Drawing really good cut-away diagrams is an incredible amount of work. You’re effectively doing multiple drawings at once, and they all have to fit together in just the right way, and be technically accurate – this is work that requires lots of skill and experience. That’s why they’re such beautiful things, when done right. But what if you don’t have the people around with the needed skills to do it? Or maybe you don’t have the time or money? In that case, there is another way, and I think that’s the path Mazda chose for their Bongo brochure.
You can just physically cut away parts of an actual car! Just make an actual, three-dimensional cutaway diagram, and one that you can photograph from multiple angles! And fill with different kinds of things! Sure, it still takes skill, but a very different set of skills, and you can put multiple people on the job.
Look at the Bongo up top there! That’s a skillful cutaway van, and Mazda seemed to get the most out of it, as it looks like they filled that thing up with all kinds of stuff and took plenty of pictures:
It also appears that they cut up more than one:
…and, even having gone through the effort of physically cutting up vans, they still occasionally commissioned an illustrator:
Honestly, the physical cutting of a vehicle to make a more visible image seems like a good use of time and resources. The ability to shoot it at different angles and with different people or stuff inside just makes it so much more flexible than an illustration. of course, you can’t show as much as you can with an illustration, so, really, I think both have their place.
Looking at these, though, I feel like we have to talk about what a packaging triumph the Bongo was! This was a rear-engined van (or pickup) much in the same vein as the Volkswagen Type 2, but I think the packaging is even better here! Let’s look at that main cutaway again:
Look how flat that rear floor is! There’s a liquid-cooled 800cc engine crammed down under that low floor there, somehow, and the amount of usable volume in these is just incredible. I really love the look of the very early ones, which were marketed as both family/recreational vehicles as well as commercial vehicles.
Look at that sweet add-on tent! And I love that face, like a calm robot of some sort.
While it was also known as a F1000 Panel Van, these were best known under the Bongo name, which eventually became a generic term in Japan for this sort of small, useful, one-box van.
The pickup truck variants had a loading door on the side, sort of like a Chevy Corvair Rampside pickup, and there were passenger and cargo versions, along with pickups with that canvas rear enclosure that old VW trucks had, too, but were never as common here in the US.
Bongos aren’t terribly well known in America, but they’re really remarkable and useful little vans. And, it seems, you can cut away large parts of their bodies and they won’t collapse!
The best use of an early Mazda Bongo is in the original Mad Max film. The budget was tiny and the director sacrificed his own Bongo in a crash scene where one of the Interceptors is chasing the ‘Night rider’…
As a drummer, I lust to drive a Bongo … or two!
As a drummer, I see what you did there…
Sweet mother of Mascarpone…
I NEED A FLIPPIN BONGO!!!
Why are those people sitting on the floor when there is a folded bench seat right there? Right there.
I think in the one pic they are having a cult meeting in the back…see also:
https://www.theautopian.com/this-old-east-german-van-brochure-sorta-feels-like-a-pov-of-being-pulled-into-a-cult-cold-start/
These are awesome! I want to go find a mountaintop and just scream:
“BONGO! BONGO! BONGO! BONGO!”
Twenty years ago, before Porsche (and Mercedes) opened their “new” museums, they had their old ones. Porsche’s was literally an afterthought, a rectangular room adjacent to the factory with a rotating fleet of cars on display because of the lack of extra space (hence the new museum).
In any case, considering the brand’s heritage, you were always guaranteed a nice assortment.
I remember gazing at the original 959 Gruppe B concept car (functional prototype) as well as a production 959 (still to this day the only two 959 I’ve ever seen in person). That second 959 was cut along the middle and you could see its entire entrails cut through and through. An interesting sight, although, I’d honestly rather it were still a useable example.
These Mazda Bongos being much more common (when new), as well as their utilitarian nature, I have no qualms with this.
Jason, the cutaways of the Bongo is of the second gen Bongo (1977-1983), which has a front/mid engine just like in a Toyota HiAce or any number of other Japanese compact vans. The shovel-nose Bongo down below is the rear-engined variety; 800cc was the initial version but the F1000 has a lusty 987cc.
