Remembering Japanese cars from the past
As some people may have noticed: I started blogging for HR blog starting from today onwards! This will mean all my AE86 related ramblings will be posted on HR blog from now on! ;)
Of course you won’t see my non-AE86 ramblings over there, so I’ll just keep those here. It also does not mean I’m going to slack here either. Just have to type a bit faster than normal! :D
Even though the HACHiRoCK festival 2008 was only 9 months ago the upcoming HACHiRoCK has already been sold out!
HACHiRoCK festival September 13th 2009
250 entries were allowed to the premises of the HACHiRoCK 2009 edition and they already reached this number of entries! :)
Also several AE86 related companies like Impulse, Run Free and Tech-Arts already confirmed they will be there with exhibitions. Can’t wait till see the pictures of this event on the 14th of September! :)
Well it’s the big news of today anyway and I already put it on the AEU86 twitter, so why not place it here again:
Toyota and Subaru have announced that, due to the financial crisis, they postponed their joint development of a small FR coupe (also known as the successor of the Toyota Corolla AE86) till at least 2012 while the originial plan was they would start with building late 2011.
Reason for this can be sought in the shrinking market for cars in Japan. The market has been shrinking for years now due to reliability of cars, but it became worse because of the financial crisis.
My gut feeling is that it will probably be postponed till 2013, but of course this does not mean it will never meet the market at all. At least it should temper the expectations of the car since it was over-hyped anyway.
This is how the car probably would look like:
Artist impression of what the small FR coupe should look like
Original source:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=aCU1OZuheIys&refer=japan
I found the news already copied here (in order of time):
http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/blog/2008/12/22/rwd-toyobaru-on-hold-nsx-dead/
http://www.autoblog.com/2008/12/22/report-toyobaru-delayed-until-2012-or-later/
http://speedhunters.com/archive/2008/12/23/news-gt-gt-toyota-subaru-fr-project-delayed-until-2012.aspx
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