Tag: Tsurikawa

Irian Jaya: Bemo taxi busses

August 4, 2011 / banpei / 1 Comment

Just got back from a two week trip to Manokwari and Jayapura (Irian Jaya aka New Guinea) and I did find loads and loads of old J-tin! I spotted many old Coronas (T80 to T120s), Kijangs (especially the first three generations), Chasers and Mark IIs (X70/X80/X90) and loads of these tiny taxi busses called bemo for your everyday transportation. The drivers tend to outdo each other with modifications and I’ve sat in some very very bizarre creations already!

Bemo taxi minibus in Jayapura
A ride costs next to nothing (2000 rupiah), you can hop on whenever you see one and they take you along on the main routes. You can also hire one for a personal destination but you can expect to pay a lot more than the 2000 rupiah…

Also at the terminal you can find loads and loads of these busses waiting for a ride:

Bemo taxi minibus in Jayapura
Most of the busses for short distances are either the Suzuki Carry (or Suzuki Every) or the Mitsubishi Colt (Mitsubishi Minicab), but some other brands and models are also used for mid range transportation.

Bemo taxi minibus in Jayapura
Some of them are really shabby and you really get the feeling they will fall apart while they master another hairpin of the many touges around Jayapura!

Bemo taxi minibus in Jayapura
But most of the drivers are really creative and improve their rides every day…

Bemo taxi minibus in Jayapura
Most of the time they start with a bunch of deep dished wheels at the rear that stick out of the bodywork with at least 3 inch. Later on they do the same up front, followed by big wings and spoilers. Steering wheel, audio, tsurikawas and dash bling are mostly done in the later phases followed by big foglights.

Bemo taxi minibus in Jayapura
I’ve given away a couple of the Bosozoku Style stickers (only whenever I really liked the car and driver) so in case you are visiting Jayapura anytime soon you can spot one on a bemo!

Carina Sightings: Red shakotan Carina AA63

June 15, 2011 / banpei / 1 Comment

What would look better than a pink shakotan Carina AA63? A red shakotan Carina AA63!

Red shakotan Carina AA63
This one is even lower than the pink one and it features clear headlights, fender flares and deeeeeep dished rims!

On the rear we find even wider fender flares and a tsurikawa:

Red shakotan Carina AA63
Unfortunately I only found these two pictures, so I can’t exactly determine the rims used on this Carina. They do feature the eight spoke RS Watanabe R-type design, but I can’t tell for sure…

Found at [MINI ? ? pleasant friends and we …]

Rare bosozoku cars: Toyota Corona T14

July 23, 2009 / banpei / 7 Comments

I have a weak spot for the Toyota Corona T14 series: they are closely related to the Toyota Carina and Celica.

I found this great bosozoku styled Corona some time ago on multiple meetings and picture galleries:

Bosozoku style Toyota Corona T14

It has been modified seriously with a sharknose, fins, big lip, oil cooler, deep dish wheels, tsurikawa and a big V-shaped exhaust! Unfortunately I could not find a picture rear of the car including the V-shaped exhaust:

Bosozoku style Toyota Corona T14

Unfortunately this is the only Corona T14 I could find grachan/bosozoku styled pictures of… On the other hand I could find shakotan styled Coronas in large amounts:

Shakotan styled Toyota Corona T14

That is very understandable: this last RWD Corona and they are mainly used for drifting nowadays. This series offered a cheap, relatively lightweight car and featured some new generation engines with great potential. Where did we hear that before?

Drifting Toyota Corona AT141

During the 70s Toyota created a great diversity in platforms: they had the Publica (P), Corolla/Sprinter (E), Celica/Camry/Carina (A), Corona (T), Mark II (X) and Crown (S) and a few other platforms on which they built their cars. Toyota decided to merge the Corona and Celica platforms to cut costs and did this starting with the Corona T14 and Celica/Camry A5 generations. The Celica/Camry/Carina wheelbase remained the same, but the Corona wheelbase shrunk by 25 mm.

Factory stock Corona TT140 sedan

The Corona was positioned above the Carina and offered, just like the Carina and Celica, independent rear suspension on all luxurious and sports models. The wagons were based on the same platform as the Carina so Toyota only changed the front section to match the Corona look. The rear section of the wagon is entirely the same as the Carina, including the live axle.

