Remembering Japanese cars from the past
It is just a joy to bring my son to school everyday. For almost two years now I’ve been passing either a Honda Accord Mk2 or a Honda Civic S Mk2 (or both!) at the same parking lot. Of course I was very thrilled to see another nostalgic Honda appearing in that very same parking lot:
Yes, a little red Honda Civic Mk1! A 1200 automatic to be a bit more precise. ;)
A bit more up close you can really make out it is in excellent condition: Continue reading
When I spotted this advert on Marktplaats earlier this week I was surprised that a Colt with this low mileage (28000 kilometers, confirmed) was for sale for less than 3500 euros!
The car has always been taken care of by the one and the same dealer: Borgmeijer in Zwolle.
Its grey color still looks stunning after 33 years: Continue reading
This is the last posting about the Japanese Autosport Festival and I saved the best for last: a black Nissan Skyline:
I’m not too sure about which variant it is, but it certainly ain’t no BNR32 GT-R…
I suspect, based upon the bootlid spoiler, that it is a Skyline GTS-t (HCR32) where the RB20DET outputs a decent 212hp. Given the bigger intercooler on this one it surely will output a bit more than that.
This Skyline has been imported from Japan 9 years ago, but what surprised me is that it used to reside around Mount Haruna in the Gunma prefecture: Continue reading
I accidentally posted this as a blog post earlier this week while it was meant as a linkdump saved as a draft. Probably I pressed the publish button instead of draft…
Anyway, I had a bit WTF when I spotted the automatic gearshift lever in this picture:
Taken from the brochure of the N11 Pulsar (aka the Datsun/Nissan Cherry here in Europe) and it states something about this being a Sports-matic mechanical auto gearbox with an electro magnetically operated clutch. You are supposed to put it in L for the first (low gear), then D for drive (up to 80km/h) as the second gear and OD (overdrive) for the top gear. Do you still get it? I don’t and that’s probably also the reason this ingenious gearshifter never made it past the N11 Pulsar. ;)
This is what the N11 Pulsar looks like as a coupe: Continue reading
Earlier I featured the AE86 GT-Apex Digi Dash and obviously, it raises many AE86 enthusiasts’ hearts. This time I’d like to feature the normal analogue AE86 gauge cluster versus the AE85 gauge cluster.
In case you feel you have a deja vu by now: you are completely right about that! I did post the AE86 gauge clusters earlier but reposted it once again with additional information.
If you ever owned an AE86 (or watched too much Initial D) these clusters should be quite familiar. There are two types of clusters for the AE86: left-hand drive (LHD) and right-hand drive (RHD). The layout of these clusters has been mirrored: on the LHD the tachometer is on the left side of the cluster, while on the RHD that spot is taken by the speedometer. Also, the warning lights, fuel, water temperature and oil pressure gauges all have been mirrored.
the GT Apex cluster and the GT / GT-V cluster. They appear to be identical, however, they do have subtle differences.
The zenki (early) AE86 GT Apex gauge cluster features the speedometer on the left and the tachometer on the right. As the Japanese government mandated speedometers to be limited to 180 km/h since the 1970s, the speedometer has a different scale than all export models. The gauge cluster features a fuel meter on next to the speedometer and oil pressure and water temperature gauges next to the tachometer. On the left and right we also find several warning lights, but I’ll get into that later. In the middle between the speedometer and tachometer, we find the two indicator lamps. Below the tachometer, we find the high-beam indicator light.
On the speedometer and tachometer scales we see intermediate steps about 2/3rds width of the full steps. Also the speedometer features the scale in yellow/orange on speeds above 100 km/h.
One of the people from AEU86 met Bruce Morris earlier and convinced us to hop over to the pitlane (yes it was accessible!) and meet him. Actually I met his car:
A Nissan Skyline GTS-t R33 that has been tuned by sourcing (almost) all parts through ebay! Now that’s a totally new achievement! Ebay is, of course, a bit bigger in the UK than on the continental mainland but we surely have equivalents. However sourcing parts for about anything through Ebay is a whole different thing!
Bruce surely makes good use of the car: Continue reading
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