As strange as this might sound, this story from my visit to the Toyota Automobile Museum in Aichi, Japan is not going to contain a single Toyota. As I touched on in my introductory post about the museum, a fair portion of the enormous facility is dedicated to telling the global history of the automobile, [...]
A project car can seem like a huge commitment sometimes. I don’t know about other people, but I definitely have those days where I look at my bank balance and think to myself, ‘What the heck am I doing?’ Perhaps there are a few other people reading this that share my feelings, but sometimes I [...]
Japan for some reason manages to do grassroots racing so much better than any country I’ve seen. It might be the incredible mix of cars, the balls-out and skilful driving, the way in which they don’t seem to give a damn about tuning and losing authenticity for the pursuit of speed. Actually, it’s especially this [...]
Now that the big gravel parking lot next to the space used to hold the Street Car Nationals has been fully resurfaced, we might as well think of it as the show’s annex, such is the selection of cars that you can run across. About an hour before the show was due to end I [...]
If you missed a certain American flair in the previous Spotlight-O-Rama from the Mooneyes Street Car Nationals, then this selection I’ve put together should balance things out quite nicely. What better way to get things pointing in the right direction than by taking a look at a couple of traditional hot rods – the rawest [...]
Welcome back to my garage. I’m happy to report that over the past month a whole lot has happened and progress with Project Z is on a roll. You might be looking at this photo and thinking I’ve gone mad, but don’t worry – the G-nose will be back soon enough. While the car has [...]
This year’s Donington Historic Festival in the UK had the usual strong line-up of car clubs taking up the infield of the track, but one gathering I was really looking forward to checking out was the area dedicated to the Classic Z Register and the Z Club Of Great Britain. Organiser Jonathan Kinghorn had been [...]
There’s a saying, ‘You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family’. I guess this would be a good way to describe how I feel about all of the cars that I’ve owned. Perhaps it’s because of the series of events that led me to owning one after the other and the eventual [...]
Big engines and big cars are kind of obvious huh? Don’t get me wrong, I love a good V8 and have owned more than a few. An Audi R8 with that V10 sat behind my head? All day, every day my friend. Yet if I’m honest I think my ego gets in the way sometimes. [...]
In yesterday’s post I took you guys on a little trip through the M. Yokota Museum in Gunma, Japan. Today I’d like to follow that up with a more detailed look at the vintage automobile collection, which is one of the museum’s biggest drawcards. From rare sports cars and competition vehicles to more family-friendly vehicles [...]
Nestled in the hills of Japan’s scenic Gunma Prefecture lies a car museum unlike any other I’ve ever seen. Actually, to even call this place a “car museum” is to understate just what you’ll find here. A visit to the M. Yokota Museum is like taking a trip back to a different era, and the [...]
This year the organizers of Nagoya’s Exciting Car Showdown created a new prize category to include votes from the various members of the foreign media that covered the show. I thought it was a great idea, but at same time quite humbling to have the chance to give our feedback. What was even cooler was [...]
I’ve got a little confession to make here. Over the last several years I’ve had the chance to witness a great amount of Japanese car culture – the legendary race tracks, shops of all sizes, events big and small, museums, mountain roads and more. Surprisingly though, one thing missing from that list was a visit [...]
While every visit I make to Japan brings with it the chance to uncover some amazing machinery, I equally enjoy meeting the people behind these cars and hearing their stories. One person I met on my most recent trip was Teruhisa Inoue, the owner of the wicked looking B110 Nissan Sunny you see here. Teru-san [...]
If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I’d like to return to Tokyo Auto Salon for a moment with this story. While TAS 2013 was an amazing show, one of the things that impressed me the most at Makuhari Messe that weekend was not even a car. Ok, so it was a car , but [...]
