trueno

Was browsing on Amazon and Ebay and it amazed me there was a huge amount of useless merchandising for Initial D fans. And I don't mean useless merchandising like some tofu sticker to stick on your wannabe tofuboy Silvia S12 with panda paint scheme. Here is my top 3 useless merchandising:

On number three:

Initial D Playing poker card deck
Of course you can play poker with this, but not without being laughed at! And what is the deal with the Toyota Sprinter Trueno AE86 being the Joker?? Is this a joke??

On number two:

Initial D: AE86 Trueno Car 12-inch plush
A plush Trueno?? What am I supposed to do with it? Sit on it? Or sleep with it?

On number one:

Initial D 86 Trueno Carbon Bonnet Mini Screw Driver Set
Amazing! A screwdriver set inside the Panda Trueno AE86!! Why? What has this to do with Initial D? Am I missing the link here?? And if this is the normal type, what other types do we have?? And the screwdrivers look like they will break upon loosening any screw! What is that good for?

It is clear what will happen to my old Trueno:

This Daihatsu Charmant A35 is owned by a friend of Eircamae86 and he was looking for an upgrade of his 4K engine. He decided to put a 5K engine in it, however given the opportunity of swapping a 4AGE with T50 made him decide to go that way.

Everything should be an easy plug and play: the Daihatsu Charmant A35 was based upon the KE70 chassis, so everything should fit. In the two pictures above the suspension already has been swapped upon the Charmant.

Eventually it will start doing this again:

But then hopefully a bit better than this:

Too bad the shell can't be saved, but at least this is a good destination for the usable parts of my old AE86. ;)

Just got the news: my old Trueno is dead now.

This is how the car looked shortly after I sold the car:


And yes, that's the Chowini AE86 HR.com.au blogged about in the background.

Then after half a year I got the message from EircamAE86 that the Trueno crashed during a trackday:

He promised to fix it up and he did:

However the structure of the car was damaged and EircamAE86 did not brace the cage to the shell. After one trackday the car was bent and out of shape again. RIP Trueno... ;(

Today I spotted a Nissan Exa while driving through town. It stopped at the junction which I was passing and followed 50 meters behind me for two or three blocks so I only got a good look at it at the junction. Of course I didn't have my camera with me, so once again a cameraphone would be quite handy in these occurrences.

Normally the Exa is quite rare here in Holland since it was never sold here and normally was only imported from the US. However this model had a very distinctive front spoiler, so I looked it up and it appeared to be a Grand Prix edition which was only sold in Australia. Hmmm... Forgot to look if the driver actually was on the right side of the car...

The Exa looked like this:

As you can see the front looks very similar to the S12, but actually I think it looks rather more a like the Toyota AE86 Sprinter Trueno. Too bad it looks horrible at the rear and that it is wwd. ;)

While searching for Exa info I also found this great Nissan Sunny Turbo picture:

Notice the mirrored "Turbo" writing on the grille. Imagine cruising and all of a sudden some car rushes in very fast. All you can see in your mirror is "Turbo" written on the grille... I love those small details on 80s cars... ;)

Thanks to the Nissan Exa club for their info about the Exa Grand Prix.

Hachiroku.com.au posted that a new Initial D game called Extreme Stage is coming soon.

Hachiroku.com.au posted the youtube trailer:

You can see the trailer in more detail here:
http://www.initiald-ps3.com/movie/promo01.html

I took some screenshots:

Look at the detail in the hand, the gearknob and steering wheel!

And here how much detail there is in the dash! It is just about the same as I had in my Trueno (mine was LHD, so mirrored dash) and it iluminates just a tiny bit more than on full illumination.

And here you can see how much detail there is in the drift scenes!

As you can see it is much more detailed than the previous games (they show them to compare), especially the road and inboard graphics. The question is of course if this the actual quality, or if it is only the intro of the game... I suspect it is the latter... Otherwise it would have been a great tool for the animators of the Anime series!

If I would have owned a PS3 I would definitely buy it! Unfortunately I don't own one and I probably won't buy one in the near future... :(