Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Tag: wtf (Page 1 of 18)

What’s up with this Suzuka Carol Levin AE86 wheels? – Commercial Time – WTF?!

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:

Suzuka Sangyo Carol wheels advertisement with a Corolla Levin AE86
Suzuka Sangyo Carol wheels advertisement with a Corolla Levin AE86

Whacky advertisement text

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?

What are Suzuka Sangyo Carol wheels?

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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Rock’n Roll Works Equipped with the American Dream – WTF?!

This Work Equip advertisement is another wacky magazine advertisement from a random Japanese magazine. It’s just mindboggling what the designers must have thought when they composed this advertisement. Let’s go over all those texts in the advertisement!
City after dark is our stage!
You look so fine tonight!
Let our dreams run all through the night
I’m your heroin
May I sit next to you?
We’re the real Rock’n Rollers
Come with us, Equip!
You, get off!
American Dream, you are going to be us

Work Equip magazine advertisement featuring the band Serika with Dog
Work Equip magazine advertisement featuring the band Serika with Dog

I’m quite puzzled by the I’m your heroin May I sit next to you? I could interpret this in various ways. Also, by the absence of a female person in this advertisement, the meaning of heroin makes me fear the worst!

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Would you like some Meiju Saucer on your Honda City? – Commercial Time

This aero kit and Saucer wheels on the Honda City was developed in the early 1980s by a tuning shop called Motor Sports Meiju in the Kyoto prefecture in Japan. 40 years onwards, it looks strange and heavily dated. It looks crude and this is not how Aero evolved over the past 40 years. So what is it and who is this Keiji dude sitting with a wheel in his lap?

1983 Motor Sports Meiju Saucer wheel ad
1983 Motor Sports Meiju Saucer wheel ad

Motor Sports Meiju history

I guess I first have to explain what Motor Sports Meiju is. It all begins with the late racing driver Keiji Matsumoto (松本恵二). Matsumoto started his career in 1968 when he bought a used Toyota Corolla and, unbeknownst to his parents, he stripped off all unnecessary accessories and started practising on Suzuka Circuit and the Higashiyama route near his hometown of Kyoto. He debuted in 1969 in the T-1 class and worked his way up via FJ1300 to F2000, a precursor to the F2 class in 1976. In 1979 he managed to win the, by now renamed, F2 class. Shortly after this, he started his own tuning shop called Motor Sports Meiju. Matsumoto is a very well-known Japanese racing driver and featured in many Cabin Spirit ads.

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I don’t know where to begin with this Fortran Drag Wheels advertisement – WTF?!

This Fortran Drag Wheels advertisement has so many WTF?!s in it that I simply don’t know where to begin. I did feature the Fortran Revolt wheels before and those wheels also had some interesting advertisements. But these Drag wheels, oh boy! Let’s just unravel this ad. Layer by layer, detail by detail.

Fortran Drag Wheels advertisement - I don't even know where to begin...
Fortran Drag Wheels advertisement – I don’t even know where to begin…

Gigantic woman towering the Manhattan Skyline

I think we can first start with the 1980s airbrush painting of a giantic woman which I can best describe standing in a Kiba-dachi stance towering over the Manhattan skyline. Her right high-heeled shoe is standing on top of the water in the Upper Bay or the Hudson River.

Chained up woman over the Manhattan skyline
Chained up woman over the Manhattan skyline

Is she wearing 1970s plateau shoes? She’s holding chains that seem to be coming from somewhere in downtown New York. The chains seem to break somewhere in the middle, but her arms don’t seem to suggest she is the one breaking it with force. On the contrary: she’s just holding them. Maybe the chain is put on a high voltage and now the centre link is disintegrating?

Over the moon and Jupiter

Giant moon and Jupiter. That gravitational pull must be immense!
Giant moon and Jupiter. That gravitational pull must be immense!

Behind the woman on the left, there is a gigantic moon. If the moon were this close to the earth, probably New York would have been flooded by the immense force of Moon-gravity. On the right of the woman, we can see a planet. Presumably, this is Jupiter. What is it doing there?

Another Skyline

Nissan Skyline GT-EX KGC211 floating in the Hudson River
Nissan Skyline GT-EX KGC211 floating in the Hudson River

The Manhattan skyline isn’t the only skyline in this advertisement. At the bottom of the advertisement, we can see a facelifted Nissan Skyline GT-EX C211 with a big golden 2000 GT Turbo sticker on the side of the car. Oy has some huge bubble-shaped over fenders and looks just like it was inspired by its Group 5 contemporaries. Why it’s floating on top of the water we don’t know. What we do know is that the wheels featured on this car are Fortran Drag Wheels. Even the license plate tells us so.

Drag, the Dynamic wheel - Fortan really knew how to create a good tag line!
Drag, the Dynamic wheel – Fortran really knew how to create a good tagline!

Above the woman, we can also see DRAG in bold painted letters and the tagline the Dynamic wheel. Why dynamic is written with a capital D is a mystery to me.

Conclusion

So, what do I make of this?
If you look at all these pieces separately, it doesn’t make sense at all. The chain, the moon, Jupiter, the floating Skyline GT-EX, and the woman over the Manhattan skyline. Nothing makes sense.

That is until I realized the randomness of all these things must have a meaning. The Fortran Drag wheels are called the Dynamic wheel for a reason. They need to be dynamic in any situation: a too-close-for-comfort moon with a huge gravitational pull. Rescuing a Godzilla-sized woman who is being chained down. Floating with big balloon-sized tires on your Fortran Drag wheels. Yes, it all makes sense now!

What are these Toyota LASRE engines doing in the Sahara desert? – Carina Sightings

What is this 1982 Toyota Carina ad supposed to mean? Are the Toyota LASRE engines supposed to fuel the infamous Sirocco winds? Sirocco winds are “a hot wind, often dusty or rainy, blowing from North Africa across the Mediterranean to southern Europe.”

Toyota LASRE engines in the Paris-Dakar rally
Toyota LASRE engines in the Paris-Dakar rally

Alternatively, are these engines supposed to give the Carina competing in the second Paris-Dakar rally a small push? Or perhaps, are these Toyota LASRE engines supposed to be giant windmills that work the reverse: wind makes them turn and in effect they suck up hydrocarbons via the exhaust and poop out fuel on the intake side?

We’ll probably never know what went through the minds of the marketing people at Toyota in 1982.

Shocking 1985 Honda City crash test – WTF?!

The crash video of the 1985 Honda City below is only 3 seconds long and it must be one of the shortest videos you can find on Youtube! Regardless of this, the three seconds (and video description) contain a lot of information. So let’s dissect that information!

First of all, the title is “1985 Honda Jazz (City) crash test” and that gives us the information that either the car is a 1985-model, or the crash test was performed in 1985. I think the former may be true as there is a timestamp in the video that reads 21-12-1999, which indicates the test might have been performed on the 21st of December 1999.

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