Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Tag: Mark II GX71

Manga Car Spotting – Subaru Rex Combi 4WD – Nissan Skyline GTS-R R31 – You’re Under Arrest part 6

Manga Cars

What do a Subaru Rex Combi 4WD, Nissan Skyline GTS-R R31 and a 1989 RUF CTR 3.4 have in common? They are all featured in today’s You’re Under Arrest manga! Yes it’s another Manga Car Spotting video and we will continue the You’re Under Arrest series with this sixth manga by Dark Horse. It will be a longer video today as we will have to cover 15 cars and two mystery cars.
Manga Car Spotting - You're Under Arrest manga 6 of 8

You’re Under Arrest by Kosuke Fujishima

The young petrolhead Kosuke Fujishima started out as an editor and assistant of, back then not so famous, Tatsuya Egawa mangaka. This inspired him to create his own manga and the first successful manga series drawn by him was You’re Under Arrest! (逮捕しちゃうぞ) which revolves around a Tokyo police station in the business district Sumida. The two protagonists are two female police offices called Natsumi Tsujimoto and Miyuki Kobayakawa and both of them are petrolheads. Natsuki is the more blunt one who catches thiefs, thugs and tramps singlehanded while Miyuki is the more intelligent one who loves tinkering with cars, engines and motorcylces.

In today’s manga we will spot more than 15 cars and various motorcycles. The Honda Today police special is the main car as the duo patrols the Sumida area in this car. The Honda Today is no longer bone stock and is specially tuned to keep up with the sports cars owned by the businessmen of Sumida. Some examples of these cars are the Nissan Skyline GTS-R R31, Mazda Savanna RX-7 FC3S and RUF CTR 3.4 than can be spotted in this manga. Also a bit more luxurious cars like a Toyota Mark II Grande GX71 can be spotted. Or even the high performance pocket rocket Subaru Rex Combi 4WD!

Initially created as a spin-off of You’re Under Arrest! manga, Ah! My Goddess surpassed it in fame. Belldandy turned up in one of the manga of You’re Under Arrest and this inspired it’s creator Kosuke Fujishima to create the Ah! My Goddess manga. In this a goddess, Belldandy, meets a lowly student Keiichi Morrisato and this series ran from 1988 till 2014. I have also created a Manga Car Spotting episode for this series some time ago. As Ah! My Goddess surpassed You’re Under Arrest! in popularity, the final manga of You’re Under Arrest was released in 1992.
Toyota Liteace XL-7 AWD

You can find the video and the high resolution scans of the panels containing manga cars below: Continue reading

Brilliant: collection of Showa scale model cars

Now this was a big jaw-dropper: two videos of a Toyota Mark II Grande GX71 literally covered in Showa scale model cars. This must be the largest personal collection of scale model cars I’ve seen!
Brilliant: Showa scale model cars
Now if you look carefully enough you can see that each and every scale model car has its own special paint job (mostly kaido racer, race car livery or kyusha kai) and set of (rare) JDM rims! If you count the number of hours it took to make them look this way alone it already is an amazing job!

Now the list of cars, mainly from the late Showa-era, is going to be a lengthy one, but I’ll try to sum up the most important ones:

  • Toyota Mark II Grande GX71 (duh)
  • Toyota Soarer GZ10/MZ11/MZ12 (including the Shakotan Boogie Soarer twice)
  • Numerous Toyota Celica XX GA61
  • Toyota Celica GT RA45
  • Toyota Corolla Levin TE27
  • Toyota Corolla Levin TE71 four door sedan
  • Toyota Corolla Levin AE86 hatchback
  • Toyota Corsa AL11
  • Numerous Nissan Skylines C10, C110, C210, R30
  • Numerous Nissan Cedric/Gloria 230, 330, 430
  • Numerous Nissan Fairlady S30
  • Nissan EXA
  • Hasemi Skyline KDR30 Super Silhouette kaido racer replica
  • Nissan Silvia S110 Super Silhouette kaido racer replica
  • Isuzu Bellet GT-R
  • Mazda RX-3

And the list could go on for another 20 or 30 models that I overlooked…

Watch video number one: Continue reading

Japanese Rustoseums: Kyusha Kai Toyota Mark II GX71 wagon

Seeing a custom car end up in a junkyard is a real shame, especially if it is a nice kyusha kai Toyota Mark II GX71 wagon like this example:
Japanese rustoseums: Kyusha Kai Toyota Mark II GX71 Wagon
The blue color with its pearlescent paint kind of gives it away as a real show car and when BANKAKUEMIKO moves around the car the tiny details make it more and more obvious: the flushed wagon hatch, the wire wheels on the rear seat, the custom vinyl wrapped trim, the xenon lights and most obvious the lengthened bonnet which fits it right into the kyusha kai, shakotan and/or kaido racer scene. (mixes them a bit)

You can watch the full video below: Continue reading

Useless Japanese car innovations: quick hand warmer

It took some time, but I finally found another useless Japanese car innovation: the quick hand warmer! The Doctor sent me this nice useless innovation. It is a picture from a Japanese X70 brochure he owns.
Useless Japanese car innovation: the quick hand warmer
Useless Japanese car innovation: the quick hand warmer

This quick hand warmer (QHW for short) was an option on the whole Toyota X70 (GX71 and MX70) range and served its purpose to warm the hands of the mid-level salarymen who bought this special option. Probably mostly used when they went golfing with their boss in Autumn…

Basically it is a minified hair dryer stuffed inside the steering column and operated by a switch right behind the air duct:
The quick hand warmer assembly from the EPC
The quick hand warmer assembly from the EPC

You need a lot of amps going through the wires to bring a 12 volts unit quickly up to temperature, so Toyota installed an amplifier (87760) under the bonnet connected with a big lead to the unit in the steering column. I don’t want to know what will happen when this goes wrong with a short circuit or something!

Popular Bosozoku cars: Toyota Mark II platform

Most of you probably already saw a video posted by white_raven in the comments of last weeks rare popular bosozoku cars posting

Well this video is actually the first of a set of 3 videos about the Toyota Mark II platform. It starts with three bosozoku styled Mark IIs (RT72, MX31 and GX71), a clean tuned Mark II (JZX90) and finishes with the Verossa JZ110 drift car.

Part one contains last weeks bosozoku styled Corona Mark II RT72 and the first part of a bosozoku styled Mark II MX31:

Good detail is that this RT72 has the 8R engine and not the 8R-G, so it is not the GSS model.

Part two contains the second part of the Mark II MX31, the bosozoku styled Mark II GX71 and the clean tuned JZX90:

Note that the GX71 did get a 7M swap, so actually it became a MX71.
BTW: I love the way the tsurikawa is dangling behind the MX31 at 0:25 and scraping over the highway: the only correct way to make use of a tsurikawa! Anyone got a spare one for me? 😀

And part 3 contains Hirota’s 2007 JZX110 Verossa drift car:

So a big thanks to white_raven for finding these videos!! 🙂

Hopefully these videos will stay on Youtube for a while, but I’m afraid they will disappear very soon…

[I posted this article earlier this week on Bosozokustyle.com]

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