My Travels in Japan-Stuff About Cars

I usually identify cars as they pass me on a totally subconscious level. If I can't identify it, or the car is one of particular interest, the situation rises to a level of conscious thought. Whew!-I am going nuts! Good thing I have played so much Gran Turismo, or I wouldn't have the slightest clue. As it is, I see all manner of car, minicar, micocar, minivan, micro-minivan, and truck I have never seen before. Sure, I have seen a few Mitsubishi Lancers and Subaru WRX's at rallies on occasion. I even saw an R32 Nissan Skyline in the flesh in Seattle once. But tonight I see S15 Nissan Silvias, late-model Toyota Sprinter Levins and Truenos, tons of R32/R33/R34 Nissan Skylines, Subaru Vivios, Toyota Mark IIs...Suzuki Altos! The list goes on and on. I just about laugh out loud when I see I micro-mini armored van!





I hear an R32 Nissan Skyline with very loud exhaust. I can hear it long before it is visible, a strong combination of harmonic pitches. The driver rev-matches, double-clutch downshifting twice up to the stoplight. He blips the throttle a few times...super light flywheel! The car is red with a black wing and hood, plus red and black wheels...but more important, the sound of it. Loud and very hard to describe, wonderful and unlike any other car I have heard...mesmerizing... A high pitched hum/wail from the turbo, not as incidental or as insignificant as the usual whistle. The engine note at idle is straight six, a smooth bellow. The overall effect is not unlike an American V8 with a crossover header, low powerful engine noise, with a harmonic scream of the exhaust over the top, but six-like, smoother, freer-revving, and almost like an overtone. Or maybe it could be described as a loud, resonant, muffled BMW racecar taking off, but with a turbo too. The revs keep gradually climbing in first as the traffic accelerates away out of sight. Slowly higher (Boy, he is revving it,) steadily higher (showoff!) slowly climbing (Jesus, he better shift...) Little did I know that it is just coming into the powerband! A hole must have opened up in traffic, and he really gets on it...the turbo is no longer linear with the engine, spooling to incredible speed, the whole sound is so frantic that my adrenaline is pumping just from hearing it. The volume and the revs had gotten so high, the upshift to second was almost like a silence, with a little flutter from the blow-off valve, and then he was accelerating in second, gone. I stood for probably a full minute in awe, and then started to comprehend the numbers: 2.6 liters, about 300 horsepower stock, tuneable to around 700 hp with a stock bottom end, and 1200 hp with heavy mods. 8,000 rpm and gearing for 180 mph...I guess that experience makes sense?...I am still dumbfounded!!!





I hop on the Yamanote line for Ikebukuro. In Ikebukuro is the world's largest automobile showroom, the Toyota Amlux. It is in an oval-shaped high rise that glows purple at night, but with a curious matte-finish look, and flashing white stobes. Very impressive from the outside, even if the impact is somewhat diminished by the fact that it is housed across the street from Sunshine 60, a sixty-story "self-contained city in a skyscraper." Inside is amazing also. Seventy current models on five floors, all of which you can touch to your heart's content. Sit in 'em, open 'em up...check the trunk, check under the hood! They also have show cars, the remains of Prius from crash-testing, and a Prius hybrid-car drivetrain which had been sawed in half for the cutaway view! Another hybrid car was a hybrid gasoline-electric four-wheel-drive small minivan! In Japan, Toyota offers several models with a "Wellcab" option. The passenger's seat piviots around the B-pillar (or sliding door in minivans,) slides out, and lowers down, allowing access for people in wheelchairs or with limited mobility, but keeping the vehicle more useable than say, a full-size van with an elevator lift.

