Tag: Nissan Laurel C31

Manga Car Spotting: Shelby GT350 and Koenig Porsche 928 – Ah! My Goddess

April 27, 2018 / banpei / 1 Comment

Manga Cars

What do a Shelby GT350, a widebody Koenig Porsche 928 and a 3WD Mazda T2000 truck have in common? They are all featured in this fifth episode of reading spotting manga cars! I’ll read these two Japanese mangas of Ah! My Goddess and I found 13 different cars in it!

Ah! My Goddess by Kosuke Fujishima

The story revolves around a student called Keiichi Morisato. He attends the Nekomi Institute of Technology (NIT) in the fictional Japanese town called Nekomi in the Chiba prefecture. Kosuke Fujishima modelled Nekomi after his own home town: Chiba.

Keiichi has to take calls for his fellow sempai in his dorm. He get’s hungry, so he decides to order a pizza and dials the wrong number. Instead of the pizza delivery he actually phones the Goddess Helpline who will help anyone in distress. After some wrong assumptions Keiichi decides his sempai are probably pulling a prank with him and he wishes that the Goddess in front of him stays with him for the remainder of his life. That’s basically the beginning of the Ah! My Goddess story.

So what’s the connection with cars and motorcycles then? Well, Kosuke Fujishima is a petrolhead who loves cars and motorcycles. Keiichi is probably his likeness and is into cars and motorcycles as well. He’s also member of the NIT CC: the Nekomi Institute of Technology Car Club and this obviously helps to increase the number of motorized vehicles in this manga!

You can find the video and the high resolution scans of the panels containing manga cars below:

JDM Trivia #2: Ridiculously long car names

December 5, 2015 / banpei / 0 Comments

Welcome to JDM Trivia #2!

For some time now I have been pondering about the ridiculously long car names for the 80s and 90s JDM cars. I gathered data from various Japanese car manufacturers, made a potential selection of models, looked up their brochures and wrote down the name as advertised.

What I did was probably not a very good scientific approach but for a long shot this probably will do and I may have left out two or three ridiculously long car names this way. As I’m a database guru I put everything in a database and made my calculations based on that.

This is probably what you are waiting for: why I put those particular five cars in the teaser. Well that’s because they are the top five longest car names. So here we go from five to one.

DOTS: local Laurel C31

September 2, 2012 / banpei / 1 Comment

Sortly before I went on holiday I spotted some J-tin driving in front of me. Unmistakably it turned out to be a red Datsun Laurel C31.

Also note the Honda S2000 I featured over two years ago on the right side of the photo.

At the bottom of the hill the Laurel was trapped at the traffic lights and I was able to shoot a close up photo: Continue reading

Japanese Rustoseums (part thirty-three)

February 29, 2012 / banpei / 2 Comments

The big question is if this Nissan Laurel C31 picked up some foliage along the way or if it is actually growing a tree out of its bumper!

I fear the latter. :(

This two tone painted C31 once used to be a SGL, but nowadays it can hardly be called anything at all…

But given that it is not a super rare hardtop or Medalist I don’t think it really matters much. ;)

My younger brother Laurel

February 27, 2012 / banpei / 0 Comments

At least, that’s what the Skyline R30’s owner must have thought.

The Skyline R30 shared its underpinnings with the Laurel C31, so that makes the C32 parked next to this R30 its younger brother.

Found at MS1122

DOTS: 1984 Brown Nissan Laurel C31

July 10, 2011 / banpei / 0 Comments

No it’s color is not brown because of the rust on it. Even though it does have some rusty spots, this Laurel is still in a fairly good condition. Only on the left side it does need some attention to its doors.

1984 Brown Nissan Laurel C31
I spotted it around the corner from where I work. Never saw it before at that spot but I did spot the Laurel a few times around town.

This particular Laurel is one of the last C31s sold in the Netherlands (replaced by the C32 in 1984) and it features the trusty 2.4 liter L24 propelling the brown Apollo to amazing speeds with 130ps.