Cars wouldn’t be any fun if there were no roads to drive them on. Today, November 18, is Civil Engineering Day in Japan, and it honors those who built the highways, bridges, and tunnels that help us get where we’re going. It was 145 years ago today, in 1879, that the roots of the Japan Society of Civil Engineers was founded. Japan has many incredible civil engineering projects, like the undersea tunnel that connects Honshu to Hokkaido, the Umihotaru rest area in the middle of Tokyo Bay (above), or the building in Osaka with a whole ass expressway going through the middle of it. But your answer doesn’t have to be from Japan. Just tell us a structure that kind of makes you go “wow” whenever you see it, a testament to what humanity can achieve when we put our collective minds to it.
What’s your favorite feat of civil engineering?
The most entertaining comment by next week will receive a prize. Scroll down to see the winner of last week’s QotW, “Which marque would you never recommend?“.
If the advice of our readers is to be taken, the brand that you should never buy is Chrysler. It, along with it associated sub-brands like Jeep, and the companies it has partnered with like Mitsubishi, was nominated the most. Franxou, Legacy-san, Jonathan P, Dillon, and speedie all issued warnings against putting your money toward a Pentastar product. As a runner up from the US, StreetSpirit, Negishi no Keibajo, and エーイダン all warned us against Tesla.
European brands also got their fair share of admonitions too. No BMWs, says Lakdasa. Steer clear of any 90s and up VW group products, StreetSpirit and Dillon say, while Legacy-san offered a blanket warning against anything German. daniel advised against Peugeot/Citroen, while Tom Westmacott urges caution against anything Land Rover.
Asian marques weren’t immune to critique. Brett said Chinese-owned MG should be a hard pass. Daihatsu’s safety certification scandal was enough to turn Negishi no Keibajo off from the brand. And of course speedie‘s aforementioned Mitsubishi advisory still stands.
The winner this week was Dillon, who broke his answer into three markets, and came up with a hard-to-swallow but not inaccurate slam against Nissan (and others):
Oh dear, I have a hard time limiting to just one. So i’ll break it into the 3 major markets for what i have seen and dealt with professionally.
When it comes to the Japanese market, I have to go with Nissan. For decades, they have been plagues with some major failure in their manufacturing process that doesn’t speak to longevity. Sadly, the late 80’s / early 90’s, the Skyline, whether with a GTST or GTR, rust, inside and out. For being the top tier to their level of performance, the sheet metal and corrosion protection was just not what the JDM counterparts were. It does not last. Then you fast forward to the 2000’s to current, that anything with a CVT is just destined for failure from the factory.
When it comes to Europe, German engineering is just one i still can not get behind. Albeit, Porsche and BMW are superior in building performance road cars that handle incredibly well. But Volkswagen is the one i will never promote. Overpriced parts, over-engineered heeps of nuts and bolts. It would be one thing, that if a known failure in one generation vehicle was fixed for the next generation, but they are not. Like the high pressure pump lobe failures. The parts are not cheap!
And for the US market, Chrysler is a known throw-away brand, so it almost speaks for itself. However, Ford takes the cake for me. Between their cars and trucks, they have continuous issues and service bulletins and recalls are pretty frequent. Though the Mustang and anything 5.0, is pretty robust, it just seems that everything else in their lineup doesn’t get the care of the latter. Even with the Powerstroke, it really seems to continue to goes backwards in design. I really think the 7.3 powerstoke was the only thing they ever built, that would even run on moose piss if you needed it to. Otherwise, it all seems to be about marketing for them…
Omedetou, your comment has earned you a set of decals from the JNC Shop!
Wheeling West Virginia …read that carefully.
There’s two roads that literally wow’d me in my 30+ years of driving.
One is the Bixby Bridge that’s along Pacific Coast Highway (PCH), and also Highway 1 along that area between Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo. That’s gotta be one of the most picturesque bridges around. It’s not the most advanced or technological breakthrough, but it’s a definitely a challenge when it comes to keeping it maintained. My drives have usually been going northbound, as I was departing Calpoly and headed back into the Bay Area post-final exams; what a great way to unwind! These days, however, it seems like there’s still that mud slide blocking thru traffic, and Bixby Bridge has become so polluted with social media that it’s not attractive anymore. I’m glad I enjoyed it when it was untainted.
The other venue is I-70 through Glenwood Canyon, another beautiful sight. Heading out of Glenwood Springs, and eastbound towards the Johnson Tunnel, this portion of I-70 is the last piece of the U.S. Interstate Highway system. At certain points the westbound side is elevated partially above the eastbound side, and the structural design is really attractive. This 12 mile portion also passes through a few long tunnels, and each time you come out of the tunnels, you’re greeted by the spectacular view. The highway is nicely integrated into the natural surroundings with as little disturbance as possible. The road is windy and has rocky wall immediately on one side, and the Colorado River on the other. This is one road I definitely took my time when driving, as it was just awesome seeing the scale of everything. Youtube link just for ref, put it on a big screen and it’ll definitely make good use of your 4K!
The Eastern span replacement of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. I know some people that worked on this project, and we followed it at work. For me, the construction staging regarding traffic was interesting because I work with traffic. Also, the story of how the cable-stayed bridge (towers with cable supports) was chosen after the public rejected the boring freeway-viaduct style bridge first purposed.
For sure the Eastern Span. My dad worked at Caltrans and supported design of that bridge before his retirement. It used to be dramatic going westbound and coming out Treasure Island, but I feel easbound coming out TI is arguably more breathtaking, especially at night with all the lights lit up.
I was going to say the Seto Ohashi- I used to live at the north end of it in Okayama and it really was a symbol of the region, for reasons both positive and negative.
But then I remembered the first time I saw the Akashi Kaikyo Ohashi. I was driving to a car show on Awaji Island, and you come out of a long tunnel on the expressway just a few hundred feet before getting on the bridge, so you don’t see it until you’re right there on it. For some reason I thought of all suspension bridges as being roughly the same size, but the scale of it is otherworldly. (It was the largest suspension bridge in the world until just a few years ago) It’s also worth noting that on a really clear day, you could see it from high places in Okayama.
Though not automotive, the rewards from the Shinkansen are far & wide. From catching the imagination of toddlers to think of mobility to the granular science of metallurgy, countless other industries benefitted from this civil engineering triumph to this day. Often copied but always associated with Japan, it’s a well deserved source of pride.
The roof-top test track on Fiat’s Lingotto Building in Turin.
This marvel was built starting in 1916 and in service by 1923; so well ahead of its time, and, as James May is wont to say ‘An ingenious solution to a problem that should never have existed in the first place.’
Most of all, made famous in the classic chase scene in the original (and the best) ‘The Italian Job’
The U.S. Interstate Hwy system.