Remembering Japanese cars from the past
I found another second-generation Toyota Carina Japanese brochure with the mysterious glass-cube building of the Ideka 20th Century Art Museum on its cover!
In the previous post, I was happy to have found out that the Ideka 20th Century Art Museum was featured on the front of the brochure. Last time, I couldn’t have solved the mystery without the help of Google Bard which recognized the building.
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A few months ago in Family Album Treasures, I featured Mr. Big in a suit, a 1990s cell phone and a Z20 Soarer by the seaside:
I recently got this Vaporwave / Retrowave album featuring the exact same photo recommended on YouTube:
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Another post in the How many are left series and today I’ll dive into how many Nissan S-Cargos have been registered in the Netherlands.
I’m not going to explain in great detail what the Nissan S-Cargo is. The S-Cargo was the third Pikes car, preceded by the Be-1, Pao and succeeded by the Figaro and the Rasheen. The S-Cargo was introduced at the Tokyo Motor Show in 1989 and manufactured between 1989 and 1991. If you wish to learn more about the S-Cargo, I covered it in great detail in my S-Cargo Down on the Street post.
To find all Nissans registered as S-Cargo was quite an extensive search: I found the S-Cargo to be registered under the following names:
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I already found this electrifying Mazda Miata a few years ago. Back then, the parking garage where I also found the Estima and some other cars converted 8 parking spots on the first floor for electric charging.
Almost every other weekend I would spot this Miata hogging one of those spots. It’s quite interesting because I could see the benefits of an electrically powered Miata: lightweight, good balance and high torque would be awesome. However, as this car was never connected to the charging port I reckoned it wasn’t converted. So what was the reason for this person to park his/her Miata in those charging spots? I can think of a few.
I’m sure you must have a couple of WTFs in your head by now: a Suzuka Carol Levin AE86? Isn’t that supposed to be a Mazda Carol or a Toyota Corolla Levin AE86? No, it isn’t in this advertisement:
The Japanese writing reads:
You might call it a space technology
but this wheel holds the
“romance of driving” of a new era.
Right, so these Suzuka Carol wheels are supposed to be space technology that holds the romance of driving in a new era?
When I searched for Suzuka wheels, I could only find cheap knock-off wheels that are called Suzuka. I found via Kyusha Shoes that Suzuka Sangyo is the brand that made the Carol wheel. What I also found out is that Suzuka Sangyo actually was the brand behind the Long Champ XR4 wheel and the wheel was manufactured by SSR. This really surprised me as I was under the impression it was SSR who manufactured and sold it. Anyway, I digress…
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A few weeks ago I found a comment in the comments section of the AE86 gauge cluster trivia page that there was a Sleek Speed AE86 gauge cluster for sale on Yahoo Auctions. Unfortunately, I missed the auction, but fortunately enough the pictures were shared via a drive. I updated the original AE86 Trivia page and didn’t think of it until I spotted the same cluster for sale again!
The cluster is not for the faint-hearted as it’s for sale for 158,000 yen (just over 1000 dollars), which is steep. Then again, the digital gauge cluster already sets you back well over 300 dollars nowadays and it might be difficult to find another. The cluster is a modified GT or GT-V cluster as it doesn’t feature the door-warning and tail-light burnout warning lamps.
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