Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Tag: rotary (Page 1 of 2)

Only some cosmetic damage on this Mazda Cosmo Sport – Japanese Rustoseums

There is only some cosmetic damage on this Mazda Cosmo Sport. Nothing bad to write about. All it needs is just a little refresher on the paint. Maybe a little TLC on the suspension. And perhaps it needs a patch or two on the bodywork. But definitely not more than that!

Just some cosmetic damage on this Mazda Cosmo Sports series II
Just some cosmetic damage on this Mazda Cosmo Sport Series II

Mazda Cosmo Series I and Series II

For those unaware what a Mazda Cosmo Sport is: when Mazda was able to create their own reliable engine from the NSU licensed engine, they needed a car to showcase it. This became the Mazda Cosmo Sport, also better known as the Mazda Cosmo 110S outside Japan, and was presented in 1964. 80 cars were extensively tested between 1965 and 1966. Only 1967 the Cosmo became available for the general public and already received a facelift in July 1968. This was then called the Series II and it only received minor changes, where the room between the door and the rear fender was extended by 1.5 inches.

This Mazda Cosmo Sport is a Series II car. In the photo above you can see the space between the door and the rear fender is longer than on the Series I car. According to the blog posts (here and here) I found this posted on, this car is located in Okinawa. We can also deduce this from the license plate 沖55 め6.62: the first character is for the Okinawa prefecture.

Road tax

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Family Album Treasures: Mazda Cosmo AP Student

The Mazda Cosmo AP is one of the best looking cars that Mazda produced during the 70s. Its lines consist out of both American and English lines mashed together and its rotary engine reflects the German and Japanese techno-craze.
Family Album Treasures: Mazda Cosmo AP
No wonder this owner drove a Mazda Cosmo AP during his studies in the 80s!

The car had a sad ending: it got driven into a canal in the Ehime Prefecture when the owner tried to avoid a head-on collision.

Found at Minkara

Friday Video: Rotary vs Skyline by Best Motoring

Back in the early 70s Mazda and Nissan fought for the grand championships with their rotaries (RX-2 and RX-3) and their Skyline GT-Rs (KPGC10 and PGC10) and Best Motoring is reliving those fierce battles with a bit more modern machines in Hot Version 52 (Rotary vs Skyline):
Friday Video: Rotary vs Skyline
Unfortunately by the time Group 5 races emerged in Japan this meant the cars used never were the actual production cars anymore. So what Best Motoring did was to line up cars that never battled with each other and they range from early 80s till early noughties.

My personal favorite is the battle between the Mazda RX7 SA22C (tuned by REOS) and the Nissan Skyline RS Turbo DR30 (tuned by Escort) and you can watch this battle in the video below: Continue reading

Commercial time: Rotary Turbo

The Mazda Cosmo HB always has been one of my favorite eighties cars:
Mazda Cosmo HB Rotary Turbo
As a young kid I kept looking through the Mazda brochures my dad once got at the dealership when he was looking for a wagon and regretted he walked out of the showroom without asking for testdrive in the new Mazda 929, the piston version of the Mazda Cosmo HB.

Of course the Japanese version of the car was featuring a lot more than the 929 spinoff we got: Continue reading

Mazda RX-500 concept car in the woods

In 1970 Mazda showed on the 17th Tokyo Motor Show one of the most extraordinary concept cars for its time: the RX-500. After 40 years this car is still as amazing as it was in 1970,
Mazda RX-500 concept car
Mazda RX-500 concept car

The only thing that bugs me is: what is it doing in the middle of a forest and why do the boy and girl in the background embrace each other? Are they afraid of the whole car? Is ti threatening them? What mastermind thought of such a bad publicity photo? ??(?????)??

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