Oh dear! The 'boss' is away and we're useless without him...with no-one to crack the whip, the usually-reliable RSM team gets all lethargic and no use to anyone and it's you, our loyal readership that suffers. It's Tuesday and we've not fed you any tasty retro related motoring morsels yet. Hopefully this batch of splendid Japanese classic car videos we've discovered on The 'Tube will go some way to apologise for our unforgivable lack of effort.

 Video Number One: The awesomely titled 'Funny Case : No Suspension Cars'. I want to get a sticker made saying that to put on my back window!

Posted on: May 19, 2009 06:05

We didn't intend for this week to be so dominated by Japanese cars, but when something demands your attention, sometimes you just have to share it.

We have long been a fan of the crazy world of bosozoku, as well as being intrigued by the lengths people go to one-up each other on more 'normal' rides, so imagine our delight when we find a bosozoku who is going directly for the craziest exhausts ever.  This picture literally made our eyes pop out :

The driver is dressed as a panda.
Just for clarification, the driver is dressed as a panda.
It was posted by uselessbug on the Retro Rides forum along with a number of other cars from the same meet, so credit where credit is due for that.

However we can't just leave you with a dozen or so pictures to look at and a handful of videos.  Oh no, we've unearthed what has to be our favourite Bosozoku video we've ever seen :

The most brilliant thing about this is you can see them out, on the open road, for us they suddenly make more sense, particularly travelling in the large group that they are in.  Whilst for a lot of people this may not be an easy thing to understand or appreciate, you have to at least respect the all or nothing nature of this type of modification.

Unless something else earth shattering occurs we'll be bringing you some non-Japanese cars tomorrow!

Posted on: November 5, 2008 04:22

A distinctly international feel to proceedings today.  I hope you got your Google Translate handy

First up we are off to the Americas, by way of Sweden.  Check out this thread on the Rejsa forums from someone who took part in the Carrera Pan America, it is a brilliant event and is hugely challenging for the cars involved, as you will see by some of the photographs in this particular entrants report : http://rejsa.nu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27960

One of the most popular thing about the Retro Rides forums the Readers Rides section, when I'm browsing other sites I always look for similar sections as it is a great way to get to know whats that forum is all about.  The German Old School Garage forum has a brilliant readers project section, you can spend many hours checking out their array of machinery, some finished, some still in the works : http://www.osg-forum.de/viewforum.php?f=3

We linked Speed Hunters before but this particular entry really caught my eye, I love racing cars and they didn't get much more insane than the peak of the Group 5 Le Man cars.  This link has some great photography which is really evocative of the period : http://speedhunters.com/archive/2008/06/05/retrospective-gt-gt-group-5-monsters-at-le-mans.aspx

Finally as a follow up to Rmad's post, have some madness from Japan

There we go, around the world in a handful of links, our scene is international!

Posted on: June 6, 2008 03:52

Not content with travelling eight years into the past I've modified the time machine to travel thousands of miles too - in this case it's leapt all the way to the land where the world's wackiest automotive modifiers live - Japan. Think that statement is an exaggeration? Read on...

Those familiar with Young Auto magazine will know that it usually sports a not-particularly-attractrive young 'gal' (their words not mine) on the cover, but this issue is an exception. The big '20' on the front is a clue, this is their twentieth anniversary issue. What does that mean for the reader? It means that the first (or last, depending on whether you're used to reading magazines backwards or not) twenty pages are dedicated to showing all the covers of the previous issues. Here's the page for 1998:

Yep, that's a 240K and those are Hayashis! Believe me about the craziest cars now? Here's some more gems:

 

How about this Celica which is ticking all the Bosozoku boxes: crazy bodykit, upswept exhaust, reworked lighting, subway ring...it's all there. I almost hate myself for liking it. Pretty radical you'd think...until you see this:

 

I can't read the text but what we do know is that it's got four rows of seats including the rearmost row which located in what appears to be a trailer! Whether the gigantic 'X' at the back is a spoiler or an exhaust isn't clear. Enough sillyness I think, how about some tamer (but still riding high in the cool chart) vehicles?

 

  Just how smart is this Celica liftback? I wouldn't usually go for red, but you won't hear any complaints from me! 

 

 
Ah, much calmer. I've no idea what's under the bonnet, but I'm happy to believe there's some form of Turbo'd modern lump from Nissan under the bonnet of this 610 wagon. Whatever the motivation there can't be many better ways of hauling stuff around.

That brings us to the end of another journey through time , tune in again soon - I'm off to Cardiff to soak up some rift energy.

 

 

Posted on: June 2, 2008 06:05

Or maybe it should be titled 'How one thread changed the retro world'.  Rmad is fond of his time machine, mine isn't quite as good, more of a Bond Bug than a Deloreon, so it doesn't go back as far.  However that being said it can take you to a vastly different time, a time when the term Bosozoku was virtually unknown, an innocent time.

Today I will give you the story of how one thread changed the retro scene.  All the way back in April 2004 there was a thriving Japanese car scene quietly grooving along doing its own thing.  In the US this centred around the Datsun 510, which had a legacy from motorsport over there.  In Europe the 240Z and 260Z had its fans and there was a small but dedicated following for other Datsuns.  The Toyota AE86 was growing in popularity and value world wide off the back of the rising interest in drifting.  So there was already a ground swell of interest in Japanese cars, which was starting to float into the general consciousness of the regular retro fan.