There are videos and demonstrations everywhere. When you walk in, you see a giant chrome ball suspended from the ceiling. There is a staircase descending down from the ball, and inside is a movie theater! It is a "full-sensory experience," complete with surround sound, rumble packs in each seat, and smell-o-rama. I can't get over how wacky and so quintessentially Japanese it all is....something stranger than most Americans could even dream of, and here it is, advertised as one of the main attractions! This week's feature is "First Finish," about Toyota's desert-racing program, and is predictably cheesy. The plot has to be fictional, because it had all sorts of drama, and even a love story between two drivers (one actually a journalist-turned-driver. Hehehe!) It must have been made a while ago because the trucks are all last-generation's body style. The heroes were running a 152E!! (Holy jam! The rare, twincam, 16-valve, 2.0-liter R-series competition motor!) They didn't show under the hood, but from the sound of the friendly-competitor's Toyota, it must have the more-current 3.0-liter V6. The bad guys are in Ford Rangers that were on screen for a total of about three seconds. I choke up and seriously almost cry! As the tears were welling up in my eyes, I marvel that the story of Toyota success is so touching, and then I decide that it must be the fumes from the smell-o-rama! The basement is the Motorsports section. More cool videos: Indycars, Formula 3, Formula Atlantic, Japan Formula Toyota, Le Mans, Japan GT Championship, Japan Touring Car Championship, Toyota Altezza Cup, Toyota Corolla Sprinter Cup, Toyota Starlet Cup, Toyota Vitz Cup, Paris-Dakar Rally, World Rally Championship, Japan Dirt Trial Series (Am.=Rallycross Eng.=Autocross) are in a videoloop on a row of screens. I am eating it up...I watch through it twice. Needless to say, I could have dropped about ten grand in the TRD (Toyota Racing Development) store in about five minutes.

I spend over half and hour at the Toyota Altezza (Japanese version of the Lexus IS300,) just staring at it...it looks so much better in person! The exterior styling is really striking, and it just keeps growing on me.

Me sitting in the Amlux showroom in an Altezza. Thanks to the Germans who took this picture!
See even more pics and info on this car (and others) in my Japanese car gallery
While the overall proportions are nothing new, the details are far more interesting than any BMW sports sedan...the subtle hood bulge, the shape of the headlights, the taillight style (this is car this style origianted with,) the complex curves of the front fenders, the amazingly subtle upward-curving character line down the side...this is no slab-hood, slab-fender, kidney-grill Beemer. Toyota can take their "chronograph-style" instrument panel and shove it where the sun don't shine...gak! How do you read that thing?...But the rest of the interior is nice. Sitting in one makes me want one all the more, almost enough to move here just to get one! As I sit in the car and think about it, I get more and more agitated and emotional. I have never driven one, but I want it so badly. It is hard to face how amazing this car is. U.S. $17,000-some, 30-some MPG, 212hp 2.0 liter four-cylinder engine, rear-wheel drive, six-speed manual transmission, small-almost exactly the same size as the new Celica, and it weighs under 3000 pounds, hundreds of pounds less than the bloated U.S.-version Lexus. It is such a shame that the U.S.-market version has a 215hp 3.0 liter six-cylinder, five-speed automatic tranny only, and costs over thirty grand. Think of the price another way: If the U.S.-market Lexus IS300 were sold in Japan at U.S. prices, it would currently cost ¥4,400,000, give or take one or two percent. The one sitting in front of me, equipped as I would want it (the sports model with a manual transmission, plus the optional wheels and tires) costs ¥2,600,000!!! I talk to the girls who work there for a little while, as much as my Japanese allows anyway.

Finally I have to leave Toyota Amlux when they close.





I see another Lotus Seven, also without a windshield, but this one is polished aluminum with yellow fenders. It comes around the corner quite fast and up behind slow moving traffic. The driver is just playing with the throttle, getting on it for about half a second, then lifting off again for a few seconds. It must be Ford-Kent-powered, because it has that (deceiving) powerful sound, and the most wonderful carbureted crackling on the overrun. It is really something to be in a town of "Ho-hum...another Ferrari, that's the second Maserati I've seen today, just another Jaguar XK8....well, at least its not another pedestrian Honda NSX."





