Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Tag: advertisement (Page 2 of 17)

I don’t know where to begin with this Fortran Drag Wheels advertisement – WTF?!

This Fortran Drag Wheels advertisement has so many WTF?!s in it that I simply don’t know where to begin. I did feature the Fortran Revolt wheels before and those wheels also had some interesting advertisements. But these Drag wheels, oh boy! Let’s just unravel this ad. Layer by layer, detail by detail.

Fortran Drag Wheels advertisement - I don't even know where to begin...
Fortran Drag Wheels advertisement – I don’t even know where to begin…

Gigantic woman towering the Manhattan Skyline

I think we can first start with the 1980s airbrush painting of a giantic woman which I can best describe standing in a Kiba-dachi stance towering over the Manhattan skyline. Her right high-heeled shoe is standing on top of the water in the Upper Bay or the Hudson River.

Chained up woman over the Manhattan skyline
Chained up woman over the Manhattan skyline

Is she wearing 1970s plateau shoes? She’s holding chains that seem to be coming from somewhere in downtown New York. The chains seem to break somewhere in the middle, but her arms don’t seem to suggest she is the one breaking it with force. On the contrary: she’s just holding them. Maybe the chain is put on a high voltage and now the centre link is disintegrating?

Over the moon and Jupiter

Giant moon and Jupiter. That gravitational pull must be immense!
Giant moon and Jupiter. That gravitational pull must be immense!

Behind the woman on the left, there is a gigantic moon. If the moon were this close to the earth, probably New York would have been flooded by the immense force of Moon-gravity. On the right of the woman, we can see a planet. Presumably, this is Jupiter. What is it doing there?

Another Skyline

Nissan Skyline GT-EX KGC211 floating in the Hudson River
Nissan Skyline GT-EX KGC211 floating in the Hudson River

The Manhattan skyline isn’t the only skyline in this advertisement. At the bottom of the advertisement, we can see a facelifted Nissan Skyline GT-EX C211 with a big golden 2000 GT Turbo sticker on the side of the car. Oy has some huge bubble-shaped over fenders and looks just like it was inspired by its Group 5 contemporaries. Why it’s floating on top of the water we don’t know. What we do know is that the wheels featured on this car are Fortran Drag Wheels. Even the license plate tells us so.

Drag, the Dynamic wheel - Fortan really knew how to create a good tag line!
Drag, the Dynamic wheel – Fortran really knew how to create a good tagline!

Above the woman, we can also see DRAG in bold painted letters and the tagline the Dynamic wheel. Why dynamic is written with a capital D is a mystery to me.

Conclusion

So, what do I make of this?
If you look at all these pieces separately, it doesn’t make sense at all. The chain, the moon, Jupiter, the floating Skyline GT-EX, and the woman over the Manhattan skyline. Nothing makes sense.

That is until I realized the randomness of all these things must have a meaning. The Fortran Drag wheels are called the Dynamic wheel for a reason. They need to be dynamic in any situation: a too-close-for-comfort moon with a huge gravitational pull. Rescuing a Godzilla-sized woman who is being chained down. Floating with big balloon-sized tires on your Fortran Drag wheels. Yes, it all makes sense now!

Is this Nissan Cefiro A31 whaling the Japanese salaryman? – Commercial time

The 1988 Nissan Cefiro A31 was offered as a sporty four-door saloon alternative to the Toyota Cresta and Chaser competitors. It shared many components with the Skyline (R31), Laurel (C31) and Leopard (F31) of a similar generation. The drivetrain and rear multi-link setup were shared with all four of them and the front strut-based suspension with the Laurel. If you squint your eyes, you will also conclude it shares its design with the beautifully styled 1988 Nissan Silvia S13.

Nissan Cefiro A31 (top) looks like a Laurel C31 with a Silvia S13 (bottom) nosejob
Nissan Cefiro A31 (top) looks like a Laurel C31 with a Silvia S13 (bottom) nosejob

So can we conclude the Nissan Cefiro A31 is just a Nissan Laurel C31 with a Silvia S13 nosejob? Perhaps it does. Judging from the various ads I found online it’s rather aimed towards the sportier image of the Silvia than the dull salaryman image of the Laurel. Most ads tend to highlight this. Most of them. Most of them except this one featuring a whale:

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Commercial Time: Toyota Multi-valve engines

When Toyota introduced their multi-valve engines early 1980s, this was advanced technology from another era. No other manufacturer, except for Triumph, was sane enough to put a multi-valve engine into a consumer car. You could argue that Nissan did the same by placing the S20 engine in the KPGC10 and the Fairlady Z432R. However, there were only a few thousand of these engines built! So when Toyota hit the market with the 1G-GE, 4A-GE and 7M-GTE in the early 1980s, this was totally out of this world! This mid-1980s European Toyota multi-valve ad boasts about them:

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WTF: Mazda’s daring Princess Diana Xedos 6 ad

I remember watching Mazda’s Princess Diana Xedos 6 ad in the early 1990s. It must have been scheduled around the 8 o’clock news as that was the most expensive timeslot for ads during the day. It was both shock and awe. The whole of The Netherlands spoke about it the next day.

Diana’s Xedos 6

Just months prior to this ad, the news about Diana and Charles living separately was shared by the, back then, prime minister John Major. Mazda in the Netherlands decided this was an excellent opportunity to launch an ad to praise the quietness of their Mazda Xedos 6.

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Commercial Time: Honda Ballade becomes a ball of dances

The Honda Ballade was a loaded subject between Honda and Rover. Honda helped out British Leyland in the early 1980s by allowing BL to build the Honda Ballade locally and sell it as the Triumph Acclaim. When the second generation was due in 1983, the Ballade was redesigned and based upon the same platform as the third generation Honda Civic. However, the rebadged version wasn’t an Acclaim. It now was sold as the Rover 200.

The Rover 200 was actually a Honda Ballade
The Rover 200 was actually 96% Honda Ballade
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Hilarious: Nissan Leaf smokes a Nissan 180SX!

I have no idea how realistic this new Nissan Leaf commercial is, but I suspect in real life the Leaf would never beat a highly tuned Nissan 180SX RPS13 with a UR-Style body kit on the drag strip:
Nissan leaf vs Nissan 180SX
Acceleration of the earlier Leafs is rated on 0-100km/h (0-60mph) at 9.9 seconds and the 180SX officially did 7.5 seconds with the CA18DET. The SR20DET probably did better than that and various sources mention around 6.8 seconds. Since Nissan does not mention licensing the insane mode from Tesla I suspect this commercial is highly exaggerated.

See the results yourselves:

So what could have made the Leaf win here then? Well there are a couple of viable options:

  1. The 2016 Nissan Leaf will get Ludicrous mode
  2. The driver of the Nissan 180SX flunked his run
  3. The 180SX is a 20 year old car now and never had its turbo serviced
  4. The surface of the drag strip was wet and the 180SX features no traction control
  5. Nissan fakes the Leaf winning

Now you decide which one it is. ;)

Direct link to video: 2015 ニッサン新型リーフ予告CM(AZE0)NISSAN LEAF

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