If left like this then I have no doubt that interest would have gradually risen.  Something else happened.  A couple of days into 2004 someone went to a car meeting in a service stop at Diakoku in Yokohama, Japan, and they took some photos, four months later they put up a thread on VWvortex to show off his pictures.  That was all, but it was everything.

Here is that thread : http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?id=1364258&page=1 titled : I'm back Part IV - Old School JDM-ness at Daikoku and even Bosozoku!!! (56k, go make a sandwich)

The thread contained images of cars that a lot of people had never seen before, what’s more it contained images of cars modified in a style that even more people had never seen before.  Some were amazed, some fascinated, some disgusted.  Everyone had a reaction.  VWvortex has a popular forum, a very popular forum, but the posting on there alone wouldn't have been enough to spark a fire of interest across the scene.  What happened next was that this thread gradually filtered out and got linked to on other forums and blogs.  Suddenly every forum you went into had this link, from Australia to the Ukraine, VW forums, Japanese car forums, drift forums, Alfa Romeo forums.  It was everywhere.

Suitably inspired people went off to find out what it was all about, to find more pictures of this type of car.  Each gallery discovered heralded more links to explore and fish our way around, clicking on everything because we couldn't speak Japanese.  In addition to finding more picture of Bosozoku style cars a lot of people also discovered the more restrained style of modifications, what is commonly called shakotan style, so started posting those up, particularly when people were ridiculing the bosozoku style.

Each time these things got posted they often required a little explination and soon the scene became aware of terms like bosozoku, grachan (originally incorrectly called garuchan), shakotan and even decotora.  Suitably inspired people have started building rides in this style outside of Japan.  Other people had their eyes drawn to the shakotan style cars and have gone out and bought cars to build.  The general profile of older Japanese cars has risen and the speed of its rise can, at least in part, be attributed to a single thread.

So next time you are out and about taking photos of interesting things, you never know what fire you might spark!

The original directory of images is here as well as a second set here

 

 

 

PS: If "VadGTI" ever reads this; Thank you!

Posted on: May 8, 2008 03:43

There are a variety of phrases used around the internet in relation to Japanese cars, it is perhaps worth an explanation of what some of them are and where they came from in order to understand them better.

The first is the most commonly used expression of Bosozoku, more correctly written as Bōsōzoku.  It's literal translation is 'violent running tribe'.  The term zoku at the end of the word denotes that it is a group or tribe, so you will also see phrases like vanningzoku and the like, which identifies something as being a group.

The Bosozoku have been around since the 50s and are traditionally a very anti social motorbike gang.  They ride unmuffled bikes, with radically visible modifications, usually in a reckless way around city streets in large groups which usually have a uniform.  The cars came along later but have been around since at least the 70's, they are similarly loud, very visible and anti social.  The style of bosozoku cars varies wildly but they will usually have bright paint, radical body kits and preposterous exhausts.

The bosozoku style gets blurred into Garuchan or Grachan. Another word that can have zoku attached to the end, as in Grachanzoku.  The word comes from the 1980's Grand Championship at Fuji Speedway, the car park was a Mecca for bosozoku.  Here it became popular to have the more and more outrageous car styling inspired by the cars on the track.  Some people will say they are grachan instead of bosozoku as they wish to avoid the gang associations and image of reckless driving.

Another term that has popped up on the internet from time to time is Kyusha-kai.  This simply translates as Japanese classic car (Kyusha) group (kai), which is just the normal term for old car lovers in Japan.

Finally we come to Shakotan, which has gained a fair amount of usage outside of Japan due in part to Shakotan Boogie.  This is a common term actually in use in Japan, Shako means ground clearance and Tan means short, so Shakotan cars are short ground clearance cars.  Shakotan cars are more usually hard slammed with cut coils rather than being able to just buy off the shelf parts.  The styles are much more restrained than those of bosozoku and grachan styles.

So there you have it, a brief over view of the culture.  There is much deeper you can go, however you should hopefully be able to identify what you are looking at now a bit better.  I have to thank Ishibashi-san from Funinki Kyusha-kai and Kusa-san for the full explinations as well as Tetsu from Sunny Speed Style for first explaining the different styles.

Pictures by Rmad and our man in Japan Mike at Auto-Otaku

Posted on: February 13, 2008 04:19

Ok so sartorial elegance isn't really your main concern with working on your car; usually it’s trying to avoid sheering bolts and/or skinning your knuckles.  However it is worth noting that Dickies do a great range of overalls of different types, from basic polyester/cotton ones through to full on flame retardant ones.  They also do disposable overalls for when you’re are painting or doing something extra oily.

 

 

 

Of course the real trick is to have two pairs, one for working on your car and one for putting your club name in large friendly letters on the back and wearing to shows, bosozoku style.

 

If you are in the UK you can get them from this here website :
http://www.dickiesstore.co.uk/dickies-workwear/dickies-and-redhawk-overalls/
Halfords are also stocking some of the standard ones as well.

Posted on: February 11, 2008 04:51