I go back to the Toyota Amlux showroom too. They haven't changed the movie yet, but they did change the cars! The silver MR2 is now green with a tan interior, the silver Celica has been replaced with yellow, and the silver Altezza RS200 has been replaced with a white AS200. 2.0-liter straight-six (1G-GE) with a six-speed manual and slightly different interior, still really sharp looking. I am surprised to see that the Japanese Domestic Market Celica is 192hp instead of 180hp!

Toyota Amlux, Ikebukuro. Foreground: Altezza. Background: Celica GT-S
Damn, that's a good looking car! I think white is my favorite color for the Altezza, and I love the blacked-out grille of the AS200.

Too bad you can't see the character line that runs down the side of the car better. Remember also that this is THE car that originated this look for the taillights.

My favorite area of the car has the be the front fender. Look for more front fender shots later...:-).

See even more pics of this car (and others) in my Japanese car gallery

I pestered the girls who work there some more. One I didn't talk to actually started a conversation with me! We talk for while and She wanted to take a picture of me in the car. I oblige even though I already have about a zillion pictures of the car. She told me that I could speak in English, but I explained that I wanted to practice my Japanese. She asks me where I am from, and after a while I tell her about how much I love the car. I explain that we don't get this version in the U.S., and she replies, "So ne...Lexus arimasu ne?" I didn't have the Japanese to explain. She asks what my car is and when I tell her it is a Corolla Trueno she gets very excited. She tells me my Japanese is good, but I think it is just politeness. I do some shopping in the TRD store, and I am very restrained, thank you. I watch the motorsports video again, and think about how impressive the 1999 season was. It was the first year Toyota became truly competitive in Indycars, the Formula 3 series champion was driving a Tom's Toyota, and the Toyota Corolla won the World Rally Championship. Toyota won the Japanese GT Championship, easily the biggest motorsports deal in Japan. They used a Tom's-built Supra with a 3S-G (turboed Altezza) drivetrain in GT500 to beat out Acura NSX, Porshche 911 turbo, and AWD turbo Nissan Skyline GT-R. In the lesser GT300 division, the FWD Celica (old body style-ST212?) was competitive with the Integra Type-R and Mitsubishi FTO. The Tom's Carina (or was it a Corona Exiv?) was competitive in Japanese Touring Car. And Le Mans...Toyota swept the front row in qualifying, and then lead Mercedes and BMW for 23 hours...when the car broke. They patched it back together for a second-place finish, with the second car also top-five! Just makes your heart swell with Toyota pride, doesn't it? :-)







As I continue on my way, I see a Lancia Delta S4 (Yes, the World Rally Car homologation special.) I think it is a very appropriate to Roppongi: Foreign to Japan, a bit unorthodox, loud, and maybe somewhat crass, but certainly expensive and effective.





I fanasize about Japanese cars in the sunshine-filled lunch counter window. A passing black Corvette breaks my revery. C4 Corvette...a RARE bird in Japan. I know that Toyota sold Cavaliers in Japan as part of the Toyota/GM bed-buddies deal, so GM isn't unheard of, but try and find a dealer with LT1 parts in Japan! The Cavalier thing has been puzzling me. Why would anyone in Japan buy one? Well, maybe they don't judging by how few I have seen on Japanese roads, but why would Toyota agree to sell them? It makes no sense. Unless they are sold at a considerably lower sticker than in America, and isn't charged any import tgaxes, anything JDM in that price range is going to be a better car, whatever your criteria: performance, ride quality, build quality, efficiency, power, etc. I'm guessing from what I've seen that Japanese vehicle tax and registration laws, usually based on size (engine cc and external dimensions) must be different for imported cars. A Cavalier is 2400cc. In Japan, this is one of the biggest and most expensive size categories. Most other cars in the 2.5-liter ballpark are are often straight-six (naturally aspirated or turbo) two or four-door rear-wheel-drive luxury sports coupes, sports sedans, and sports wagons. Sort of like a luxurious M3 in that they have plenty of go, plenty of status, plenty of handling. Four-banger front-wheel-drive small economy cars are 660cc to 1500cc or maybe 1800cc on the outside, and cost a lot less to register. The Cavalier just doesn't make sense.





