But based on description the winner this week was TheJWT for his recommendation of Mt. Kinko in Tamano City:
Only a few days after I arrived in Japan, still a nervous mess wondering what the heck I had gotten myself into, I found a twisty road a few minutes from my apartment and headed up it in my company-provided car. It led up to an observation deck at the top of Mt. Kinko in Tamano City, just south of Okayama. The view at the top was quite literally unlike anything I’d ever seen before- It overlooked the entire Seto Inland Sea with Shikoku in the far distance, the Seto Ohashi Bridge, and the hundreds of tiny islands. I’ve read that on a clear night with a good zoom lens, you can even see as far as the tallest building in Osaka. I never managed to, but I was able to see the supports of the Akashi Kaikyo bridge near Kobe one day.
I grew up in Ohio, and we’ve got Lake Erie, a milion miles of flat land, and not much else. To say this was the most scenic place I’d ever driven to would be a huge understatement. It became a really special place to me, and I’d go there probably once a month or so.
I also didn’t know at the time, but the road leading up there used to be popular with Hashiriya in the 90s, and is still a decently popular street drifting spot if you show up late at night. There are still some VHS-quality videos up on Youtube from back in the day (shown above).
Omedetou, your comment has earned you a set of decals from the JNC Shop!
