Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Tag: 1983

Video: Japanese 1983 Celica XX advertisement #2

Last week I blogged about the Toyota Celica XX advertisement with the ELO (Densha Otoko) theme in it. This week I have a Japanese Celica XX advertisement with Grace Jones!

I can understand why they compare Grace Jones with the Celica XX: both are square muscular superstars but I personally would prefer the Celica XX above Grace Jones. ;)

A nice detail is the mirror shot at 19 seconds: it is a bit the same as the mirror shot of the New Carina catalogue (S59-3):
Cover of New Carina (S59-3)
Same style, same era?

Carina A6 entering the Paris-Dakar in 1982 and 1983

As you can see in the catalogue of S57-6 (June 1982) the Carina A6 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.
Carina in 1983 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.
Carina in 1982 Paris-Dakar
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.

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