Factory stock Corona sedan and wagon

Later on Toyota also offered the Corona as a taxi with an additional LPG engine (Diesel was already available). This Corona was basically a mix and match of the Corona and Carina: front looked like the Carina while the mid and rear section were Corona. Later taxi models featured the Carina taillights.

The 1982 and 1983 Corona taxi

The Corona hardtop Coupe was targeted as the grand tourer edition of the Celica and positioned between the Celica and the Soarer. It offered great luxury above the spartan Celica and Celica XX models while it had less luxurious options as the new Soarer.

All varieties of the Toyota Corona hardtop coupe

Toyota had borrowed some styling cues for the Corona T14 from BMW: the nose had a slight wedge in it, its rear section featured a BMW style rear door and its boot and taillights were slightly borrowed from the BMW 7 series of that era:

This Corona sedan shows its BMW lines

The Corona offered, like the Carina, a great variety of engines: from the 1.5 liter 3A-U till the 2.4 liter 22R. Of course it featured the sporty 135hp 18R-GEU and 130hp 4A-GE in the GT and the performance 160hp 3T-GTE engine in the GT-T.

The mighty 3T-GTE twin cam turbo engine

After this series the Corona and Carina models merged, the platform changed to FWD and started to feature a bit more dull styling. The Corona T14 series is the last great Corona.

Hilarious: Daijiro Inada versus Bosozoku master part 3

June 12, 2009 / banpei / 1 Comment

I just couldn’t stop laughing when I watched this video!
Remember Daijiro Inada visiting the bosozoku master Daisuke Shouten in part 1 and 2? (If not, don’t worry: a reminder is in the video itself) Now Daisuke Shouten finished his project on the Toyota Celsior UCF11 (Lexus LS400 outside Japan) to create a bosozoku VIP car! Or should I rather say a bippuzoku car? Or even better: bippuzokusha!

Have a look at it yourself:

t is amazing what he did with the car: he extended the front and the back of the car to 6.7 meters! The front was replaced with a set of headligths borrowed from an early 80s Toyota Crown S110. He added another row of seats where the trunk used to be and at the rear he replaced the taillights with a set of a Nissan Skyline KPGC10 GT-R! A fridge is placed where the front passenger seat used to be. And I did spot a fax machine in it to make it a real VIP car while a 24cm steering wheel and a tsurikawa dangling from the ceiling to finish it off as a true bosozoku car! ;)

Fortunately enough I did manage to find two pictures of this car which were taken at the Massuru meeting in 2005:

Bosozoku style Celsior VIP car by Daisuke Shouten

Then they just pick up this girl, asking if she would like to have a ride in it. Damn, even with a bippuzoku car you can pick up girls without any trouble!

Bosozoku style Celsior VIP car by Daisuke Shouten

It is also really funny when they meet up with this limo driver at 7:53. The limo driver also drives a Toyota Celsior and can’t believe that the car underneath is the same! And they also get a lot of respect from the kyusha style GX61 Cresta driver at a traffic light!

Thanks to White_Raven for finding this video! :)
[I posted this article yesterday on Bosozokustyle.com]

Popular Bosozoku cars: Toyota Mark II platform

May 14, 2009 / banpei / 0 Comments

Most of you probably already saw a video posted by white_raven in the comments of last weeks rare popular bosozoku cars posting

Well this video is actually the first of a set of 3 videos about the Toyota Mark II platform. It starts with three bosozoku styled Mark IIs (RT72, MX31 and GX71), a clean tuned Mark II (JZX90) and finishes with the Verossa JZ110 drift car.

Part one contains last weeks bosozoku styled Corona Mark II RT72 and the first part of a bosozoku styled Mark II MX31:

Good detail is that this RT72 has the 8R engine and not the 8R-G, so it is not the GSS model.

Part two contains the second part of the Mark II MX31, the bosozoku styled Mark II GX71 and the clean tuned JZX90:

Note that the GX71 did get a 7M swap, so actually it became a MX71.
BTW: I love the way the tsurikawa is dangling behind the MX31 at 0:25 and scraping over the highway: the only correct way to make use of a tsurikawa! Anyone got a spare one for me? :D

And part 3 contains Hirota’s 2007 JZX110 Verossa drift car:

So a big thanks to white_raven for finding these videos!! :)

Hopefully these videos will stay on Youtube for a while, but I’m afraid they will disappear very soon…

[I posted this article earlier this week on Bosozokustyle.com]