To kill some time I go to play more driving video games. There is a Ferrari 355 Challenge game at Suzuka...and it is so much fun! The sound is incredible and comes from right behind you. The feedback is very realistic, and the vehicle dynamics aspect of the game is excellent, one of the most consistently realistic I have experienced. The car is definately a mid-engined car on super-sticky tires, so it can be hard to catch once it starts to slide, especially since you can turn the traction control off! The ol' Corolla technique of "any unwanted oversteer above 40 mph? Just floor it and gather the car up!" doesn't work so well with 400 hp. My point is that the car in the game could be made to oversteer, but it was tricky. Add in all the other challenges of the game (it won't let you downshift unless you rev-match in neutral, the computer is very hard to beat, etc.) and hanging the back end out isn't my main priority in racing during the game. Once I had played it a bunch of times and I was getting used to the game, inducing slight oversteer while turning in _felt_ faster, but just like real life, it wasn't really any faster. But I think that Japanese driving enthusiasts live to oversteer, because this Japanese guy jumps in and is drifting all over the track like crazy...almost every corner, any speed...and he would keep up with the computer! There are also a whole range of nighttime highway battle/mountain road drifting games of varying quality, but always featuring Corolla AE86, FC3S RX-7, 180SX, R32 Skyline, etc. Some of these are quite fun too.





Only in Japan: A 308 Ferrari with a large wing on the back (touring style with two drilled-out aluminum central supports and little endplates) hustling down the road, with a Honda S2000 _hot_ on its heels. We're talking inches, and anxious to prove itsself, with an R32 Skyline GT-R, complete with ski rack on the roof, not far behind, and waiting to embarass them both!

As I walk past the station, a Toyota Chaser goes past, pulling out from the parking garage. Japanese drivers generally seem very patient (or at least resigned) and conservative, but every once in a while they uncork it. This guy whooped it up (in first gear) and the sound in that narrow, smooth, unbroken walls, ten-story canyon was unreal! Turbo straight sixes sound amazing! Nothing will ever top the sound of a Formula Atlantic car (or other BDA, BDD, BDX car) but a Japanese turbo straight six...with a loud exhaust it sounds (to my American ears) like a truck down low, but a smooth-running powerful truck. By the time the revs climb to the point of having your full attention, you are just saying to yourself, "What the hell?" Then it comes on the boost. Then...then the revs just climb frantically. On each upshift, the turbo makes a sharp WHOOMP! which you feel as much as you hear. It is wierd for my NA-tuned ears to hear and engine which has such a two-stage rev range. When it starts out, you are figuring, big, lots of cylinders=slow to rev, then it knocks you on your ass. It isn't like the shriek or wail of a four cylinder, but more like an urgent, high-pitched bellow that leaves you standing there, alone, in awe, and making little blowoff valve noises with your mouth.





It was a combination of luck and attentiveness that eventually got me there. I was feeling glad that I had started as early as I did! I walk from the station to Toyota Kaikan (Exhibit Hall) asking directions three or four times on the way there, per Lester's instructions. The surroundings are unlike any part of Japan I have seen yet...they are still urban, but largely industrial, lower and more spread out than in Tokyo...almost like some parts of the American west. This place is cool! Although the city is non-descript suburban/industrial, probably ninety percent of the cars on the cars on the road are Toyotas. Probably half of those are modified Toys! Another lowered Supra, aero-kitted Chaser, whoa! check the rims on that Starlet, loud Chaser, cute girls in a hot Vitz complete with roll bar, and blowoff valves sounding everywhere!

