How A Japanese Funky Car Builder Could Turn A Nissan Rogue And An Infiniti QX80 Into Amazing Retro Machines

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug and marketing opportunity; something that can take you back ten, twenty, or even forty years in time is a highly sellable object. Car companies have certainly made more than a few bucks off of aging buyers looking for what might pass as a fountain-of-youth mobile such as a Mustang or a Challenger. As GenXers, we sometimes think we’re immune to that Boomer-baiting crap, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be happily transported to a different time.

Picture this: You’re riding in the cargo area of a wood-paneled wagon that doesn’t even have a set of seats. You and your elementary school buddy Mike are laughing your asses off at your brother who has just downed some Pop Rocks with a swig of Mountain Dew, bought with your allowance money at 7-11. You heard that a kid died doing that so why not try it? Between news reports on Mount St. Helens and the Iran Hostage Crisis you hear “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” , “Ride Like The Wind” or the Caddyshack theme play through the speakers of the radio controlled by your parents way up front — parents who truthfully don’t care what the hell you are doing back there.

The destination is the near-religious event of The Empire Strikes Back in an actual theater or a place like Action Park or Ebenezer Floppen Slopper’s Wonderful Water Slides, where the concrete gullies you careened down were the consistency of 20 grit sandpaper. There would be blood, or at least major friction rashes all over your skin, the kind that parents today would scream about before taking you to an immediate care or emergency room straightaway. Back then, as I think I’ve made clear by now, Mom and Did didn’t give a shit; you just grabbed your mat and went down the slide again. Later you realized that this was the best time of your life.

Can a car take us back to those carefree times before even things like SAT scores and what the object of our desire thought of us? If anyone could, there’s one boutique car fabricator that might.

Neoclassics Or Nightmares?

In people’s minds, there’s always a magic to the products of half a century before. Going back almost fifty years from today, some people of means longed for the drama of pre-war luxury cars from long-dead brands like Duesenberg and Auburn. The sort-of-solution to this ask was the “neoclassic” car. Low-volume builders would take some existing car of the time and slap on long, sweeping fiberglass fenders and stand-up grilles in front of engine covers featuring fake external exhaust pipes to make something that sort of resembled a glamorous car of the roaring twenties or thirties.

Most car enthusiasts see such creations either revolting or hilarious, or both, yet they found buyers back then in those with sufficient funds but insufficient taste. In America, the makers of the vast majority of these abominations disappeared after the nineties, yet Japan persisted with the idea.

The firm Mistuoka has continued making homages to vintage cars based on heavily modified domestic (Japanese) products. There are Miatas made to look sort of like old Corvettes or Morgans. Numerous Nissan sedans are customized to emulate various old Jaguars. Proportions and sizing are naturally a bit odd, but like a nine-year-old in a Richard Nixon costume it’s cute rather than ugly.

The Viewt is possibly their most well-known product. Looking much like a Mark II or early S-Type Jaguar from the sixties that stayed in the dryer too long, the Mitsuoka Viewt uses a Toyota Yaris as its base:

Earlier (and more convincing looking) Viewts were based on a Nissan Micra (I mean, convincing in a relative sense):

In Japan they go nuts for these, but as a GenXer you probably don’t feel any nostalgia for cars that were already classics for old people to enjoy fifty years ago. No, you want some good old malaise tributes to bring back memories of Big Wheels and Cap’N Crunch. Mitsuoka seems to be starting to get that, as there’s now a rehash of the K5 Blazer they offer called the Mitsuoka Buddy:

There’s plenty of opportunity for Mitsuoka to make far more crypto-malaise examples, and I’ve even suggested a few here and there. I can think of two easy ones that should be next in line to hit the “1980 memories” cortex of your grey matter.

Circle The Wagons

Even if your parents didn’t own a wood paneled station wagon back in the day, there is no way that you never at least rode in one occasionally. The poor family in the pic below doesn’t realize that they’ll be walking when that 350 Diesel blows a head bolt and the class action lawsuit replacement motor won’t do any better (still that 33 MPG figure has to be a record for something that big).

