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Minipato: small kei patrol cars

November 3, 2012 / banpei / 1 Comment

Just found a new mind boggling term: Minipato (ミニパト).

Basically I was searching around for the Suzuki Cervo SS20 and stumbled upon a page about the Suzuki Cervo used in the Mechadoc manga and anime. It was referred to as the Minipato. So what is a Minipato then? Simple: a mini patrol car!

Now how awesome is that?

I also found when searching for the phrase Minipato lots and lots of pictures of kei patrol cars used by the Japanese police. Another famous one is, obviously, the Honda Today driven by Natsumi and Miyuki in Taiho Shichauzo (You’re under arrest!): Continue reading

Touge drifting in 1990 on the Hakone mountain pass

November 2, 2012 / banpei / 0 Comments

I did post up a couple of 1990s Hakone drift videos in the past, but these three must be the oldest so far!

They are dated May/June in 1990 and they feature several cars from that era including TE71s, KP62s, AE86s, B310s and an occasional S13: Continue reading

Down on the Street: Wasabicars Style MR2 AW11

October 28, 2012 / banpei / 0 Comments

Some of you may think you just encountered a deja-vu and yes you have twice!
First of all: I did feature this AW11 rustoseum over two and a half years ago.

Second of all: in the past two weeks my server crashed twice and last time I lost one day of data. Unfortunately I also lost this posting… Nevertheless I’ll repost it again. :)

I did this video in a similar way as Daniel O’Grady is doing his Wasabicars videos (be sure to check out his videos!): Continue reading

Ken's parents get married in a Skyline S50

Commercial time: Kens parents get married

October 27, 2012 / banpei / 0 Comments

There had to be something before Ken and Mary, right? They must have come from somewhere and it probably wasn’t a Nissan Skyline that gave birth to them…

The Nissan Skyline C10 was the third generation Skyline and the first car released after the Nissan and Prince Motor Company merger and the fourth Skyline model became famous for its Ken and Mary commercials. Before merger the Skyline range belonged to the Prince Motor Company and I personally consider the Skyline as a manly car. So the Prince Motor Company must have been the parents of Ken while Nissan must have been the parents of Mary.

Prince featured Ken’s parents their commercial for the second Skyline model (S50):

So now we know that Kens parents loved skiing and were god fearing christians. ;)

Direct link to video: スカイラインのあるところ、ここにも幸せが。

WTF: Animated tail lights?

October 26, 2012 / banpei / 2 Comments

Jalopnik posted today a very simplistic idea/how-to about turning netbooks into animated tail lights and guess what they used as an example?

Indeed: a US/kouki Corolla GT-S AE86 tail light! I actually liked the idea that they picked Nyan Cat as the animation! :D

Is this going to be the next automotive craze? And if so, as Jalopnik states, sequential animated tail lights are legal: so why not?

Ebay Treasures: 66 kilometer Daihatsu Opti from the Leipzig Auto Show!

October 13, 2012 / banpei / 2 Comments

According to the claim on Marktplaats (Dutch Craigslist) this 1992 Daihatsu Opti was actually a show car for the 1992 Leipzig Auto Show:

The car has been shipped from Japan to Leipzig to be shown to the public. Apparently the public didn’t like it that much and the Opti never made it to Europe.

The car was never shipped back to Japan and put in storage somewhere in Europe and recently came back to the surface:

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