I get to Toyota no problem. As I approach the Exhibit Hall, I see a large screen that says something to the affect of "Toyota Exhibition Hall-Toyota Motor Corporation Japan would like to greet members of the foreign press visiting today: Mr. Jesse Fairbank, USA" Hehehe! It feels like Toyota runs the town. They have a high school which not only meets state requirements, but also grooms students as the next generation of Toyota technical wizards. In America, you never see all the tech and R+D that Toyota is involved in. Although I don't think they are in every cast the industry leader, it is impressive the amount of ground-breaking development Toyota has done and is doing with direct-injection gasoline engines, cleaner diesels, hybrids, electric vehicles, crash-safety, and innovative production facilities. While the Insight is a big deal in America, the Prius has been on the road for three years here. I have yet to see an insight on the road here, but I have seen countless hundreds of Priuses. It almost seems like every tenth car on the road in urban Japan these days is a Prius. The technology in the two cars is also more similar than I had realized. Honda simplified things a bit, but many functions are the same: regenerative braking, auto stop, electric motor assist for hills or passing on the highway. The big difference seems to be in around-town type of running. The Prius starts and drives at city speeds as a purely electric car. The gasoline engine can recharge the batteries at a constant speed through a (separate?) generator if needed...I think...if I am reading the Japanese correctly!

I have a few more minutes until my factory tour, so I continue to look around at the exhibits in the Toyota Kaikan. I have seen that most of Japan's zillion taxis are relatively new Toyota Crowns, but I didn't know that they are mostly GDI versions of...suprise, suprise, a 2.5-3.0-liter straight six. There is a cut away display of one of these motors, and the top of the piston is crazy...dishsed, but not a round or symmetrical dish! I guess both consumption and emissions both went down considerably with GDI. If you don't believe me about Toyota's R+D and commitment to reducing car emissions: Did you know that Toyota is making an electric car in Japan? Yes, it's true. Minimalist 1400 pounds, two-seat, similar size and dimensions to a Smart...designed purely for urban use. No, you can't buy one, even in Japan, but your community can. Toyota is selling them for carpool and carsharing public-car type use only. I have seen a few of them around city streets so far this trip...cool!

Our tour guide meets today's group for the tour and starts to tell us about Toyota. We get some background info on the founder, Mr. Toyoda, and the factory facilities in the area. In the past few years, Toyota has decided that they were really at a risk of falling behind, or looking like they were falling behind, so they started stepping up their expectations of themselves. They have instituted extensive waste reduction/reuse, and recycling programs at their Aichi prefecture factories (the ones I am visiting.) Since the program started, they have reduced waste produced by 85%!! Before I am able to recover from my suprise at the success of this program, I am hit with a fact even more amazing: Toyota is pleased with how effective beyond their original hopes this program has been, but rather than rest on those laurels, they have set a new goal of being a zero-landfill contributor in the near future, and are instituting plans to pull it off! The factories for all the components of the cars are located close to each other to reduce the costs, both monetary and environmental, of transporting parts for final assembly. Toyota provides all the packaging materials in which various components are shipped to them; the boxes become bumper skins, and the packing material becomes headliners. They have these amazing machines that chop and sort car parts for recycling. If the workers doing assembly come across a damaged or defective part, in the hopper it goes. A series of magents, sifting screens, puffs of air, and who knows what other processes, sort the resulting pellets by material. As a demo, they toss a defective wiring harness in. First we hear it being chopped into little pieces, like a mini wood-chipper. Then it flies all around inside, and comes out of two pipes in two piles: One is little shreds of copper wire, and the other is little shreds of insulation and plastic connectors! This machine can handle and sort steel, aluminum, copper, rubber, plastic, dense foam, soft foam...you name it! The factories here don't contribute to water pollution, and air emissions are closely monitored to keep them at some number that doesn't mean much to me, but is well below the level required by national and local regulations. Toyota purifies all the water used in the factories, and the resulting precipitate is collected and used as a fuel. I am really quite amazed to learn all of this!

Toyota has also instituted a program called GOA to improve crash safety. The Prius at Amlux in Ikebukero was part of the GOA display there. They have more wrecked cars here on display. What they are doing is running their own crash tests at higher speeds than government tests. Toyota's new cars now meet government crash standard tests, and pass the same tests at 10% higher speed...this program will also continue to ramp up. Impressive when you think about how much higher the forces involved are at a slight increase in speed. Talk about relentless pursuit of perfection!

