Benoist!!!!

Just finished reading Densha Otoko. Amazing! Much better than the J-Drama: Train isn't such a wimp in the book as in the Drama. He's more direct to the point and the story drags less on. In the end it turns out that he's worse than an otaku (translated into anorak): he's really into Hentai Dōjinshi (translated into fan-porn) as well! If that isn't enough: his favorite is Sailor Moon and Keroro! （｀･ω･´)

For all you out there doubting whether you should buy the book or not: do buy it, it's definitely worth it!! Otherwise you can read it all here: Densha Otaku original (Japanese) or project DENSHA:The 'Densha Otoko' Translation Project. IMO the online version is better than the book, but reading the book is much easier. ━━━━━━（ﾟ∀ﾟ）━━━━━━

Shameless ascii-art rip:

Benwa!

I'm going to add another section: Carina Sightings.

This section will contain sightings in films, magazines and other references and will be updated regularly.

Today I have Gwok chaan Ling Ling Chat (From Bejing with love) which is a Chinese action movie. I really like the description of the plot by IMDB: An incompetent 007-wannabe is sent to locate a stolen dinosaur skull

One of the agents tries to escape with a Carina (I suspect SG by looking at he trim so type would be SA60 or AA60) and the man she just assassinated steps in (bulletproof vest) and joins her. Some Jaws lookalike cyborg guy stops the car by lifting it while they try to overrun him full throttle and doing a burnout. After they shoot him he lets go and they manage to finally overrun him.

The carina features from 3:55 till 5:30 in this Youtube clip:

I don't really have the idea that I really should have seen this movie and I feel kind of disappointed now... Lucky enough I really like the wannabe 007 and his enternal cigarette so that makes up for it. ;)

Source: IMCDb.org

As you may have noticed: I've changed the layout of the blog.
I've based it on Alek 2.0 and modified it into my own theme.

This is how it originally looked:

I hope you like it. :)

Found this Carina with a 1JZ-GTE engine (JDM Supra MkIII/Soarer MkII) in it:

From what I can see on the grille this is a ST model, so it either featured a 1S or 3A originally.

Too bad there is not more footage of this engine swap. Would have been very interesting in what they actually had to change for this!

As you can see in the catalogue of S57-6 (June 1982) the Carina featured in the Paris-Dakar rally. According to the Carina page on the Japanese Wikipedia it featured in 1981 and 1982. However I could not find any reference that they actually did attend in 1981, especially not on this list. I did find a Toyota Starlet attending Paris-Dakar.

I did find that Masaru Kubota and Masahiro Uchida joined Paris-Dakar in 1982 and 1983 with a Carina, and Kubota was driving the Starlet in 1981. They became 34th in 1982 but did not finish 1983.

They entered as a private team (no factory backup) in the normal unmodified class, so their Carina was almost bone stock!!

Perhaps the Japanese Wikipedia page is mistaken about the years, maybe the conversion from Japanese years was done wrongly or maybe they traveled to Paris before 1st of January and of course counted it as 1981. We'll never know.