These were so thick on the ground that it’s hard to believe they’re essentially all gone now, and remaining ones surprisingly aren’t worth much, relatively speaking. One exception to the rule is the tough four-wheel-drive new-for-1978 Jeep Wagoneer Limited, later called the Grand Wagoneer after 1984 when the smaller XJ-based Wagoneer came out to sell beside it.

The SJ Wagoneer actually premiered way back in 1962 as the pioneering “sport utility” four door wagon years before the term was coined (though aficionados might say that the 1946 Willys Wagon processor should take the title).

As iconic as the later woody Grand Wagoneer is, the vinyl-tree-sided later versions are really a bit of a bastardization of Brooks Steven’s industrial design firm’s original. My guess is that Stevens never envisioned fake timber slapped onto his Wagoneer, or at the very least that it would just go into the formed recess in the sheet metal that runs the length of the sides (as it did on early models).

Regardless, the woody version is the one people want; they’re popular props in photoshoots with middle aged models leaning against them on the covers of your mom’s Talbots or Chico’s catalogs. It’s hard to believe that Stellantis’s “revived” Wagoneer introduced a few years ago offers no such wood option. Actually considering that they started with a clean sheet of paper you would think that this new Wagoneer could have looked a hell of a lot more like the original in general than the thick-pillared version they gave us (a certain goth dude here even suggested a far better alternative).

Such is the popularity of the old SJ Wagoneer that a firm called Wagonmasters sells fully refurbished examples with optional upgrades like fuel injection and seat heaters (but overall the Wagoneers are essentially bone stock). Sell prices of these restored SUVs go well into six figures, particularly the later models from just before the 1991 discontinuation after a nearly 30 year run almost unchanged (the round headlight holes still exist in the sheet metal under the full width grill on the last ones!):

To some, at around $100,000, a Wagonmaster recreation might seem to be a far more characterful and interesting substitute for a modern SUV like new Wagoneer at the same money. To those that think this, all I can say is that for the love of God don’t do it. Sure, Wagonmasters might add those heated seats and CarPlay but if you’ve never driven a 1963-era vehicle with axles on cart-like leaf springs front and rear I can guarantee that you’ll be shocked at how medieval it will feel. It’s horrible. Hell, even our own David Tracy seems to rarely drive his beloved SJs anymore, and you ain’t even close to being as hardcore as that Autopian founder. [Ed Note: If you buy any vehicle with an AMC 360 engine for $100,000, you need help. It’s not a good engine. -DT]. 

No, those people probably want the look and the old money WASP image of an SJ Grand Wagoneer without the pain. Wagonmasters seems to understand that, so for around two grand they offer kit with a “T” shaped chunk of vinyl timber with dimensional framing to stick on the side of brand-new Wagoneer.

Applying this to the latest large Jeep wagon gives you something that very closely resembles, well, a new Wagoneer with a “T” shaped piece of fake wood stuck to it. God bless them for trying, but they just can’t do what the factory should have done right in the first place if they were not, apparently, so opposed to going “too retro”.

Mitsuoka would have no such qualms about aping the past. Most of their Viewt owners want the old British car design but would not be fond of the way a real Jag Mark II might catch fire or die while driving in the rain (if it even starts at all). This Japanese boutique maker could take the same path using a reliable, new SUV with a lineage that wouldn’t be an injustice to the car they’re trying to tribute.

Wagons East!

There are plenty of Japanese off-roaders with legitimate off-road credibility, and some that we ignore. A little while back I explored the Nissan’s rival to the Land Cruiser, the Patrol. Most of these were never sold in the US, but the latest versions have been distributed here not as Nissans but as the Infiniti QX80. I’m sure that the new seventh generation model will be an extremely capable off roader, but everyone seems to forget about Infiniti offerings. It doesn’t help that they feature styling that looks at once like everything on the road and nothing at all. Scroll past the pictures of the latest one below and try to remember what you just saw ten seconds later. See what I mean?

