Japanese have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Americans. Historically, it’s understandable that they don’t always see Americans with a good eye, and recent events involving American tourists (Thinking of you Logan Paul/Johnny Somali!) definitely won’t help them with their prejudices. Yet, at the same time, there’s always been some sort of fascination with anything American, much in the same way that youth culture in America sometimes gravitates toward Japanese culture.
People love contrasts and the contrasts are pretty evident, having lived in both America and Japan. Everything American is widely different when compared with anything Japanese. Big, loud, and slightly obnoxious, direct, a tad confrontational … those are definitely not Japanese traits.
It’s quite the opposite, which is exactly why some Japanese citizens are quite attracted to quintessential ‘murican stuff. Like NASCAR!
Yes. Some part of the population from the land of tight narrow and technical mountain roads eyes the big V8s running around in circles at 200+ miles (sorry, at 300+ kilometers per hour) with some sort of interest. Who would have thought? In both 1996 and 1997, the NASCAR Thunder Special took place on Suzuka International, a road course mostly known for hosting Formula 1 races. Then, in 1998 at Twin Ring Motegi! An actual oval race in the land of the rising sun!!
But why am I telling you about all this? Because there’s a NASCAR truck, of sorts, at the Tokyo Auto Salon! Here is the WiZ Concept XIX CX-Vision!
This is a 2017 Mazda CX-5 with its original 2.5-liter, 190hp engine combined with the original slushbox and transformed into a NASCAR truck. Every year this place surprises me.
It’s on air suspension, the livery is an hommage to the 787B rotary LeMans racecar, and they built a safety cage and interior that looks somewhat accurate. It’s really Something that could only ever come out of Japan!
All photos: Flavien Vidal for The Autopian
No way I could do this to mine, but そうだよ、兄弟
Also, if I didn’t already have plain Canadian Tire steelies and if those wheels didn’t max out at 16″, I might have spent way too much money for something to put winter tires on.
Haha, that’s awesome.
Hopefully Mazda’s CEO doesnt sue. He hates motorsports almost as much as Subaru’s CEO.
I like it. Thumbs up.
This is not
The greatest Mazda in the world
This is just a Tribute
There’s no Escaping that fact.
Zoom-zooming in circles.
This is genius. May I be your comedy Protege?
I really wish NASCAR would get back to its ROOTS, and by that, I mean running bootleg sake distilled in the hills of Chiba Prefecture all through the Tokyo metro while trying to avoid the cops, who just want to nab them Takashi Brothers before they find the park & ride for the Shinkansen and delivery their suitcases full of Karaoke Fuel to Kyoto!
Bad renditions of Sinatra are a blight on society.
This reminds me of an absolutely divine meme where someone’s edited Hank Hill’s truck into an Initial D screencap with the caption “Now Bobby, I don’t condone street racing but someone’s gotta teach that dang Fujiwara boy a lesson.”
There’s a great video called “King Of The Hill Is My Favorite Anime” that edits the episode where Hank helps his mom move into a shounen flashback sequence. It tries to be ironic but it just works to well and shows Bill at his best. Honestly if someone edited entire episodes to be like that I’d watch all of it before I ever watched an episode of the reboot they’re working on.
I would watch that show.
Every episode would end with a still-frame shot of them jumping a wooden bridge with a
Waylon JenningsToshiro Mifune voiceover setting us up for a cliffhanger!I understand there’s a bridge on the River Kwai. That would be madness.