It is hard to imagine now but Japanese cars used to be seen as cheap economical cars – good value, but not good fun.
Hino were the first Japanese sports-car makers with their Contessa 900 sprint looking very reminscent of Alfa Romeo’s and the Volkswagen Karmann Ghia, although the Contessa didn’t last long as Hino was soon acquired by the Toyota Jidōsha Kabushiki-gaisha.
The first car to change people’s perceptions was the Toyota 2000GT which co-starred with Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice.
The Toyota 2000GT was a fantastic car, but priced in the Porsche cateogory of its time, so were very rare.
However, the idea was sewn in western consumers minds. By the 1969 you too could be like Sean Connery in an exotic sports car with the Datsun 240Z (in Japan it was known as the Fairlady, in a nod to a series of Japan-only sports cars reminscent of the MG and Austin-Healey British sports cars).
Where UK sportcars fell to pieces in your drive, were the warmed over remains of the parts bin, handled like a pig and were driven by pompous chaps with string back driving gloves; here was a modern sports car. As a bonus the 240Z was also reasonably priced.
If you squinted it could even look Italian, some people fitted lourve shades on the back window to ape the ventilation slats that the Lamborgini Miura had at the time like this well used model I saw in San Francisco.
Whilst Datsun cars had their fair share of problems such as body corrosion they were getting steadily better and the 240Z was at the forefront of this charge. Both Datsun and Toyota was revolutionising the way quality was built into everyday cars, but it was the Japanese sports-car that gave them the brand permission to surge ahead.
Hat tip to Salim whose picture got me thinking on what ‘SXY CHIC‘ should really mean when refering to Nissan | Datsun.
I love this short film shot at The Vinyl Factory in Hayes, Middlesex – it reminds me of the industrial films that were shot up to the middle of the last century.
FT.com / Telecoms – Eircom in talks to restructure its debt – basically Eircom has been LBO’ed into financial ruin by a number of investors since privatisation. I wonder what this says about the EU telecoms deregulation push. Expect a breach of bank covenants in the medium term and a lack of investment in the network for the foreseeable future
Steve Jobs has moved on from mock turtlenecks to black long-sleeved t-shirts. More on the keynote once I have had a chance to digest it all.
Disappointed that no iPod has more than 64GB of memory and convinced that my broadband connection would make the new hockey puck-esque AppleTV absolutely useless – Digital Britain is a sick joke.
Check out this amazing film by Henrik Hansen about custom motorcycle engineer Shinya Kimura work works at Chabott Engineering in California. My father is a mechanical fitter by trade and much of this film reminded me very much of him.
The close-up shots of Kimura-san’s workshop tools reminded me of my Dad’s garage at home with his tools. Like my father Kimura-san has an instinctive relationship with his tools and materials that product design and engineering just can’t teach.
Shinya Kimura’s machines make you realise how soulless modern vehicle engineering has become, the complex mechanical nature of the machines giving his machines an almost organic nature and a steam punk aesthetic.
There film also brought out to me the direct lineage in the work of Kimura-san and the approach and attitudes prevalent in Japanese design through the great artisan and apprenticeship traditions. If you would like to know more about this I can recommend Elements of Japanese Design by Boye Lafayette De Mente.
In terms of the film itself, what makes this even more amazing is that Hansen didn’t shoot this video on 35mm film but on a couple of Canon digital SLR cameras.
Frank Miller of 300 and Sin City fame has produced a commercial for Gucci. This will feature on MTV on September 12.
It is fantastic to watch, but it also a point of convergence between high fashion and geek culture. This has been going on for a while with people like hackette and fashion model Anina who pioneered lifestreaming. Hat-tip to PSFK.
The story of Silicon Valley, that I have helped to perpetuate in my career as a PR professional is that of the classic plucky young start-up founders going from garage to boardroom. Dare I say it there is even a ‘start-up’ monomyth. Bright young things work really hard developing cool | amazing inventions in a spare room | garage. Their ideas inspire rich people or organisations to fund them and they become financially successful. The world is enriched by their innovation. The truth of course is somewhat postmodern in comparison, but that wouldn’t have paid my bills.
There are a number of histories of Silicon Valley, some include the beat and counterculture generations of the 1960s, others include square-jawed engineers who would look right at home on the set of Mad Men. This video of a talk at Google highlights the role of the military industrial complex in the growth of Silicon Valley.
The LDS Church has been running some ad spots in trial markets across the US (and has also posted them to Youtube) which owe a creative debt to Microsoft’s I’m a PC campaign. But I have to admit that this video featuring motorcycle fanatic Jeff Decker for the Mormon’s campaign beats any of the I’m a PC spots hands down.
His sculptures and the vintage bikes in the video are underpinned by an awesome rockabilly soundtrack.
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