Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Month: May 2010 (Page 2 of 7)

Carina Sightings: what the 3T-GTE sounds like!

The sound of this 3T-GTE is one of the most amazing sounds I’ve heard so far!

If you wonder what the engine is: it is the Toyota 1.8 litre 3T engine with a Yamaha DOHC head slapped upon it. It was a quite normal practice for Toyota to do such a thing to beef up their normal engines. However if that wasn’t enough the Yamaha head featured dual spark and Toyota added a big Toyota CT-20 turbo charger on top of it. The 3T engine normally produced somewhere between the 70 and 105 hp (depending on the market and amount of carbs), but this turbo charged dual spark dual overhead cam beauty managed to squeeze out 160hp! Since Toyota kept the six cylinders to the Celica XX alone this 160hp engine was featured in the normal Celica and (lucky enough) its sister models Carina and Corona. Now if only I could lay my hands upon one! 😉

Japanese rustoseums (part 10)

I haven’t got the guts to post up more of those rotten away sportscars like last week, so this time I have a Nissan Gloria 430 wagon for you:
Nissan Gloria 430 wagon 280d
Nissan Gloria 430 wagon 280d

Someone bought this Gloria 430 as his family wagon second hand in 1990 and parked out in the back of his premisses three years later and left it there for 16 years! In these 16 years of time bamboo and other plants surrounded the car completely and the car sunk slowly into the ground.

Someone actually was crazy enough to save it and bought this Gloria simply because of its rarity!
Nissan Gloria 430 wagon 280d
Nissan Gloria 430 wagon 280d

The new owner bought the car as being a Cedric, but when he picked it up it turned out to be a Gloria instead. So even the Japanese can’t tell the Cedric and Gloria apart either! (even when a big sign on the trunk says GLORIA)

The Gloria itself is a 280D, which means it is powered by a LD28 2.8 litre diesel. The engine itself is not the most powerful engine, but it surely has a lot of torque! Too bad this car can’t really use that well with its automatic gearbox…

Nissan Gloria 430 wagon 280d
Nissan Gloria 430 wagon 280d

The car came with a set of genuine vintage rims, a lot of mud, rust and lucky enough the handbrake wasn’t stuck either. The owner towed the car home and already began cleaning it and fixing it up.

This man is a real hero: I would certainly have walked away from such a dump! I’ll keep an eye upon this project and post the outcome when it has been finished! 🙂

DOTS: Miata hunting! (part 8)

Even though I have collected plenty of Miatas already to fill up another three parts I still want to keep this Miata hunt to one single Silver Miata I spotted:
Silver Mazda Miata
Silver Mazda Miata

The Silver Miata was parked next to an small industral zone with some car shops. Since I spotted it on a Sunday I don’t reckon it was parked there by one of the shops and since I also just spotted earlier on some guys fixing up an old Celica on a driveway around the corner I suspect it is owned by one of them…

As you can see the Miata had a small bump on its nose but apart from that I must say this a nice looking Miata! It is not the looks I like, but rather the, I hate to say this word, stance of it. It has been dropped till the tires barely hit the fenders and, even though it does not have massive camber nor very wide wheels, it looks very nice this way! Only thing I would change were a bit wider wheels to fill the fenders to the max…

The Miata is owned by a member of the Dutch MX5 Club:
Silver Mazda Miata
Silver Mazda Miata

I did have a look on the MX5 Club forums, but I haven’t been able to track down the owner. Perhaps anyone around recognizes the car?

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