Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Author: banpei (Page 40 of 318)

Down on the Street: illest Hungarian Honda Civic EF progress

It has been a bit quit here lately, but I’m back from my vacation to Hungary! Like every year I make photos of all interesting (Japanese) cars I see and like every year I also visited my parents in law. Opposite of their apartment someone owns the illest Honda Civic EF that I covered two years ago and this year there was some progress on the Civic:
Down on the Street: Illest Hungarian Honda Civic EF
Sorry for the grainy photos, but when we visited them it was already past 9 in the evening which means in an Hungarian summer it will be dark. So I had to keep my hand steady and shoot the photos because this was the only time I could take them and there was no other chance…

Anyway, the Honda Civic EF has been fitted with some really fancy rims that look like Enkei mesh rims: Continue reading

Friday Video: two hours non-stop 90s drifting

Mr Yumio at Youtube just uploaded his private drift videos from 1990 till 1993. Half of the content takes place at local drift events but the other half is shot on various touges. You really can see how things evolved since this early 90s drifting!
Friday Video: non-stop 90s drifting
It is interesting to observe in this video that most cars at the touge are old “disposable” cars. For instance the Nissan Skyline R30 and Toyota Corolla Levin/Sprinter Trueno AE86 are popular cars. At the circuit a lot of new cars can be seen: Mazda RX7 FC, Nissan Silvia S13, Nissan 180SX, Eunos Roadster and a Toyota Soarer Z30. Still the AE86 is ubiquitous at the circuit as well.

Other extraordinary cars seen at the touge are: Nissan Skyline GT-R PGC10, Isuzu Piazza, Isuzu Gemini PF60 and a hot Nissan Sunny B310. At the circuit the most odd thing is a second generation Honda CRX SiR drifting in reverse!

I bet you can’t wait to spend the remainder of your Friday afternoon watching this video: Continue reading

Brochures: Datsun Sunny Mario 120Y

The Mario character from Nintendo appeared for the first time in the Donkey Kong game that got released in 1981. So how could Mario show up on the inside of this 1975 Dutch Datsun Sunny 120Y brochure?
Super Mario Datsun Sunny 120Y
Miyamoto, the creator of Mario, never acknowledged anything about the origin of the character and the wildest stories have been told. Could it perhaps be modelled after this Datsun Sunny 120Y character?

The page shown above is taken from a Dutch brochure that is in typical mid 70s style: Continue reading

Down on the Street: Blue 1979 Honda Civic Mk1

This morning I was driving from my son’s school to work and took a wrong turn as people were digging up in one of the streets. That happened to be a lucky break as I passed this great looking blue Honda Civic Mk1:
Down on the Street: Blue Honda Civic Mk1
The little car looked awesome, especially in the early morning light.

The tenth owner must really love its little Honda as the car got treated on a bucket seat (with beads!) for the driver: Continue reading

WTF: Easy url on Skyline DR30 FJ20ET

How easy is it to remember a URL that contains DR30 and FJ20ET? The Nissan Skyline DR30 below features a FJ20ET so naturally for any JDM car nut it is easy to remember:
WTF FJ20ET Friends meeting at Tsururingu
It was not really visible when I first spotted this photo of the first FJ20ET Friends meeting at Tsururingu, but there was a whole “short” and “easy” url on the spoiler of the DR30.

It is a pity that WordPress does allow me to do quotes around the easy part as the first part of the url is, at least for a non Japanese person, difficult to remember. See for yourself: Continue reading

Kickstarter: JDM coloring book

As some of you already know a few years ago I created a coloring book. My son complained to me coloring regular coloring books (with flowers, kittens, turtles, etc) was boring for him. So I created a special coloring book for his third birthday: a Bosozoku Style coloring book!
Bosozoku Style Coloring book
The result was amazing: he started to like coloring again!

I liked the concept so much I actually sent a few copies to people around the world and one of them, Mike Garret, shared the story and thanks to that I was bombarded with orders for the coloring book. I decided to reprint them with a colored cover and that version sold almost 100 copies. Imagine that: over 100 people liked it so much they actually bought a coloring book!

Bosozoku Style coloring book

I spoke to a friend a few weeks ago and he asked my why I never created a follow up. I couldn’t tell him exactly why, except for a few ridiculous reasons that made no sense at all. One of them being that, like last time, I have to invest a lot of money up front. He told me to actually try to do a Kickstarter project and I agreed that it would make sense. So I decided to give it a go!

What is the plan?

Basically my plan is to create JDM coloring book featuring all sorts of Japanese cars to make it more mainstream than last time. JDM is a broad term, so it could literally mean anything from nostalgic cars to fully tuned F&F Supras. Having a broader audience also means more coloring books will have to be ordered up front than last time.

Rewards are simple:

Pre-order your coloring book and you will receive a signed copy and have the ability to vote for which cars/styles will actually make it to the coloring book.
I also wanted to allow people to fund the project a bit more by featuring their own mad JDM ride in the coloring book which in my opinion is the most awesome reward possible. ;)

What does it look like?

Last time I traced a couple of bosozoku styled cars and edited that in my favorite line-art program. I plan to do the same again so I can best describe it with some example content from the bosozoku style coloring book:
Example content for the JDM coloring book
Now squint your eyes and think of your favorite Japanese car! Yes, exactly: like that!

Well, there you have it. The plan is simple, the rewards less simple and reaching the goal to get the project funded is going to be the most difficult part. So if you like the project, please do share it any way possible:
JDM Coloring book project page at Kickstarter

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