In the latest episode of James May’s Cars of the People, the former Top Gear host travels to Japan and drives some JNCs. Specifically, he gets behind the wheel of a Mazda Familia (aka 323) hatchback in its hometown of Hiroshima, and pilots a Toyota Celica Liftback in Toyota City with three of the company’s engineers as passengers.
The latter is contrasted with a drive through Detroit with a trio of Big Three employees in a Ford Mustang II, perhaps the most derided pony car of all time. In typical May style it’s all very entertaining, of course, but it’s also a curious examination on how Axis Powers may have lost the military war, but won the industrial one.
Signs in Romaji! It didn’t used to be that way in Japan!
It’s worse than that! 黒 is now ブラーク, 現金 is now カシュ, 牛乳 is now ミルク… We’ll all be taking katakana in a few years.
Bye bye Kanji.
That Ford singalong song is legendary.
James May is the King!
Very entertaining.
It is testament to power of starting again. While I am sure that it didn’t seem like it at the time, the defeated countries had an almost unprecedented opportunity to start anew, after their political, social and economic systems failed them so badly and were washed away in the conflagration.
glad no one comments about james may said “that’s a dacia sandero” XD captain slow ftw
And I noticed an AKB48 song in there too XD
OOOOOOH, I bet this is why the BBC was looking for a 1st gen Celica in Detroit last summer. Right. I assume this means they never found one (because the only ones here are poorly modified beaters, non-running projects, or 7MGTE swapped).
Very cool from the few minutes I’ve watched- it is funny to see him basically criss-crossing the area I go to school and work in driving the Buick, haha.
Captain Slow is still in the car tv show scene?? Yes!!
Mazda <3