Category: brilliant (Page 5 of 6)

Bassie en Adriaan get a Honda Civic for free!

Brilliant: Bassie en Adriaan still not retired!

May 31, 2012 / banpei / 1 Comment

I’ve featured the Dutch circus duo Bassie en Adriaan a couple of times now, but this new footage is too great not to share!

Apparently Honda managed to get the two together again to perform a new social media campaign to promote the new European Honda Civc while the two of them should, according to the Dutch media, actually have a healthy brotherly war.

Money talks and perhaps their pensions went up in smoke during the credit crunch. Also both of them look a bit aged now: Adriaan (acrobat) can’t hardly hide his belly and wrinkles while Bassie (clown) looks a bit worked out after all that diy.

In the video you can see the duo travelling to the Honda dealer in their 80s red/yellow polkadot Honda Prelude and caravan: Continue reading

Brilliant: Swap a Honda F20 into a Celica XX

May 14, 2012 / banpei / 0 Comments

I think many purists will think this is blasphemy but I think it was a genius who thought of swapping the Honda F20 engine (presumably F20C) into a Celica XX GA61:

Why? Well the F20 is more powerful and has nearly the same torque as the 1G-(G)EU engine but a lot less in weight (almost equal to the 1G-GEU including its gearbox!). Now where can I get one of these babies swapped into my Carina? :P

Direct link to video: ??????20????????

Lots of JDM classics in 1Q84!

March 28, 2012 / banpei / 2 Comments

As you may have noticed I haven’t been posting much lately. The main reason for this is because I’ve been selected as a presenter at the Percona Live MySQL conference in Santa Clara on April 12th. This takes a lot of preparation so I literally have no spare time left till the conference is over.

In the meanwhile one of the preparations was to buy a book for the 11 hour flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco and as Haruki Murakami already is one of my favorite writers I chose his latest book called 1Q84 to be the best choice. Murakami is renowned for his tremendous amount of details in his writing and I’m sure this book certainly won’t disappoint me.

I could not resist reading the first chapter and already starts great for a JDM classic fanatic like me: in the first chapter it gets clear that the setting in 1984 and the main character is in a traffic jam. The following cars get mentioned:
1. Toyota Crown Royal Saloon (probably MS120 as it is the new model)
2. Nissan Pajero
3. Suzuki Alto (probably SS40)
4. black Toyota Celica (hopefully a AA63 or TA63 ;) )
So you can guess this really is mind blowing for me: just picturing all these late Showa cars being queued on the Tokyo Expressway 3. Just had to share this joy and recommend reading this book.

Brilliant: Soarer lace seat covers

March 16, 2012 / banpei / 0 Comments

One of the things that is typically Japanese are the lace seat (or headrest) covers that you mostly see in Japanese taxis or luxury cars. Apparently Toyota sold OEM lace covers with the Soarer griffin logo embroided on them:

This Soarer was photographed outside Gallery L who is renowned for restoring beautiful kyusha cars. The Soarer is the “lesser” 1G-GEU powered GZ10 model, so it doesn’t feature the smooth 5M or 6M engine however they did put some effort in it: it now features a five speed manual. That means you can really get the best out of that 140hp engine. :)

Here you can see embroided lace headrest covers up close: Continue reading

Pigsbutt Laurel C130 in RS Turbo Liverage

Brilliant: Pigsbutt Laurel in RS Turbo liverage

February 9, 2012 / banpei / 0 Comments

I already saw this one in Mike Garrett’s coverage of the JCCA NYM on Speedhunters, but nevertheless nice to see another picture of such a brilliant car:

The only things missing now are the RS Turbo decals on the side of the car!

Found at Minkara

Brilliant: Moon equipped 410 wagon

February 7, 2012 / banpei / 0 Comments

Not at the JCCA New Year Meeting but at one of the parkinglots nearby someone found this Bluebird 410 wagon parked:

And it is Moon equipped with a nice set of white walls that perfectly match with the new white leather/sky interior.

Found at