The most entertaining bit of normal car news lately is that Honda and Nissan want to get married. Now, as silly as it sounds, Japan’s automakers love hooking up with each other. Mazda and Toyota share a manufacturing facility here in the states! Still, it’s funny to think about something like the Nissonda Super Cub Nismo. Oh yeah, I’d ride that.
Now, Matt’s headline from the Morning Dump is innocent: Why Honda Is Making Nissan Merge Right Now. But it’s also sort of hilarious when you think about the Big Altima Energy meme, from Sid Bridge:
One need only observe a few Altimas on the interstate to understand that well-executed merges just aren’t a thing for Nissan.
Ash78 made the same joke:
If Nissan talking about merging seems last-minute, just think about every single Nissan you see on the highway.
Are we sure this is going to work out? Anyway, Kevin Cheung makes a funny point, even if it may not be entirely accurate:
The Kanji for Nissan is 日産, and Honda is 本田. Combine the two and you get 日本, aka Japan.
One Japanese car maker to rule them all.
Yesterday, Jason wrote about how you can get so many speedometers at the same time in modern cars. But is that really necessary? From Jesus Chrysler drives a Dodge:
If I had 4 speedometers, I’d set them to display my speed in New York, Chicago, Denver, and LA.
You know what? Today must be Ash78 day because here’s another banger from the Nissan Kicks piece:
“All the other brands with their pumped-up Kicks better run, better run, faster than our Ghosn”
–Foster the Credit-Challenged People
Have a great evening, everyone!
(Topshot: Universal Pictures/Nissan)
Honda is bringing the table to the table in this relationship
Nissan and Honda….
Why is Bryan’s 2JZ, sub-10 second, Toyota-made Supra in the top picture? I mean, I know they overnighted parts from Japan and all, but it isn’t a Honda…
Johnny Tran was driving an S2000 with $100k under that hood
And it still made no torque….
One Brand to rule them all, One Brand to find them, One Brand to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them, In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
Wouldn’t it be “In the Land of Japan where the Sun Rises”?
Sounds like you’re describing Land Rover as it kills off Jaguar with its latest antics.
I promise not to hoard COTDs like I once did on The Site That Shall Not Be Named. Mwahahaha…
Damnit, no matter how hard close I rode on your ass, I still never achieved greatness of my own. Is it – am I? – am I the Big Altima here?
By the ghost of Roy Wort, I am pulling for you!
Honestly, I’d be pretty pleased if “am I the Altima?” entered common usage.
I’m not really a reddit user but here’s the theme I’m riffing on, if you don’t know: https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/?rdt=49542
I did forget to say congrats, btw, ye great hoarder of COTD gold, which is definitely not just the wrappers from those little chocolate coins that taste better because they’re *coins* for gods sake, coins you can eat (more safely than other coins)
Bask in the glory that is the Foster the People reference. For it it greatness.
If I recall correctly, if you combine the Kanji the other way – you get “Exit”
Or is it “Prepared”?
I could never be sure….
Well if you just use the back halves, you get something like “farm products” in either direction…. 産田
If you reverse the order and get 本日…. it’s a bit of a flowery way to say “today/this date”
Funny how languages work some time.
Japanese is a weird language to begin with because combining the characters doesn’t just conjoin the base words, it makes entirely new meanings. Hiragana, or the forty eight phenotypes, are widely used in modern printing because katakana, or the freeform kanji, can be read so many different ways as to make anything a word scramble puzzle. For example depending on how you write it a single sentence written in katakana can be read in up to sixteen different ways. It gets even fuckier with furigana where there’s rules similar to German “kombinaten” or “komposit” words, except you just cherry pick what part of the character you want to transpose to make entirely new words or phrases.
For example with the furigana if you take “日産自動車” or “Nissan Motors” and just cut it down to “日産動車” then suddenly you get “Nissan Motor Vehicles” because the supposition is gone despite losing an entire character.
This difficulty is why people get paid money to translate comics where teenage girls get turned into zombie cyborgs that fire rockets from their kneecaps.
“…where teenage girls get turned into zombie cyborgs that fire rockets from their kneecaps.”
Which could probably have been differently translated to mean
“Puppies are cute too.”