Remembering Japanese cars from the past
I received a huge stack of Mitsubishi brochures, and this time they come from the Dutch dealerships!
Most of the brochures are from the 80s and early 90s, including the Cordia and the Starion. But I also couldn’t resist getting that late 90s Galant that I love soooooo much. Watch the unboxing below: Continue reading
Back in the early 80s Japanese car manufacturers were convinced that the digital dashboard was the way to make a car to look computerized and modern. Digital readouts and meters were to be found in most of the top of the line models, like the Toyota Celica XX, Toyota Soarer, Nissan Leopard. Mitsubishi did the same: they added a digital dashboard to the Mitsubishi Starion GSR:
The design of the dashboard is really nice and all readouts are clear in one overview: fuel, water temperature, oil pressure, tachometer and spedometer. Even though not all of them are digital, they are all there.
Now a static image doesn’t sell that well so here is a nice video of the dashboard in action:
Continue readingIn contrary of the previous wrecked Skyline GTS-t HCR32 this owner is actually quite sad about his loss… Obviously he only acts like that. ;)
It doesn’t state how it happened, but it mentioned it happened somewhere April 2006
Found at Minkara
Two months ago I posted some older Down on the Street by me from a period where I didn’t even have a proper digicam yet. So, here are some more beautiful cars taken on a crappy phonecam!
Let’s start with this nice S12:
Down on the Street: Nissan 200SX S12
The Silvia S12 was called the 200SX in the US and even though this car has the “normal” CA18ET under its hood it is still badged as the 200SX. ;)
Back then the owner of this car lived in the center of Amsterdam and took the habit of parking it close to my house (waiting time for a parking license in Amsterdam is about 3 to 4 years!) so I saw it many many times. According to the RDW this car no longer exists in the Netherlands…
How about a non-widebody Starion then?
Down on the Street: Mitsubishi Starion
Owned by the same person who owned the Starion widebody and disappeared a few days after I took the picture. It is no longer registered on the Dutch roads, so I don’t have to guess what happened to it…
This Soarer parked in front of my house was a nice surprise after a long day of work:
Down on the Street: Toyota Soarer JZZ31
Back then I still had my AE86 so within 20 meters apart there were an AE86, a Starion widebody and a Soarer! Too bad they were not directly parked next to each other…
Ten minutes after I took this picture the Soarer left. Engine sounded like a non turbo 6 cylinder engine, so most definitely a JZZ31 with a 2JZ-GE. Only the badge makes it a Toyota Soarer and not a Lexus SC300, the rest of it is identical. However I still like the idea of seeing a real Soarer! ;)
Time for some more car chases! This time it is Mitsubishis versus Nissans!
Edit: embedding was disabled by the user. Click on the image to watch the video!
This video clip of Guerilla: Tokyo Police Group 8 shows what carnage a group of Nissans can do against the police Mitsubishis. Lucky enough Shou Kuramoto (chief Daimon in Seibu Keisatsu) kills off the rocket launcher. Unfortunately two perfectly good Nissan Gazelle S110s get killed instantly and the Cedric manages to survive a good 8 minutes. So the Mitsubishis prevail over the Nissans. Nissan versus Mitsubishi, 0 : 1.
I was digging through my old photo archives and found a couple of pictures of cars I spotted down on the street some years ago. Let’s kick off with this widebody Mitsubishi Starion:
DOTS: Mitsubishi Starion widebody
Back then I was living in a neighborhood near the center of Amsterdam where parking was free. So a lot of people living in the center of Amsterdam were parking their car opposite to my house, the Starion owner included.
He drove the Starion only once or twice per month and the rest of the time it was just parked there gathering rust/dust, including being parked slant.
DOTS: Mitsubishi Starion widebody
The badges told me it was the 4G54 equipped Starion (turbo intercooler) and a quick lookup on the Dutch vehicle registration pages revealed its MOT did expire in 2007. Probably the car is currently in storage or on someones driveway.
The owner did not really take good car of it and after something like eight or nine months I witnessed him selling the Starion on the street opposite to my house.
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