Remembering Japanese cars from the past
Okay I admit that I love digital dashboards and I surely do love this Nissan Leopard F31 dashboard!
If you look at the complexity of it Nissan must have spent a fortune on getting these LCD displays fault free. ;)
The boot-up test sequence shows about everything the display can show you:
Not much more than the most necessary gauges but sufficient enough for a Gran Turismo like the Nissan Leopard F31
Direct link to video: デジパネ 日産 レパード F31 デジタルメーター UF31 NISSAN LEOPARD digital dash
On the very same day that I encountered the snowy Subaru Impreza WRX I also made photos of a snowy Mazda MX-5 NA:
This red Mazda MX-5 originates from November 1990 and was imported 14 years ago into the Netherlands.
As you can see a lot of things have changed on this MX-5 in the past 24 years:
First if all the double exhaust pipes look brilliant on it. I have no idea if they are functional or not but they don’t look fake or something.
Then there is also a boot rack (trunk rack for the US) mounted on the boot/trunk which should increase luggage capacity for long weekend trips.
The wheels are dished Rota RB rims (Minilite/Watanabe copies) but I’m unsure about the size as I did not make a clear picture of that.
Last but not least: the snowy Mazda MX-5 NA reminded me of the Miatas from Cars in this photo. I tried to add eyes and eyelids but I simply couldn’t post it here, so you will have to do the same by squinting your eyes and see for yourself. ;)
Verdict: I really love to see this Miata every morning when I bring my son to school! It hardly ever moves but I hope the owner just suspended his/her daily commute in it during wintertime.
Almost seven years ago I posted about Masaru Kubota’s and Masahiro Uchida’s Toyota Carina ST joining the Paris-Dakar rally in 1982 and 1983 and today I stumbled upon this amazing photo of the very same Carina:
To be honest: I’m speechless here. So much awesomeness being pushed out of that boxy four door sedan by team ACP!
I think the photo is part of an unknown Toyota and/or Carina brochure as it states “…across the burning sands of the Sahara…” and underneath that “turn to center pages”. This indicates there are some center pages (brochures?) with more of this. I hope I will somehow uncover this in the future.
A few years ago I posted an photo of what the infamous Fuji Speedway 30-degree high bank looks like today. A few weeks ago someone in my subscription list on Youtube posted a video of the same thing: the Fuji Speedway 30-degree bank overgrown with grass, plants and trees.
The video can actually show you more details than one single photo: it shows details like old signs, banners, guard rail leftovers and overgrown tribunes. Really worth watching on a boring Friday afternoon at work!
You can watch the video below:
Direct link to video: 馬鹿が富士スピードウェイの30度バンクを見に行くと、こうなる。
I could stare for hours to this Nissan RB26DETT cutaway drawing and still not see every detail in it!
The black valve cover on this Nissan RB26DETT uncovers this engine as a R32 or R33 type and as the cutaway drawings got out of fashion in the 90s the drawing is probably made around the launch of the BNR32 in 1989.
The Nissan RB26DETT is/was one of the most awesome engines that Nissan made. The engine is an cast iron block with aluminum head, has 24 valves with double overhead cam, a parallel twin-turbo setup and six individual throttle bodies. Even though the initial power was “only” 280ps (276hp) the engine is able to output more than 1 megawatt (1,340 hp) after heavy modifications. I would say it is a good successor of the Nissan S20
Drawing via Autospeed
I wasn’t really aware of Mituoka’s past and assumed they started building kit-cars at first and then creating their own cars. Actually they did manufacture their own cars before that! May I introduce to you the BUBU Shuttle-50:
The Shuttle-50 is probably the most boring “car” you ever have seen, but somehow Mitsuoka managed to sell quite a few of them!
More interesting are the successors of the Shuttle-50: the Mitsuoka BUBU 501 (sedan) and Mitsuoka BUBU 502 (van)!
Both are nothing more than a fiberglass body on a tubular chassis and a Honda 50cc moped engine. As the BUBU branding was obviously not as appealing in Japan it was branded as the Honda Zoe Zipper overseas.
As the Honda engine lacked a reverse the BUBU 501 also features an electric motor connected to a bar that directly connects to the tire and rolls the car backwards.
Now the Mitsuoka BUBU 501 may not appeal to you but I can ensure you that you can outrun a couple of Toyota Hi-Ace Ninjas on roller-skates with it! You can watch it here in action: Continue reading
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