The assembly factory itsself is very interesting. It is definately production-line...nothing very personal about it. However, I am disappointed that we can't take pictures, but I can understand why. We tour the factory by following the guide along a catwalk above the assembly line, stopping at certain points along the way to receive a short lecture on the points of interest. I am impressed by the workers' ability to switch between models...I don't think there are more than two in a row of anything on the production line. I ask the tour guide about this, and she says that it is the preference of the workers to have the whole range of models interspersed. More on the guide in a moment... Also of interest: Following painting, the doors and hood and trunklids, along with the windshields, are carried on a separate, but parallel conveyor (above the ceiling) and are fitted to the car last, after interior, suspension, wheels, trim and badges, etc. The guide implies that this process is unique to Toyota; I am dubious, but in any case, it seems a good way to improve access and cut down on dings and scratches. The workers apparently designed the assembly line. They have rollstands on a tether, so they can be rolled up and down along the line with a particular car. The workers also have a self-designed swivel stool they can sit on; it is suspended from above on a long arm that curves way out to the side and back. The height is set at a level that allows one to sit inside or outside the car, going in and out of the trunk, engine compartment, and door openings. Cool! It seems very well thought out, as one would expect it to be when the people who work there daily get to design it. I guess the workers also have continual opportunity to give input and suggestions about effective changes for the future. The thing that suprises me the most about the whole process is the willingness to shut the line down. There is a pull cord that runs above the entire lengths of the line, and at any time, with any doubts or problems, any worker can pull it and shut down the conveyor. The guide explains that it is the first step in quality control. The reason I am so suprised by this is that I know that some other manufacturers, GM for example, almost never shut down the line..."time is money! Who needs quality control?" There are signs above the work areas, reading, "Good thoughts make good products." The tour guide explains that workers can't have good thoughts with unreasonable pressures, hence their level of input on their working conditions. Someone pulled the cord during the time we were there, and it wasn't a big deal for anyone else. Some took a short breather, while others used the time working in place to get ahead a little. After initial assembly upstairs, the cars are conveyor-belted downstairs through a huge hole in the floor for drivetrain, seats, wheels, etc. to be installed.

Our tour guide is a very cute young woman who whole-heartedly believes in Toyota as a company, and seems to love her job as a tour guide. After she introduces herself, I wonder to myself why a Japanese woman would be named Connie, but then I feel really stupid when I figure it out...duh!...Kani. She and I started talking between each of the scheduled stops on the tour. Everyone else in our group is from Iran, and they are going to be opening a car factory soon. I slowly gather that someone outside of the fields of car-production and journalism is a rarity on these tours, as is someone close to our age. I imagine she is usually much more businesslike, but she seems intrigued by me, and is obviously very curious about not only how I got here, but what motivated me to come. I luxuriate in the attention as much as I can. I don't know exactly how to explain it, so I honestly tell her that I am fanatical about Toyotas, I belong to a Toyota club of sorts (the Toy-mods mailing list) and Gary and Rob and some others on the list recommended the factory visit to me, and that I wanted to see the birthplace of my car. She is excited that I am so commited to Toyota, and asks me what kind of car I have. When I tell her about my hachiroku and show her some pictures of me on the track, I get instant recognition. Now we have made a good connection, we are really friendly, just talking away when she is not giving her spiel. The rest of the tour goes great, and I am really startled by her attempts at humor, as most Japanese women I have met seem fairly humorless due to a combination of being reserved and having a different idea of funny. Cool! I am in heaven now! We sit next to each other on the bus, and she starts getting into the Toyota trivia, "Does anyone know why Mr. Toyoda changed the name of his company to Toyota?" She also tells me with excitement that one of Toyota's Formula One drivers, Mika Salo, will be visiting the factory next month, and she is really hoping to meet him and get his autograph. We are laughing and having a good old time, that is, until I tell her that I really really want an Altezza RS, but they aren't available in America. I want an Altezza, and she likes WilL...yuck! "The Altezza is too big, and has ugly taillights." I think WilL is fairly disgusting. Oh well, you can't win 'em all, but at least we had a good time together on the tour.

