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I luckily caught one on display at the Mazda exhibit at the LA auto show a few years back, and it's a lot smaller than it appears in photos. Lovely proportions, though.
My favorite classic Japanese cars are the plain, but bulletproof 60s-70s Toyota Coronas, the Datsun 510 of the same era, the fisrs Honda Civic, the pickups of that era, and the Subaru FF1. These cars established the Japanese as building good reliable cars.
My favorite classic Japanese cars are the plain, but bulletproof 60s-70s Toyota Coronas, the Datsun 510 of the same era, the fisrs Honda Civic, the pickups of that era, and the Subaru FF1. These cars established the Japanese as building good reliable cars.
Except they were more than just reliable appliances. they had character and a good dollop of fun thrown in.
One I always wanted, but never actually got was the Corona Mk II from the late 60s:
Racing in the late eighties, early nineties, the only Japanese imports I saw even coming close to beating true muscle cars were a few heavily modified 350Z's (they would run with no exhaust and made such a horrible whining sound that your ear drums felt as if they would burst) and a small seventies Toyota (Corona) in which the owner took out whatever small engine was in there and stuffed in a Chevy 350 instead. I remember everyone there staring at the engine that took up every inch of the modified engine bay wondering how the hell he fit it in there.
I am not completely bashing these cars at all. I personally believe some of them are cool looking and would probably be fun to drive, BUT, if someone is going to try and tell me that these tiny Japanese cars are EASILY modified to beat TRUE American muscle cars, I will say this is false. I will further say that if you take the same amount of money needed to spend to get one of these cars to be in the same league as a true muscle car and put it into that muscle car instead, there is absolutely no comparison.
Now, if you tell me you will take one of these little cars and road race a 1969 Roadrunner with a big block or an equivalent muscle car on a winding mountain road I will say that the little car has a good chance with handling better but once you get to a straightaway all bets are off.
Again, I am not actually bashing these cars, but I can't stand reading about how they will best a real muscle car or even be in the same league without extensive modifications. By the way, just for reference, I do not consider a 1970 base Nova with a six cylinder or a 307 V-8 a muscle car so if responding to this particular post please refer to muscle cars that are truly muscle cars.
I do remember driving my a friend's car which was some sort of Anniversary Edition 300ZX in the eighties. I do not remember what year the car was but it was something like a 1985 300ZX. I remember driving it and thinking that the turbo charged engine felt faster than what the power rating was. For some reason I remember it having a Datsun and Nissan emblem on it as well. Perhaps this was a year when they were changing the company name? In any case I do remember it being a fun car to drive.
Racing in the late eighties, early nineties, the only Japanese imports I saw even coming close to beating true muscle cars were a few heavily modified 350Z's (they would run with no exhaust and made such a horrible whining sound that your ear drums felt as if they would burst) and a small seventies Toyota (Corona) in which the owner took out whatever small engine was in there and stuffed in a Chevy 350 instead. I remember everyone there staring at the engine that took up every inch of the modified engine bay wondering how the hell he fit it in there.
I am not completely bashing these cars at all. I personally believe some of them are cool looking and would probably be fun to drive, BUT, if someone is going to try and tell me that these tiny Japanese cars are EASILY modified to beat TRUE American muscle cars, I will say this is false. I will further say that if you take the same amount of money needed to spend to get one of these cars to be in the same league as a true muscle car and put it into that muscle car instead, there is absolutely no comparison.
Now, if you tell me you will take one of these little cars and road race a 1969 Roadrunner with a big block or an equivalent muscle car on a winding mountain road I will say that the little car has a good chance with handling better but once you get to a straightaway all bets are off.
Again, I am not actually bashing these cars, but I can't stand reading about how they will best a real muscle car or even be in the same league without extensive modifications. By the way, just for reference, I do not consider a 1970 base Nova with a six cylinder or a 307 V-8 a muscle car so if responding to this particular post please refer to muscle cars that are truly muscle cars.
And where were you located in teh late '80s, early '90s when the V8 musclecars were finally getting quick again? That;'s when I put a Ford V8 in my RX7.
But if you've never been around built up rotaries or turbo Toyotas, then you really don't have any experience.
In the late '70s to early '80s, the average musclecar was a jacked up camaro or Nova that ran 14s. The very fastest stock big blick musclecars ran high 12s, low 13s. It didn't really take much to beat them becaeu youre forgettig one thing: power to weight, with the addtion of gearing.
My RX3 (the red one I posted first) weighed under 2000 lbs stock, and had a ported 12A rotary that revved to 9k rpm. Now, add in a light flyswheel and the fact that the STOCK rear gears were 4.11s and you can see that the power to weight was there to beat typical V8 cars, even i fit only had 180-200 hp. All it had to do was run low 13s in the quarter to be able to beat 95% of the musclecars you'd come across on the street.
it was the same with the air cooled VWs we used to build up (which are a subject for another thread, but I was building them at the same time):
Didn't take much to build and 11-12 second street Bug with the 4 cyl VW engine in it.
Great thread. Seems the cars I crave the most when I see them on the road are the older classic toyotas. The new ones, not as much. When they had the pics of the earthquake in China awhile back, I spotted a cool looking older model toyota van among the rubble in the pic. It was not at all like the big minivans they sell here. Small and compact. Wonder what that was..
Great thread. Seems the cars I crave the most when I see them on the road are the older classic toyotas. The new ones, not as much. When they had the pics of the earthquake in China awhile back, I spotted a cool looking older model toyota van among the rubble in the pic. It was not at all like the big minivans they sell here. Small and compact. Wonder what that was..
Probably an older Toyota HiAce van. We got them in the US in the '80s with the mid engine, but they were around in Japan smaller than that for years.
My favorite early Japanese cars were all Datsun (aka Nissan). The B210, the 200SX (odd styling made it stand out), and the early Z cars. It's sad that we don't see more of these cars still on the road today. My parents had a two door B210. It had great MPG and was nimble for it's time. We had to trade it in for a larger car since my sister and I were getting too big for the back seat. So my mom went from a 2 door Datsun B210 to a Chrysler Cordoba.
Location: Prescott Valley,az summer/east valley Az winter
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some of my best memories are driving my fairlady Z ~ loved the left hand shift ~ beautiful styling and was a blast to drive! PS. drove it on the right side of the streets in downtown Tokyo
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