The Car Tangent, part 5...

The pace at which the Japanese auto industry evolved and adapted post WWII was staggering. Small commuter cars helped get the nation back to work but after a generation the middle class had grown and were looking for more sophisticated automobiles. The designers at Toyota carefully studied the trends in the US and England and offered contemporary designs domestically in the '50s and '60s. The cars changed shapes and features almost as fast as they did in the west.

The Japanese were exceptional at copying the designs of competitors the world over. The total disregard to IP and in some cases even patents and copyrights helped turn many industries into international players within a few generations. The Japanese created a powerful presence by emulating the West just after WWII. Once they got into a position of power they began leveraging their own businesses and technology to put a run on western auto makers. It was interesting that China got a lot of flack for copying the products and IP from the west in the last quarter of the 20th century. They grew their own industries by patently stealing the products they were meant to manufacture. Now as a major economy they also look to take a slice out of the automotive pie as well as other industries.

If a person were to study the trends that Japan followed in the auto manufacturing they would find many parallels with what their competitors were doing overseas. Japanese drivers were eager to have cars with more performance but not necessarily a huge price tag. As such designers looked at what worked in the US and Europe for performance, cost and power. BMW had a long and distinguished run as a sports car manufacturer. The styling, suspension and even body type of the classic 2002 (production number, not year) model influenced Mitsubishi. They managed to marry German technology and styling with US performance design. Japan was able to catch the tail end of the muscle car movement and put the aggressive shapes into their own designs in the '70s. The Galant for example looked like some sort of hybrid between BMW and Ford. Since the Japanese were splitting the elements of design from muscle car to sports car they could have a less expensive V6 or even 4 cylinder engine to offer consumers. It would be a sacrilege for a classic MOPAR car to be running with half the horsepower of the other Dodge lines but this wasn't Detroit and gas was still a pricy commodity. The Japanese did what they had to in order to have the best of both worlds.

In the quest for performance and price the Japanese created their own version of the muscle car. Highly tuned smaller engines in lighter body 2-door cars helped keep the speed junkies satisfied. The Datsun 510 and Fairlady cars were early examples of Japan keeping pace with the rest of the world. Nissan got wise to the Japanese baby boomers and saw that they also desired a powerful alternative to the passenger cars that helped pull the country out of the war. The Skyline was born from necessity and in the early days borrowed plenty of elements from the West. Stylistically is was just a little bit behind the curve. Japanese designers were still reacting to the trends rather than thinking ahead. That mentality did not really change unit the end of the '80s, when they realized that they were the nation the world looked to for the next big thing.

The Skyline and it's cousin the GT-R would rewrite the book on performance and price. Supercars and Muscle Cars could in fact come from Japan. The import scene would be a long time coming but the threat to US and European racing domination was real. The gas crisis in the '70s and the rise of safety mandates for US auto manufacturers meant and end to the muscle car era. There would still be performance cars here and there through the '80s but the golden age of raw horsepower on big bruisers was done. This was not the case in Japan where tuning helped make the most of smaller engines and safety and even mileage were factors well before the performance cars went into production.

 

Japanese auto makers demonstrated that they had engineers and designers that could compete with the Big Three at every stage of the game. New methods of production and closer relationships between management and employees meant that cars could not only be mass produced but workers would become more loyal to the factories. The quality inexpensive cars that were a hit with the Japanese working class would also become appealing to the western working class. The US auto makers on the other hand seemed to have little motivation to change the way things had been run since the end of the war. There was a clear distinction between the workers and owners, each of whom had begun fighting for a bigger share of the profits instead of working together to maintain their position at the top of the industry. Innovation, quality and loyalty seemed to fall by the wayside. As such Japan and some European companies were able to get a strong foothold in the US market. Driving culture however was more than either economical cars or outlandish muscle cars. Some cars existed simply for the sake of being driven. Sports cars were every bit as important to the identity of each industrialized nation as any car. How Japan and the US differed in this regard will be explored in the next blog. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!

