You may know him for his acting skills: he played bad guys in several major movies, like Battle Royale and Dead or Alive for instance, but his acting career started already in the mid 80s! Back then he already played Bosozoku bikers, so his acting career hasn’t changed much since!
This guy really has a split personality! At one side he is the actor Riki Takeuchi who plays tough guy roles and on the other side he is the Yakuza/Bosozoku/etc singer RIKI.
Riki Takeuchi the actor
versus
Riki Takeuchi the singer
His looks are a bit of a crossover between Daijiro Inada and Elvis and his music videos are mainly the same: him singing as the tough Yakuza/Bosozoku guy with either a lot of flashy dancers, big trucks or even battling bears! I wonder where I did see that all before??
Especially this video is great:
Supahwwwwwwwawe! :D
I think RIKI just got a new fan! ;)
Only flaw was that they should have used the verb “to tweet” instead of “having to twitter about this”.
I’m sorry if you don’t have Twitter and doesn’t understand how funny this video is: I guess it is really hard to explain to a non-Twitarian why this video is so true…
I found this very funny clip of Daijiro Inada (founder of Video Option and D1GP) racing around Fuji Speedway in a D1GP prepped Toyota Chaser JZX100 the Speedracer way with his head sticking out of the sunroof:
Very funny to watch. Especially when Daijiro tries talking to the camera at 113MPh: his mouth stays open due to the wind!
At first he enjoys the experience, but after the first two rounds a while he really begins to hate it… Then he has to do the shooting again because the camera was not setup correctly and the picture is too dark!
This week I present you: the Honda City! (city… city… hondahondahondahonda…)
I used to be a big fan of Madness in the 80s and owned about every record/cd they ever made, but I never knew their songs (and themselves) were actually used in commercials for the Honda City! The commercials itself were hilarious back then! Dated as they are now they look even more hilarious! Honda tried to attract young people to the Honda City and back then Madness was the band that attracted a lot of those youngsters, so it would have been a very obvious choice!
The 1981 Honda City was a subcompact car and was produced till 1986. The car sold in Europe under the name Honda Jazz. Due to Opel owning the rights to the name City on a car (Opel Kadett City for instance) Honda had to choose a different name. It was just a few centimeters too tall and wide to be a Kei car if the displacement would have been lower. Of course the European Jazz is in no way comparable with the Japanese City: apart from the Turbo and Turbo II editions it lacks the Motocompo companion in the trunk! The motowhat?
Motocompo minibike in Honda Jazz
The Motocompo is a small minibike with a small 49cc 2 stroke engine which fitted in the trunk of the Honda City. It was sold as an option till 1983 when the production reached 53369, so not every City did actually have one. The Motocompo manages to output 2,5HP and with its 42 kilograms it should actually a quite capable minibike for the City! (city… city… hondahondahondahonda…)
Here you can see how rediculously small that Motocompo actually is when someone rides it:
And during my search for info I also found out people are selling brand new Motocompos through Ebay for $3500! That’s more expensive than the City was when new! (thanks to Japanese Nostalgic Car for that info!)
I only learned of the Honda Motocompo during early 90s when I got involved into anime and discovered the You’re Under Arrest (Taiho Shichauzo) series. In this series Natsumi Tsujimoto and Miyuki Kobayakawa, two female police officers, patrolled Tokyo in their Honda Today. The Honda Today was partly the successor of the Honda City: Today was the smaller Kei sistermodel of the City while the higher spec (like more luxurious and the Turbo editions) remained the City. Back then I mistook the City for the Today.
You’re under arrest (Taiho Shichauzo) and their Honda Today
In the series you can see the Motocompo in action various times since Natsuki ownes one and always takes along on their patrols.
And to show you once again how small that Motocompo actually is, look at how big Madness is:
Motocompo minibike vs Madness
A bike that small? Madness!
IMO the Motocompo was a great invention from Honda! Just imagine: drive to the outskirts of central Tokyo, park your car and travel to work in central Tokyo with your Motocompo! It would even work here in the Netherlands and it’s puny capital Amsterdam! If they would only have sold the Motocompo along with the Jazz… Jazz? I should rather call it the City!
If you really like Madness you’d definitely love the City! city… city… hondahondahondahonda… Damn… That song is in my head now! :(
First watch this advertisement and then read my comments. ;)
At first I saw the 1975 Toyota Corolla KE30 (great in 75!) and then the 1981 Toyota Corolla KE70 (tops in 81!) I thought I struck gold and found a US advertisement for the Toyota Corolla GT-S AE86! But no: it is a South African advertisement for the new Toyota Corolla EE80! (go one better!)
Lovely 80s setting with dancers in tracksuits! Back in 1984 the moonwalk was the hottest thing so it is amazing to see that EE80 moonwalking with the dancers! :D
Apparently the idea back then was that the FWD EE80 was much better than the RWD KE70 (It’s a whole new number!) which may be true for the masses but not for us! (Sorry Siert!) It’s got more space than the KE70 but it lacks the potential of the KE70. Ah well, back in those days people were not thinking about engine and transmission swaps in throwaway cars like the Corolla… Times really have changed!
Still, these cars are fine cars for the less enthusiastic people and I even have a member on AEU86 who swapped in a 4AGE in a Sprinter liftback! But that is of course an exception. ;)
Everything keeps going right! Toyota!
Ahum… Well, the rest is history I guess. ;)
As I said yesterday: I was browsing Tokusatsu videos on Youtube to make my Hilarious posting this week. My idea was to see how cars were actually used through these series. Of course I mean recognizable cars and not the Bosozoku styled super-heroes cars.
First of all I found this intro of the 1988 Choujuu Sentai Liveman series:
At 0:30 the first hero drives a white Mazda FC convertible.
A poor student at Academia, but a strong leader and quick thinking under pressure. He is brave and a hardworker. Initially starts as hot-headed and sarcastic, but grows into the role of dependable leader as the series progresses.
Could this have been the inspiration for Shuichi Shigeno for Ryosuke Takahashi in Initial D? Only difference is that Ryosuke is not a poor student but rather a rich student taking a break during his study…
The red Flashman is a professional racing driver. To be more precise: he drives the number 170 Mazda 757. It must somehow be true that he did was the driver because number 170 did not finish Le Mans 1986. Probably one of the villains must have wanted to sabotage Le Mans 1986 and in order to prevent this red Flashman must have abandoned the race. ;)
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