Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Tag: sprinter trueno (Page 2 of 15)

The cars of Initial D – Manga Car Spotting – part 1

Manga Cars

Ever wondered which cars are featured in Initial D? And perhaps also wondered which model, make and type these manga cars are? In this third episode of Manga car spotting, I’ll be spotting cars in the first book of Initial D! This first book is the US version of the Manga by Tokyopop and covers chapters 1 to 10 of the Japanese Manga.
The cars of Initial D - Manga Car Spotting - part 1

Initial D by Shuichi Shigeno

I don’t think Initial D needs an introduction: it’s the classic racing manga / racing anime series that gained huge popularity during the mid 1990s in Japan and mid 2000s outside Japan. The manga itself contains many layers of depth and isn’t just about cars, but also about (family) relationships and harsh training by commitment and determination. These first 10 chapters are mostly the introductory of the characters and the setting, so not a lot of action will happen. Still it was fun to do!

You can find the video and the high resolution scans of the panels containing manga cars below:

Continue reading

Manga Car spotting – Nissan Skyline R30 – The Walking Man [part one]

Manga Cars

Today I’m sharing one of my vices: reading Manga and spotting cars in the background! Yes, it’s really something odd that I can’t let go and sometimes you really find nice treasures: like the Nissan Skyline R30 that made me buy this book!
Manga Car Spotting - The Walking Man part one

The Walking Man by Jiro Tanaguchi

The Manga I’m reading here is called The Walking Man by Jiro Tanaguchi. If you wish to obtain this book yourself, you can find it here: The Walking Man by Jiro Tanaguchi @ Amazon
In this first episode I’ll introduce this new concept, before jumping into each and every car I could find. I just counted them and the grand total is 23 cars, plus one surprise car that magically changes when you flip the page!

You can find the video and the high resolution scans of the panels containing manga cars below: Continue reading

TOM’S Angel T01: angel or unicorn? [JDM Trivia #9]

JDM Trivia #9

Today’s trivia will be all about the TOM’S Angel T01. Gred_cz guessed the teaser entirely correct: the car in the teaser clip is indeed the TOM’S Angel T01 and the tail lights are indeed borrowed from the E90 generation Corolla FX. I recognized the car in the video from my Gran Turismo 2 days when this car was one of the prize cars you could obtain if you won the Pure Sports Cars Cup located on Laguna Seca Raceway.
JDM Trivia #9: TOM'S Angel T01

TOM’S

TOM’S always has been a tuning garage where they take an existing car, only Toyota in their case, strip and modify it into a high performance race car, or a de-tuned street version.

Mid engined sports car

You could argue that TOM’S counterpart for Nissan would be Tommy Kaira. They also take mostly Nissan cars and modify them into high performance race cars. The analogy even goes further: both have made an attempt to create their own light weight mid-engined sports car from the ground up. Both of them had their mid-engined sports cars manufactured in Great Britain. For Tommy Kaira that car was named the ZZ while TOM’S attempt was named the Angel T01. Continue reading

Panda AE86 paint scheme [JDM Trivia #8]

JDM Trivia number eight!

I expected people to jump on the Fujiwara Tofu livery of the Corolla E80 sedan and I was right about that. Actually I wasn’t aiming for the Initial D inspired sticker but rather for the panda AE86 paint scheme applied to it. Why? Well because the two tone panda paint scheme of the AE86 is actually quite subtle and it is easy to make mistakes in it.
JDM Trivia #8: Panda AE86 paint scheme

Panda AE86 paint scheme

To get started, and sorry if you already know this, but there are two types of the hachi roku: the Toyota Corolla Levin and the Toyota Sprinter Trueno. The former has fixed square head lights while the latter has 70s and 80s style popup head lights. Both of them featured in two body styles: 3 door hatch back and 2 door sedan. People also refer both as a coupe as they have been marketed as a coupe in various regions. However according to the Toyota firewall ID plates the real coupe is the 3 door hatchback and the 2 door sedan is called a hardtop. But enough about introducing even more confusion… Continue reading

WTF: Toyota Sprinter Trueno Black Limited BP Kraft?

I bumped into this Toyota Sprinter Trueno Black Limited BP Kraft lookalike while I was doing research on the Black Limited for the rediculously long car names where it took third place. I guess lovers going to love, haters going to hate…
WTF: Toyota Sprinter Trueno Black Limited BP Kraft
The most obvious change are the Lambo-style doors and the change of the pop-up headlights for the integrated ones that were featured on the BP Kraft Sprinter Trueno.

Here you can see a picture of the car that inspired the car above: Continue reading

JDM Trivia #2: Ridiculously long car names

Welcome to JDM Trivia #2!

For some time now I have been pondering about the ridiculously long car names for the 80s and 90s JDM cars. I gathered data from various Japanese car manufacturers, made a potential selection of models, looked up their brochures and wrote down the name as advertised.
JDM Trivia #2: Ridiculously long car names
What I did was probably not a very good scientific approach but for a long shot this probably will do and I may have left out two or three ridiculously long car names this way. As I’m a database guru I put everything in a database and made my calculations based on that.

This is probably what you are waiting for: why I put those particular five cars in the teaser. Well that’s because they are the top five longest car names. So here we go from five to one.

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