I’d use this Nissan/Infiniti as the basis for an SJ Grand Wagoneer tribute. The final result is the Mitsuoka Grand Park Estate. Mitsuoka would rip of the front and rear bumper panels, replacing them with items that mimic the front and rear of the SJ. I chose the 1979-83 model with the OG wraparound taillights and a black grille as the one to copy, though the Mitsuoka one would likely be altered far more since I am pretty sure that Stellantis has a legal department.

Note that on the sides I did virtually nothing other than add the rear pillar covers, paint the cant rails body color, and obviously install the stick-on wood. Oddly enough, the woodgrain not only breaks up some of the tremendous visual mass of the flanks of the Nissan underneath but the wheel cutouts in the “wood” actually accentuate the flared fender arches on the original car.

Like with the Viewt, as an enthusiast and car connoisseur you naturally hate the look and even idea of something such as a Grand Park Estate, yet a surprising number of people would likely not agree.

Cruze Control

Sitting in the back of the woody wagon as a pre-teen, there’s other cars that you’d see as part of the wallpaper of daily traffic that, like the actual wallpaper of the late seventies, was far bolder and outrageous than anything offered today.

One of the rather outrageous vehicles you’d likely witness was something that, even then, I wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a joke or not. Would anyone in their right minds take on a four-year fourteen percent (back then) car loan for a subcompact two-door station wagon dressed up to look like a custom van complete with “bubble” windows?

Surprisingly, people did buy the Pinto Cruising Wagon, and as silly as it seemed then I promise that if you took one to a local car show today and parked between a $35 million 250GTO and a 959 you’d make that Porsche and Ferrari invisible; you’d also be part of dozens of smiling Instagram posts.

As Jason has pointed out earlier, the Pinto wasn’t nearly as bad as the press reported it to be, particularly compared to the competitors of the time. Still, by today’s standards, it’s horrendous: slow, poor handling, and it’s like sitting in a deep pit to drive and see out of. Mitsuoka could make a tribute car out of essentially any new car and it would be orders of magnitude better.

Our Mitsuoka Cruze would capture the full essence of the old Pinto fake van, complete with chrome mags and flashy stripes. The headlights and front bumper of the donor car are trashed and replaced by a nose that simulates the little Ford, possibly even using some NOS parts like turn signals and side markers. The rear outside door handles are removed, but it’s still a practical four door with roll down windows on the back doors. Not sure if the seemingly opaque graphics would in fact be “bus side graphics” where you can see through them. Either way, finest porthole windows are installed on sheet metal replacing the rear quarter windows.

At the back we would almost certainly use actual Ford Pinto taillights after filling in the old lamp units.

What, pray tell, is under this flashy skin? Why, it’s a brand-new Nissan Rogue (yes, not a Chevy Cruze), as close to an “any car” as you can get today.  Actually, not so much a car as it is the object third from the left when I walk into the Avis row in the Charlotte International rental center garage at 10PM. The keys are in it, please fill the tank before returning it.

Regardless, the Rogue will drive far better than any Pinto did, and we’ve kept the functionality for the crossover. Only now you will have no problem finding your car in a parking lot.

Yacht Rock On Wheels

Sears is gone, so you couldn’t buy Toughskins jeans even if you wanted to. They stopped making cast iron Yard Darts years ago. My mom wouldn’t want me to get on a Slip ‘N Slide today.

Honestly, the idea of the past is often much better than the reality, but a shot of that romanticized vision isn’t a bad thing every now and then. Maybe Mitsuoka can’t make a fountain of youth, or bring back your pre-dad body, but a good snort of nostalgia they could indeed create.

Guess The Mainstream Car These Bizarre “Neo-Classic” Cars Are Based On – The Autopian

Make Mine Malaise: Our Daydreaming Designer Applies The ‘Pike Car’ Approach For This Nostalgia Machine – The Autopian

The Legendary Nissan Patrol Should Come To America As A Boxy, Back-To-Basics Sport Ute Like This One I Just Dreamed Up – The Autopian

Our Pro Car Designer Fixes The Jeep Grand Wagoneer – The Autopian