I just cruised by the CC Cohort, and canadiancatgreen has just uploaded a trove of vintage Japanese cars shot at a…vintage Japanese car show. It’s Labor Day, so I’m not going to labor and copy and paste them all over here, so just head to the Cohort, and check them out for yourself.
Lovely cars, and a perfect setting. I wish I were 50 lbs lighter so I could fit inside cars like that.
I owned a 510 2-door sedan when they were new (hard to believe they’re almost 50 years old now), and liked it very much except for three things: the dealer could never solve a carb icing problem mine had; the heater had basically two positions, off and burn your foot; and the plasticizers in the vinyl interior boiled out, coating the inside of the windows with a film that was very difficult to clean off.
So many of those cars were turned into racers, including the one in the picture, that the photo makes me wonder if there are any stock 510 sedans left in the world. If one were really trying to decide between the sedan and the wagon, IIRC, a deciding factor would be that the sedan had IRS and the wagon didn’t.
Reminds me of my 1980(I think)510 wagon, 4sp. It replaced a 1978 Bonneville. You couldn’t get much further apart then those two, especially gas mileage! I didn’t have icing, but I had a pinging problem that the dealer couldn’t fix. I fixed it by disconnecting something under the hood….don’t remember what. Finally started to rust, especially around the holes the dealer drilled in the rocker panels to spray rustproofing into.
In Australia most of them were rallied to death – looks like the one in the photo is set up for that too.
When the 510 (called the 1600 here) body shells became hard to find the rally guys moved on to the newer cars, although there are still a few running around.
There are some stock-standard sedans that have been preserved and I still occasionally see lightly-modified ones in peak hour traffic.
Edit – there is a stock-standard sedan in the pics canadiancatgreen posted to the Cohort – https://www.flickr.com/photos/52345709@N02/36039757244/in/pool-1648121@N23/
Some mates and I campaigned a 1600 Datsun foor door around north Queensland in 85 quite a reliable little bomb it was a rust free Canberra registered car, but the appalling B pillar shake on the Cape Tribulation road was quite scary structural integrity wasnt a strong on these cars, light? yep very, strong? not at all.
Less of an issue when they are seam welded and caged! All the suspension & brake parts are usually swapped for stronger parts too, such as 240K/Skyline.
Nice; thanks for the photos, canadiancatgreen. Dark green vinyl-top coupe is a ’73 Celica ( my ’74 was new car #2). Woodie is a c. ’48 Chrysler Town and Country. Quite a group !
Perhaps the most outstanding of the lot, a Daihatsu Midget II with Astroboy livery
Can’t overlook the Autozam AZ1 (by Mazda), perhaps the height of the early 1990s Japanese bubble?
Our local council had some of those in ute form doing litter duty.
The concept isn’t unheard of in Europe. Surprisingly despite more or less heavy regulation on most other modifications you can still build trailers to your liking from the ground up, including from half a car.
I would be more impressed if the rear half of the car was interchangeable!
Cool show, lot’s of different Japanese cars that I remember, I’m voting for the 510s as 4DR or 2DR for the IRS, seeing those pre-1980 Honda Civics was a treat. All in all, a great display.
Looks like something Red Green might build as a “convertible”: Drive the sedan, switch out the wagonback when you need to haul stuff, then reconnect the sedan for the big night out.
These the Daihatsu wagon/sedan combo and Autozam were all at a Japanese car show it was really cool to see so many neat cars also there was a Colt and a Cedric
My aunt and uncle had a ’57 Chevy Nomad from new, a year or so after the 510 came out they bought a 2 door for around town. They loved it and drove it everywhere. After having it about a year they bought a second 2 door and put it in proper storage to use when the 1st one wore out. They decided to retire the 1st car at 310,000 miles, even though through excellent care it still looked almost new. They got enough out of it to pay for most of a new ’79 Buick Electra coupe. They also pulled the 2nd car out of storage and started driving it, both cars served until they passed away years later (my cousin has the Nomad, and 510)