Tag: toyota chaser (Page 3 of 4)

Commerical time: Mixed bag of Toyota

January 16, 2010 / banpei / 0 Comments

Got a mixed bag of Toyota commercials from Japan: Starlet KP60 Trans Europe trial, Corona T100, Celica XX mk1, Chaser MX30 and the KE30 saloon!

Even though I live in Europe, in a country next to Germany I still have no idea what the Trans Europe Trial actually is… It must have been something like Toyota wanted to prove the Starlet was an excellent car for European roads, therefore it would certainly be an even better car for the Japanese roads!

The Corona T100 looks like it would have been sophisticated back in a day, but with those features (central warning light, 5mph bumpers) you can even find on BYDs nowadays!

And that Chaser MX30! Of course if you first run it flat out on the saltflats (who put those lines there??) you definitely need to wash your hair!

Commerical time: Airwolf chasing in a Chaser?

November 23, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

We all know Japanese love to use (foreign) actors in their commercials and Jan-Michael Vincent (Stringfellow Hawke in Airwolf) was no exception to that:

Maybe Toyota thought of the possibility to reuse this Chaser commercial in the US, but never actually did because the Cressida never got the 24 valve 1G-GTTE Twin Turbo engine!

If they would have aired this Commercial when I was a young lad I would most certainly have tried to convince my dad to buy that Airwolf car! ;)

Carina sightings: Carina AA63 winning D1SL North

September 2, 2009 / banpei / 1 Comment

Found a Carina AA63 competing in D1SL North 3rd round (Chitose) on Youtube. The car is driven by Taoka Tomokazu and he ends up winning this event!

During quarter finals it competes against a JZX100 Chaser and wins:

During the finals it is put against a Nissan 180SX RPS13 driven by Masayuki Ono Akira where the Carina wins the first run:

The second run the Carina spins due to the 180SX touching the Carina. In the rematch the Carina spins again, but this time by its own error so the error by the 180SX is now nullified. Then in the final run the Carina and 180SX are equally matched in lines, but at the final corner the 180SX spins.

So the outcome is that the Carina won!

The 180SX driver pretends to be angry at his RPS13 and climbs on top of it pretending to stamp on its roof. :D

Of course the Carina could never have come this far without the help of a bit of rain, like what Alexi lacked during his third round in D1SL Central when the track dried up… The rain neutralizes the factor of having a more powerful engine than the others, so even less powerful cars have a good chance of winning. Still it is a very very good result controlling a car in such heavy rain and winning in such fierce competition! ?(´?`)/

Useless Japanese car innovations: quick hand warmer

August 24, 2009 / banpei / 1 Comment

It took some time, but I finally found another useless Japanese car innovation: the quick hand warmer! The Doctor sent me this nice useless innovation. It is a picture from a Japanese X70 brochure he owns.

Useless Japanese car innovation: the quick hand warmer

This quick hand warmer (QHW for short) was an option on the whole Toyota X70 (GX71 and MX70) range and served its purpose to warm the hands of the mid-level salarymen who bought this special option. Probably mostly used when they went golfing with their boss in Autumn…

Basically it is a minified hair dryer stuffed inside the steering column and operated by a switch right behind the air duct:

The quick hand warmer assembly from the EPC
You need a lot of amps going through the wires to bring a 12 volts unit quickly up to temperature, so Toyota installed an amplifier (87760) under the bonnet connected with a big lead to the unit in the steering column. I don’t want to know what will happen when this goes wrong with a short circuit or something!

Hilarious: Go Go Daijiro Inada!!!

February 27, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

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!

The end of the road for this Toyota Chaser MX41

February 15, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

I thought this was a bit of a sad video:

This okay looking Toyota Chaser hardtop MX41 could have saved, but apparently nobody was interested enough to save it…

First they remove all reusable parts, like the RS Wantanabes, exhaust, engine and drivetrain, and within 50 minutes the car is ready for the crusher. Bye-bye Chaser… :'(