Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Month: August 2014 (Page 1 of 2)

Japanese Rustoseums: the very rare junkyard

From various sources (like WasabiCars) I understood that finding a junkyard in Japan is very rare. There are some private yards that are mostly owned by garage owners and use the cars in the yard as spare parts. When I saw this photo of a real junkyard on a Japanese blog I couldn’t believe what I saw:
Japanese Rustoseums: the rare junkyard
In this big pile of rust I detected: a Mercury Cougar, a four door Toyota Chaser X30, a Mitsubishi Galant Λ (aka the Mitsubishi/Plymouth Sapporo and Dodge Challenger), a Toyota Celica A60 (maybe an XX?), a Nissan Skyline C210, a Toyota Corona T130, a Toyota Crown MS50 and the nicest of them all: a Toyota Publica van.

More photos of this junkyard can be found here: route0030

Friday Video: Nissan ATTESA E-TS explained

As already posted yesterday by JNC the Nissan Skyline GT-R R32 is as of today an official Japanese classic. Released on 21st of August 1989 means it is now 25 years old and legal to import to the US (about the only place on earth where it wasn’t) while in some other countries it no longer has to oblige to certain rules anymore (CO2 ratings and such).

The BNR32 Skyline was stuffed full with various electronic gadgets like the ATTESA E-TS system, SUPER HICAS 4 wheel steering and the twin-turbo PLASMA RB26DETT. Back in the 80s the Japanese car manufacturers loved acronyms!
Nissan Skyline GT-R BNR32 ATTESA E-TS
Now if you wonder what the ATTESA E-TS system is: that basically gave the Skyline GT-R four wheel drive by splitting torque between front and rear wheels once it loses traction.

Coincidentally two days ago IKnowSkyline posted a clip taken from the Best MOTORing July 1989 edition featuring the all new BNR32 Skyline GT-R and an explanation of the the ATTESA E-TS system: Continue reading

WTF: Tomica Nissan Gazelle S12 Super Silhouette replica

After yesterdays TOMs Corolla Group 5 I was searching for Group 5 cars and found this Tomica Gazelle.
Wait a minute! Isn’t that supposed to read Tomica Skyline Super Silhouette replica?
No, it isn’t! This is all about the Tomica Nissan Gazelle S12 Super Silhouette replica:
Tomica Nissan Gazelle S12 Super Silhouette
Yes, someone made a replica of the Tomica Skyline Super Silhouette racer in the early 90s but used a Nissan Gazelle S12 body for that. He even included all correct livery… WTF?!

You can watch the video below: Continue reading

Carina Trivia: the Toyota Carina A60 transmission overview

Some time ago I bought a CD-ROM from Japan with the Japanese Toyota handbooks hoping it would contain the wiring diagrams of the Japanese Carina A60 or at least the body repair manual for this to help me out with the wiring of the JDM gauge cluster. Unfortunately I haven’t found any pin out for the gauge cluster, except the one used for the digital cluster. What I did found was an awful lot of trivia like the Toyota Carina A60 transmission overview. The ones listed here are taken from the updated handbook of May 1985 (so released during the facelift) and the two tables reveals quite some surprises. There is an additional one covering the transmissions for the vans, but that reveals hardly anything surprising.

First of all here is the transmission per capacity per body type listed:
Toyota Carina A60 Transmissions per capacity
I tried to copy the kanji and decypher the meaning of them, so don’t pin me down on any translations here:
○ means these were the choices/options
◎ means it was an extra option/special case (e.g. overdrive)
☓ means it was abolished (not available anymore)
Top section is the four door, middle section the three door coupe and the bottom section the five door wagon (Surf).

This table reveals to me:
1. The Toyota Carina GT (and GT-R) only came with a manual transmission (T50).
2. Only the Toyota Carina GT-T (and GT-TR) came with either the W55 manual or the A43D automatic transmission
3. The 1C diesel engine featured the W51 and A42D automatic

The other table contains the transmission per model code per body type:
Toyota Carina A60 Transmissions per model code
Legend is basically almost the same as the table above.

This table reveals to me:
There was something like the SG-JUNE (misspelled Jeune?), SE-EXTRA, GT-R and GT-TR. All of them were options. I can’t tell what exactly in this list is the option over the existing transmission.

I did find additional information regarding the differences from the GT/GT-T and GT-R/GT-TR models and most of it is trim based. Will definitely post this in a later posting.

For completeness, here is the A67 wagon overview:
Toyota Carina A67 transmission per engine
Nothing surprising here: T40, T50, A41 and W51 all present like in the previous overviews.

Some trivia regarding the bellhousings:
The 1C diesel engine has the same bellhousing as the Toyota S engine and a popular fit for the 3S-G(T)E with the W series transmission. Also the 1S engine features a bellhousing that fits the T50 transmission, so for cars with a T50 transmission this is a popular bellhousing to mount a 3S-G(T)E to the existing box.

I have created a template to put this overview in a nicely formatted html table here: Toyota Carina A60 transmissions and I will fill the blanks in the upcoming day(s).

Reverse Fetish: LHD Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86 in Japan

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, so naturally in the US and Europe we love the JDM cars and RHD is actually a novelty. It is no different in Japan: they love USDM and EUDM car: in the past I’ve posted a few other reverse-fetishes. In this case it is all about a left hand drive (LHD) Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86 at the HaCHiRoCK Festa 2008:
LHD Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86
Seen from the dash it is an USDM model (tachometer on the left, speedo in miles), the seat has the inflatable lumbar pump (as seen on the Celica XX) on the driver seat and the body style is a JDM Trueno or USDM GT-S. The source only has this particular photo so it is unclear whether an existing RHD has been converted to LHD or this car is actually a genuine USDM Toyota Corolla GT-S imported into Japan (most probably), so we’ll probably never know for sure…

Found at: Minakara

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