Tag Archives: toyota

NEWS: Passing Toyota 2000GT crushed by tree

There were only 337 production examples of the Toyota 2000GT built. Now there’s one less. At about 9:00 am this morning in the Gokayama area of Toyama Prefecture, the classic flagship car passed under a 100-foot beech. Unfortunately, that’s the exact moment the tree came … Continue reading

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MINICARS: Get these 2014 Hot Wheels right now

Can’t find any J-tin on the pegs? You must live in California. However the consensus from other parts of the country seems that miniature Nihon steel is getting hard to find in those areas too. Much like 1968 was a banner year … Continue reading

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Classic & Sports Car pits Toyota 2000GT against UK and US counterparts

The June 2014 issue of the UK’s Classic & Sports Car pits a Jaguar E-Type against a 1965 Corvette and a Toyota 2000GT to see which continent produced the best sixties sports coupe. Long-time readers know what’s coming next: A genuflecting ode … Continue reading

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GRAND TOURING: Okinawa

To Americans, the name Okinawa immediately conjures images of US military bases. However, the archipelago located south of Honshu, Japan’s main landmass, is also a popular subtropical tourist destination. Okinawa literally means “a rope in the open sea” and is comprised of a 600-mile … Continue reading

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BOOK CLUB: Koichi Inouye’s 1960s Japanese sports cars volumes now available in English

Three Koichi Inouye books about 1960s Japanese sports cars have been translated into English and published as e-books. The works cover seminal automobiles from Japan’s largest automakers, the Honda S-Series, Toyota 2000GT and Sports 800, and the Datsun Fairlady roadster. 

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FAUX-STALGICS: 2000 Toyota Origin

On the heels of another Toyotafest, let us return to the series where we check out some examples of modern retro-inspired cars along with the JNCs they mimic. In this post, we turn to a quintessential classic Toyota, the Crown, … Continue reading

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JNC THEATER: Initial D Final Stage

The anime that brought touge culture to US screens is coming to an end. Initial D, in manga form, concluded its 18-year run last summer. Now, the animated account of the story is following suit. Animax will air a total of four 30-minute episodes wrapping … Continue reading

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EVENTS: 2014 All-Toyotafest, Part 04 — Museum Pieces

For our final installment of Toyotafest coverage, we bring you the museum-worthy cars that put meaning to the word classic. Whether its racing provenance, rarity, pop culture status or just a stupendously fantastic specimen, these are the cars that are should be exhibited and preserved as inspiration … Continue reading

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EVENTS: 2014 All-Toyotafest, Part 03 — Practicals

We’ve seen the high-end luxocruisers that gave Toyota its reputation of apocalypse-grade reliability and the long-forgotten sports coupes Akio Toyoda hopes will rekindle passions for his great-grandfather’s company, but Part 03 of our Toyotafest coverage is about the everyday cars and trucks that made the ToMoCo kingdom possible. 

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EVENTS: 2014 All-Toyotafest Part 02 — The Sports Coupes

This year Toyotafest fell on a very special occasion — President and CEO Akio Toyoda‘s 58th birthday. Since taking the helm of his great-grandfather’s company in 2009, Toyoda-san has vowed to bring the wakudoki back. What’s wakudoki? “A palpable, heart-pounding sense of excitement,” says Toyota. … Continue reading

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EVENTS: 2014 All-Toyotafest, Part 01— Luxe & GT

Hanging like a cloud over the festivities of the 19th annual All-Toyotafest this year was the news that had been leaked to the press a week prior: Toyota USA was moving its headquarters, which had been a southern California fixture … Continue reading

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JNC THEATER: Operation: Mystery! and the Tortoise

Kaiki Daisakusen (or Operation: Mystery! in English) was a 26-episode Japanese TV series about a team of investigators dispatched to solve cases involving supernatural phenomena. The SRI, or Science Research Institute may have been Japan’s 1960s counterpart to the FBI’s X-Files department, but Mulder and Scully never had … Continue reading

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KIDNEY, ANYONE? 19k-mile 1974 Toyota Corolla

Proof again that California does not have a monopoly on classic J-tin comes in the form of this Philadelphia-based 1974 Toyota Corolla 1600 Deluxe. Said to be a one-owner car with just under 19,000 original miles, it is likely one of the least … Continue reading

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19th Annual All-Toyotafest, a preview

JNC on the way to the 19th annual All-Toyotafest, stopping for an early morning breakfast of champions. Supra-size me! 

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2014 All-Toyotafest, a reminder

There are only three days till the 19th annual All-Toyotafest. As usual, JNC will be there with a booth, and we’ll be making the drive in this black 1980 Toyota Supra. Stop by and say hi. As it happens, the day of … Continue reading

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Old Tokyo photos oozing with Japanese nostalgic cars

We recently stumbled upon a thread of old Tokyo photos on the architecture site SkyscraperCity. Though the focus was the buildings, we came for the cars. Just look at these pictures and dream of being amongst these machines when they were still new. 

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JNC THEATER: Solaris

The 1972 Russian film Solaris is considered one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time. It tells the tale of a psychologist sent to investigate the deteriorating mental state of a space station crew orbiting the distant planet of Solaris. Like many sci-fi … Continue reading

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Nissan Bluebird and Toyota Levin revived in China, in name at least

Soon, you will be able to buy a 2015 Nissan Bluebird or Toyota Levin. Only, they won’t be available in Japan, and definitely not in the US. Instead, Japanese automakers are reviving these classic nameplates for the Chinese market. 

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VIDEO: 8-second kujira Crown

So you find one of the rarest Toyotas ever to make landfall in the US, and what do you do? Tub it out, drop in a 2JZ bored .40 over with HKS 280 cams, and take it to the strip, … Continue reading

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EVENTS: 2014 Nostalgic2Days, Part 04

We start our final installment of our 2014 Nos2Days coverage with a beautiful butaketsu Laurel by Red Megaphone. The Nissan restoration shop is known primarily for its Skylines, but this white C130 hardtop showed that there’s more than hakosukas and kenmeris … Continue reading

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