Author: banpei (Page 14 of 318)

Down on the Street: Nissan Micra Gogomobile

Nissan Micra that likes to Tango a March – Down on the Street

December 16, 2023 / banpei / 0 Comments

Apparently, ten years ago I was wrong about a particular Nissan Micra I found parked down on the street. Very wrong. The Micra in question featured a retro-styled front end and I thought, back then, it was some bodykit for the March in Japan.

Apparently, it is a Nissan March Tango produced by Autech in 1996 and 1997! So how did I manage to finally identify this front end after 10 years? And what’s the Autech March Tango? Are there others as well? I’ll try to answer all these questions today but a follow up has to come soon!

Connecting the dots

When I was on a voice call with my friend in Japan Daniel O’Grady (Wasabi Cars) talking about his awesome Mitsuoka Ray, I briefly mentioned encountering this car over ten years ago. He asked me to send him a picture, which I did. Modern life is so convenient: While talking to each other over WhatsApp, I was able to search my blog, find the post in question and send the photos. When Daniel saw the Micra in question he told me it was a Tango, a March Tango. Boom! Mind blown!

How the Skyline GT-R got the Godzilla name – Friday Video

December 15, 2023 / banpei / 0 Comments

Aiden Millward has done a ton of videos about racing and I love his storytime videos. It harks back to those good old days and Aiden can tell these stories with that little extra cherry on top. Most of his storytime videos are about Formula One or Le Mans 24 Hours as those are the most covered motorsport in this world. However, earlier this week, I was pleased to see him covering the story of Godzilla. The R32. How it earned its name. How it outclassed everything else.

Godzilla R32 at its finest hour at the 1992 Bathurst race

Not to spoil too much of this story, but the Nissan Skyline R32 didn’t earn its nickname in Japan. It earned this name in the Australian Touring Car Championship (ATTC) over the period of 1989-1992 when it dominated the Supercars (group A) racing series.

You can find the video below:

Cutaway photo of the first generation Toyota Estima

Toyota Previa dissected in a cutaway drawing – Picture of the Week

December 14, 2023 / banpei / 0 Comments

Earlier this week, I posted a Toyota Estima L Aeras G Limited ACR30 in Down on the Street. Today I will feature the non-JDM sister car the Toyota Previa in Picture of the Week. As it involves the first and second generations, I should have named that Pictures of the Week.

It’s funny how much you can actually observe from a cutaway drawing. Last week I already posted my amazement over the Galant GTO’s rear leaf springs. In the cutaway drawing of the Previa, I was also able to deduce a lot of things!

Cutaway drawing of the first generation Toyota Previa TCR20L

The first cutaway drawing above depicts the first-generation Previa. I’ve narrowed it down to a TCR20L as it is a seven-seater (eight-seater has the code TCR10L) and is a left-hand-drive example.

The Tommy Kaira M13 Baby Gang – WTF?!

December 13, 2023 / banpei / 0 Comments

You may wonder what image DALL-E 3 would generate if you described the following picture of the Tommy Kaira M13: big wide gaping mouth and above it the tagline Baby Gang in big bold letters. Personally, I think not much good: either it would just get confused by that mismatch of information or it simply refuses to create something NSFW!

Tommy Kaira M13 brochure: Baby Gang with a Micra K11

This picture brings up even more questions. Why Baby Gang? Why the Italian Flag? Why is such a big gaping hole necessary? I’ll try to make some sense out of this…

The Tommy Kaira M13

The first thing you probably notice is that the Tommy Kaira M13 actually is based on a Nissan March K11. The Nissan March K11 was released in 1992 and Tommy Kaira offered the M13 for the first year in 1993. Remember that the Japanese bubble economy burst in early 1992. The more expensive Tommy Kaira cars must have fallen out of grace quickly and this smaller M13 was an excellent choice!

Versions

As stated earlier, the Tommy Kaira M13 was based on the Nissan Micra K11. After the first M13, it existed for another generation with the Micra K12.

Double Dragon: two Toyota Celica XX brothers – Family Album Treasures

December 12, 2023 / banpei / 0 Comments

The Lee brothers in the Double Dragon game may have inspired these two to stand on top of their Toyota Celica XX-es in today’s Family Album Treasures. So why are they standing on top of their cars? And what is the Double Dragon game? And what has that got to do with the Celica XX?

Double Dragon

Let’s start with the Double Dragon game. If you are unfamiliar with this game, you really missed some vitally important gaming history. Double Dragon was the first game in the beat-’em-up genre. This genre is a side-scrolling game where “bad guys” have to be fought and reach a goal at the end. In this case, a young student, Marian, is being kidnapped by the Black Warriors. You have to fight your way to rescue her from this evil gang of thugs.

Hybrid 2T/3T-G powered Carina TA63 – Carina Sightings

December 11, 2023 / banpei / 1 Comment

Here in Europe, there were three choices of engines for the third-generation Toyota Carina: 1.6 litre 2T, 1.8 litre 3T and 1.8 litre 1C. The 1C offered a mere 62 hp and 111 N⋅m. The 2T offered 75 hp and 120 N⋅m. The 3T adds about eleven extra horses over the 2T, which makes the grand total about 86 hp. So where does this oddball Carina with a 1.8 litre 3T-G come from then?

Zsolt's Toyota Carina with a 2T/3T-G hybrid engine — Zsolt’s Toyota Carina with a 2T/3T-G hybrid engine

Unfortunately, we never got the double overhead cam 2T-G on our third-generation Carina. The 2T-G double overhead cam head adds about 40 hp to the baseline 2T. In theory, slapping that very same head on a 3T would then give about 125hp and loads of torque. That’s exactly what Zsolt (zsolesz_molesz) did to his 3T-powered Carina TA62 and he called it a 2T/3T-G hybrid and renumbered it to TA63!