The second-gen Bongo had the same engine as a GLC of the era (1.3/1.4), or larger units up to the 2.2-liter diesel engine which was also briefly used in the Ford Ranger.
When I first saw the pic, I thought it was sold this way. I think they should sell these like this. I’d buy one.
I first became aware of these Asian market cabover trucks while I was serving in the army in Korea in the late 80’s. They hauled all kinds of stuff, including livestock and were easy to load and unload. If they can solve the problem of safety for the driver and passenger this kind of vehicle would fit the needs of a lot of people. The horrors of seeing the carnage from these things being in an accident can’t be unseen…
Here is a photo from an urban explorer site of some Rover 75/MG ZT vehicles cut away for what was likely interior photo shoots.
This reminds me of some vehicles I saw in a salt mine tour in the middle of Kansas. Everything in the mine had to be taken down by the elevator, so everything had fit in the elevator (which if I recall correctly could fit about 12 people). They cut up cars on the surface and then put them back together in the mine, only they didn’t necessarily put everything back the way it was. Most they didn’t reinstall roofs, but some they cut away back doors so they could haul stuff. It was very interesting, but I was really impressed how well some of the cars from the 50s/60s/70s held up after being cut into pieces, stickwelded back together, and then used in a mine for decades.
I particularly enjoy the shadowy couple sitting up front in the camping image. [Reaches for ignition key, whispering “watch this.”]
The grin in the guy’s face: “lets get the fuck away from these morons”…
What’s the thing in the middle compartment below the floor in the white van? Is that a jack stand of some kind?
It looks like a scissor jack to me.
Wonder if Mazda was inspired by what Morris did when they first came out with the Mini in 1959:
http://images.oobject.com/thumbdir/thumbnails/1/9f/19fa89b7f35d8643f1f0fac82797a078-orig
Maybe just a case of GMTA given how both the Bongo and the Mini are such stellar examples of maximum utilization of mininum packaging…
This is a task that Jason is uniquely qualified to perform.
Too bad he was born too late; this was really his time to shine.
Not sure about that. Chainsaws work great on batteries, but not so much on metal car bodies.
You’d be amazed at what a sawzall can do to one, though.
In the original Godzilla movie (Raymond Burr!) a JDM cutaway display car was used as a prop showing the results of Godzillas’ terrible lazer breath. It still had all the contrasting colors on the part cutaways.
“Check out the four wheel suspension drive”
I certainly would, if I knew what it was!
The Sawzall is mightier than the drafting pencil, sometimes.
Sometimes you gotta make a few cuts to make a cutaway.
I love cabover designs so much. Really wish they could make a (safe) return to the US
My first vehicle was a 1985 Toyota Van. It was a total basketcase, it leaked oil, the windows fogged up to 100% opacity on a slightly humid or drizzly day, the steering wheel felt like it was on a stick in a bucket of non-newtonian fluid, the body was 33% bondo and I once accidentally kicked a fender off of it in jest. With the combination of its center of gravity and its aerodynamics, driving it in a gentle breeze could occasionally be terrifying.
I miss it dearly. It was my asylum, my ticket to freedom from loneliness in the boonies. I had it in 1998-’99, my senior year of high school, and it died the day my parents went back home from helping me move into my apartment when I started art school. A few years later, I heard a guy at a landscaping company had an ’89 4WD that had been sitting for over a year unused, but was still pretty clean; I attempted a few times to convince him to sell it to me, to no avail. Probably for the best, I used the money I saved up for it to go back to school (the degree in computer animation will never be used). But if I ever run into something like that again, it’s going to take a ton of convincing me not to leap at it immediately.
All this to say, “word”.
The rear wheels are smaller in diameter than the fronts but wider! Weird.
I had a set of bongo drums like that, one drum slightly larger than the other to give two different sounds. Maybe that’s why they called these Bongos, because the wheel set up sort of aped the drums. Or not.
Presumably the rear wheels are smaller to enable a lower cargo floor in the back? If so, actually pretty clever albeit at the expense of having increased complexity in terms of perhaps having the increased costs of buying different sizes and possibly having to carry two different spares.
Agree, looks like they are needed for the level load floor.
I’ve seen this on some Japanese market trucks too
they should have done this with the Rivian/Amazon van too.