Back at the Kaikan, I decide to finish looking at the exhibits there I didn't catch in the morning; there are some really enjoyable displays. One small case in a really big room has all of Toyota's Japanese Car of the Year Awards, dating back to the early days, even. They have two race cars on display: a '98 JTCC Chaser with a 3S-GE and a '95 Supra Le Mans with a 3S-GTE. There are also various cutaway displays: GDI straight-sixes, and Altezza 3S-GE to demonstrate VVTL-i, a CVT transmission, a Toyota (Lexus) aluminum V-8, a Prius drivetrain, etc.

Two Toyota race cars on display at the Toyota Kaikan. Foreground is a '98 JTCC (Japanese Touring Car) Chaser with 310hp of 3S-GE power and rear-wheel-drive! Behind that is the Denso SARD Supra that was raced at Le Mans in '95 driven by Jeff Krosnoff, among others. This car features 650 hp from a 3S-GTE...RWD four-cylinders forever!
See even more pics and info of these cars (and others) in my Japanese car gallery

This is a slightly cut away 3S-GE at Toyota Kaikan. It is a rear-wheel-drive Beams motor out of an Altezza. The continuously variable timing through adjustable on-the-fly cam gears is shown in a partial cut-away view. Also note the tubular intake manifold. Too bad the picture of the nearby cutaway CVT (from a Corolla) didn't turn out!

Upstairs they have some fun old TV advertising clips arranged by decade. In the 60's and 70's, they had Corollas outrunning everything in ads: a bullet train, a biplane (?!?) and an archer's arrow. There is an early one bragging about how the 1100cc Corolla (KE10?) would do 0-400m in 19 seconds and topped out at 140 kph (86 mph) and a later ad has a RA23 Celica doing a Bullit (the movie) impression in San Francisco. I think my favorite is one from the early 80's. It starts with dawn light-essentially just a dark grey screen, and you see three sets of headlights slowly approaching from very far away, appearing to flash as they bounce on what must be a bumpy dirt road, and weaving everywhere. It is three KP61 Starlets rallying on a dusty dirt road! The text on the screen is bragging about affordable, reliable, and the best fuel economy you can get, meanwhile the Starlets are doing massive oversteering slides in formation, catching air, kicking up baseball-sized rocks, and generally being driven the way RWD Toyotas should be driven. I watch it three or four times, laughing my head off. There is also some cool 80's Japanese ice-racing footage-KP61s, AE86's, TE72 Corollas, TA22 Celica...fun stuff! I don't spend as much time at the style-your-own-car computer demo, or the films describing all of Toyota's facilites worldwide, but I do really enjoy myself, and would highly recommend the trip to any and all Toyota nuts.

The train station sign at Mikawatoyota (Toyota City) the home of the Toyota Kaikan, and parts of the Toyota factory.

I think what I like best about the town is that everyone is so honestly and genuinely enthusiastic about Toyotas! I spend a while wandering around looking at cars on the street, and this serves as an excellent lesson on JDM Toyota models over the past ten years or so. There are many models and variants we have never even heard about in America, and I see all kinds of cars, let alone minivans, I haven't seen before: Corolla, Corolla II (3-door hatch) Ceres, Marino, Sprinter, Sprinter Carib, Vista, Levin, and Trueno, all Corolla variants, Corsa, Celica, Carina, Corona, Caldina, Chaser, Mark II, Celsior, Soarer, Crown, Windom (ES300) Starlet, Vitz, Platz (Echo) Prius, WilL, Corolla RunX (a tall 5-door wagon with Celica GT-S drivetrain) Opa, Supra, MR2, and very occasionally, but not often, a Camry. I am at a loss for what else to do, and given my sleep record of late, I am so tired. I am also in bad need of a men's room. I find one in the department store in Shin-Toyota, but the rest of the train ride is a long one back to Nagoya.





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