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Remembering Japanese cars from the past

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Surprise by the previous car owner

December 7, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I think we all have bought a car in the past which held really nice surprises. For instance my good old trusty Trueno had a really nice surprise of a thick layer of bitumen to cover a really badly rusted spot. Or my new TA60 Carina had the really nice surprise of having retro tires mounted in 1983 under the car and only to be replaced in 2008 when I mounted the Celica Supra rims. Or the Mitsubishi I once owned had the original instruction manual which was illustrated with manga. ;)

Well, I think we all had these happy or unhappy surprises in the past… But I don’t think you can match up with the nice surprise Nori Yaro had when he bought his Nissan Skyline GTS-t!

First of all: his Skyline featured a period Kenwood double-din tape radio which was non functioning. He tried to fit another one, but he did not have the right connector for that so he fixed up the old Kenwood:
Double din Kenwood tape radio
Double Din Kenwood tape radio

Then he discovered there was a forgotten tape inside the Kenwood:
Surprise: Hello Kitty tape
Surprise: Hello Kitty tape inside!

Who would like to hear Hello Kitty when driving in a Nissan Skyline GTS-t with a mechanical diff, coilovers and sitting in a bucket seat?? I can only come up with the answer that the previous owner must have been a women drifter! ;)

Keiichi Tsuchiya’s 1989 Group A JTCC coverage

December 6, 2008 / / 0 Comments

I was browsing some movies on Youtube and found a lot of Group A coverage of the Japanese Touring Car Championship during the 80s. Lots of cool cars like the Toyota Corolla AE86, Nissan Skyline DR30 and in later coverage the Nissan Skyline HR31.

During the JTCC 1989 season the coverage was illustrated by Keiichi Tsuchiya. During that era Keiichi Tsuchiya drove the Sierra RS500 for Cosmo Oil and you can see him sitting in the Cosmo Oil pitbox. I only found two coverages so far and hopefully I will find some more later on…

First race:

This race was held on the West Circuit (Mine circuit) and Keiichi and his co-driver qualified 8th and finished eleventh.

Second race:

This race was held at the Sendai Highland Raceway and Keiichi and his co-driver qualified 8th and finished 3rd. It is great to see that the AE86 wasn’t entirely dead in 1989: the Trampio Levin is still driving around. ;)

This is a few years after when his pluspy videos (with the Levin and Trueno) was shot:
First pluspy video (Levin)
Second pluspy video (Trueno)
Same glasses and footage of the AE82 FX number 38 he drove during the 5th round of the JTCC on the Fuji International Speedway in november 9th 1986.

Useless Japanese car innovations: side mirror wipers

December 4, 2008 / / 3 Comments

This is going to be a new regular feature to my blog, just like the Carina Sightings.

You’ve seen them around on Japanese cars: useless car innovations which hardly add anything to the experience. Most of them emerged somewhere in the late 80s and early 90s till the Asia-recession struck Japan very hard and made the car manufacturers save costs by eliminating these innovations.

For starters I found these great side mirror wipers:
useless car innovations: side mirror wipers
Side mirror wipers on a 1988 Toyota Mark II X80
They are not really mirror wipers, but rather side screen wipers for only a small portion of the side screen.

Then what is the actual use of this innovation? Well, as you can see this wiper is mounted on the left side of the car. So for a Japanese it would be on the passenger side of the car. That means you don’t need to open the window on the passenger side to clean the side window. But if you already have power windows (most probably Mark II models of 1988 did feature power windows) you can clean them by opening and closing the passenger window, so what is the use??

Well, the only use I can think about is that you won’t get cold by opening the passenger window. What a great innovation! :P

Carina Sightings: Revolver Drift’s AA63 Carina Coupe

December 3, 2008 / / 0 Comments

About two months ago Revolver Drift posted some really nice pictures of his AA63 Carina Coupe near Bukit Tinggi. I asked his permission to post them on my blog as well but didn’t have the time to post it here: there was always another Carina Sighting and I kept moving it forward. So, finally the pictures are here:
Revolver Drift's AA63 Carina Coupe rear view
Revolver Drift’s AA63 Carina Coupe from the rear

Revolver Drift's AA63 Carina Coupe rear view
Revolver Drift’s AA63 Carina Coupe from the rear

Revolver Drift's AA63 Carina Coupe front view
Revolver Drift’s AA63 Carina Coupe front view

Revolver Drift is from Malaysia and his AA63 Carina Coupe features a 4AGE 20v blacktop. The deep dish rims on his coupe fit very nice to the coupe body type. I don’t think it would look that well on a sedan. Also the mesh grille looks quite aggressive with the big headlights. If I only could get a mesh grille for mine…

Thanks to Revolver Drift for allowing me to post his pictures here! If you want to read more, his blog is located here:
Revolver Drift’s blog

Drift City: Racing MMO

November 28, 2008 / / 0 Comments

Some time ago I was searching for some drift pictures when I came across this:

Video provided by video.mmosite.com
Looks quite nice, doesn’t it? ;)

Well, I immediately downloaded the game (700MB!) and installed it and started playing it during my lunch breaks at work.

It is a very nice online MMO in which you can do missions but also do team efforts. The storyline itself is very linear, so everybody has to do the same missions and gets through the same cities as I did so far.

Only thing that costs (real) money are the car-level upgrades and the bling-parts. Car class upgrades means that the level 2 Panda (Sprinter Trueno AE86) I’m driving in can be upgraded to level 3, 4, etc. as long as you pay for it. Of course the Panda doesn’t get as good as the real cars from that level (like the Dodge Viper SRT/10 in car level 8).

And of course I still drive the Panda. At the moment I upgraded it to level 5 and it looks exactly the same as this one:
Drift City Panda (Sprinter Trueno AE86)
The Panda in Drift City (Sprinter Trueno AE86 lookalike)

Currently I just reached level 20, so I finally was able to register a crew. I did not need to think long for the name, so I registered the AEU86 crew.

Feel free to join in! :)

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