The Car Tangent, part 1...

Friends, welcome back to the beginning of a very long tangent. I have been on a racing, driving and general car kick over the past few months because a concept car shown a year ago was announced as actually going into production. It may seem obvious that the things that I am most passionate about get the biggest write-ups on this blog. I did mention why I did that in the About section of my blog. If you don’t care much for cars then just tune out for the next few weeks. I’ll get back into fighting games eventually. To get back to the subject at hand, Nissan showed off a fun little two door called the IDx at the 2013 Tokyo Auto Show. Both a street version called the Freeflow and a sport/racing version dubbed the NISMO (after the Nissan Motor Parts Racing Group) were unveiled. The announcement of a new concept car may seem insignificant, especially since just about every major manufacturer shows a new concept or pre-production car at every show. There can be dozens or even hundreds of new models at any one event. Audiences do not always have the time or patience to sift through them. However the response for the IDx was immediate. The general public and the press were all over the car, spreading images and articles online like wildfire. It was one of the strongest reactions that any company had gotten during a debut. The reason why may not have been obvious to everybody but those in the know recognized that Nissan was going back to a legacy design.

The IDx was a nod to the 1968 Datsun 510. Nissan phased out the Datsun name in 1986 although the recently brought it back in smaller markets, but I digress. The small car was popular in its day and predated the smash hit Fairlady-Z. The 510 was a cultural touchstone for the parents of people from my generation. Seeing it remade immediately brought back a sense of nostalgia. However there was also a sense of awe to go along with it. The IDx captured the essence of the classic 510 but included the modern conventions one would expect. Bigger wheels, sharper body angles, high tech electronics, engine and suspension that couldn’t have been possible 46 years ago were now available to the general public.

What Nissan did right by the IDx was apparent from the get-go. They did not simply call it the 510 and let the nostalgia critics tear it down. They would have too. The lights were not right, the grill was not right, the body lines were not right and the accents were not right for it to be a “true” remake of the classic 510. Instead Nissan wanted to demonstrate that their designers were going with a new idea but were also free to take cues from the company legacy. These designers had the freedom to make editorial decisions with the car and not put out another boring design based on sales numbers, as was the status quo for the industry. In fact Nissan reached out to the community and asked about 100 teens, the children of my generation what they were looking for in a first car. These were not run of the mill kids either but those that loved cars new and old. They loved the classic Datsun designs yet also wanted a car that was easy to customize, like something out of a videogame. From lights to fenders, seats and wheels, just about every component on the car was designed to be easy to swap out. The spirit of the classic two-door remained despite the radical ideas. The badge and color of the NISMO package in red and white livery gave car buffs a reason to do a double take.

The past was reborn and remixed in Tokyo that night. The decision to go ahead and turn the IDx Freeflow and NISMO into production cars filled my heart with hope. Car design was finally becoming fun again. It had been boring for the first half of my life. From the late ‘70s through the ‘80s there were not many cars, except for the exotics, that seemed to spark my imagination. I was crazy about cars as a kid but also knew that there were some bland cars that were as boxy and lifeless as my early drawings. Cars that once had formidable reputations like the Mustang and Corvette had fallen behind the curve. Something had to change and something did change when a wave of awesome imports hit the US. Whether they had better gas mileage, were more reliable or cost less than US automobiles it was apparent that America was embracing foreign autos. It took a long time for Detroit to take notice and even longer for them to do something about it. By the time the Great Recession hit the US auto makers were in too deep with the old modes of production and design. Change was the only thing that could help the industry and thankfully it was already happening. Nissan was not the only company that used a legacy design to re-launch a brand, if anything they were one of the last to do that. The next blog will look at how the muscle car was reborn. If you would like to sponsor me please visit my Patreon page and consider donating each month, even as little as $1 would help make better blogs and even podcasts!