Ged Carroll

Category: japan |日本 | 일본

Yōkoso – welcome to the Japan category of this blog. This blog was inspired by my love of Japanese culture and their consumer trends. I was introduced to chambara films thanks to being a fan of Sergio Leone’s dollars trilogy. A Fistful of Dollars was heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo.

Getting to watch Akira and Ghost In The Shell for the first time were seminal moments in my life. I was fortunate to have lived in Liverpool when the 051 was an arthouse cinema and later on going to the BFI in London on a regular basis.

Today this is where I share anything that relates to Japan, business issues, the Japanese people or culture. Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Lawson launched a new brand collaboration with Nissan to sell a special edition Nissan Skyline GT-R. And that I thought was particularly interesting or noteworthy, that might appear in branding as well as Japan.

There is a lot of Japan-related content here. Japanese culture was one of odd the original inspirations for this blog hence my reference to chambara films in the blog name.

I don’t tend to comment on local politics because I don’t understand it that well, but I am interested when it intersects with business. An example of this would be legal issues affecting the media sector for instance.

If there are any Japanese related subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • Generations or life stages?

    Generations or life stages? – Why am I asking this as a question? I’ve had a bit of time to think about consumer behaviour. At the moment you can’t throw a stick without hitting ‘an’ expert in at least one of three generations:

    • Gen-Y or millennials
    • Gen-Z
    • Gen-A

    There are older generations that also exist but are only mentioned in passing:

    • Gen-X
    • Baby-boomers
    • Silent generation
    • Greatest generation
    • Lost generation

    The principle behind this is that each generation would relate to the world in different ways. The implication is that each would require different marketing considerations radically different to anything that has come before.

    This lens has a number of results:

    • It encourages marketers to segment markets in certain ways. This facilitates marketing assumptions that are unhelpful
    • It continues marketing focus on a set age group, rather than mining a portfolio for lifetime spend
    • It feeds into a wider marketing culture of ‘disruption’ that can be unhelpful

    A history lesson in generations

    Generational labels seems to have been started in journalistic essays. These essays tried to convey common experiences. For instance, the sense of loss and dislocation that many felt after fighting in World War 1.

    The massive scale of the war meant that armed service touched more people. Over time they have been used to illustrative effect by governments, media and business.

    Generations

    This has meant that generations varied in length. I reviewed a raft of reports and media coverage and found that from Gen X onwards there has even been an variation in definition of what the generational length was.

    Over time an industry of journalists and consulting firms has been built up. They point out the various flaws that are supposed to characterise each generation. They point out to company boards how their businesses will be disrupted if they don’t change the way they do business to meet the needs of a generation. This consulting mirrors the way consultants have preached a similar disruption message around different aspects of digital transformation and requires a regular cyclical refresh.

    Is this a deliberate ruse? Probably not, but book publishers need books and consultants need to bill. Both of which are insatiable machines that require a ‘new, new thing’.

    A final factor to consider in defining generations. Historically the definition of generations has been done with a global north, western-centric lens. If you look at markets like China the differentiation tends to be done in decades: post-90s generation, post-80s generation and so on.

    Now, we’re in a time period where the bulk of young people are going to be born in the global south. There is likely to be emigration north for economic opportunity. There is likely to be a corresponding need due to population decline in developed nations. A trip to Tokyo or London already shows the impact of this. From nurses and care home workers to combini staff and baristas; many of the workers are young and foreign. A global north, western-centric lens makes even less sense.

    Period trends and generation trends

    One of the things that the generations stereotypes can blind marketers to is cross-generational trends within a period of time. One of the stereotypical characteristics that Gen X was labelled with was cynical. Researchers found that Gen X did exhibit higher levels of cynicism than previous groups of 18 – 29 year olds.

    But Stanford University took the research one step further and looked the accuracy of this cynical label. What they found was that all generations at that time were exhibiting higher levels of cynicism. It was a period trend rather than a generational one. As a marketer, that might have a huge implication in the way you deliver messages beyond Gen X.

    What are the causes of this increase in disaffection? “Media commentators may be right in emphasizing the malaise-inducing effects of ‘historical underdosing’,” the researchers said. The term refers to the belief that history has come to an end, with such institutions as the family and government becoming ever more corrupt and exhausted. It suggests that the great regenerative struggles of the past, such as civil rights and feminism, have already been fought, and all that is left is the winding down and decay of present institutions. “Generation X commentators have, however, glossed over the possibility that such disaffection can just as easily affect older folks as younger ones. If anything, older individuals are especially vulnerable to romanticizing the past and thus becoming disaffected and disengaged with the present,” Grusky said.

    Oldsters Get The Gen X Feeling | Sci Gogo

    David Grusky, one of the two Stanford sociologists who conducted the study highlighted some great actionable insights that marketers at the time could have used when targeting older market segments. Unfortunately, the Gen X = cynical impression stuck, marketers failed to ask the right questions and got the wrong heuristic.

    Grusky’s work and the rise of social media adoption across all age groups does make me wonder about Gen Y’s reputation for narcissistic behaviour – when we could be living in a more narcissistic time.

    Unhelpful stereotypes

    Stereotypes are heuristics that help us make sense of the world. If we constantly had to analyse everything, we’d have been eaten by large predators whilst in a state of analysis paralysis. In a resting state our brain accounts for 60 per cent of our body’s glucose consumption. So anything that can drive energy efficient actionable insight would make evolutionary sense.

    It is unlikely that the modern marketer will be eaten by a pack of ravenous wolves. Yet stereotypical heuristics will make their way into the decision making biases of marketers and their management teams.

    Generational labels lend themselves to stereotypes and some of the biggest of them are questionable at best.

    • Boomers are selfish and don’t care about the planet. The publication of Silent Spring by biologist Rachel Carson, could be considered the point at which the modern environmental movement was born. Counterculture figure Stewart Brand lobbied for the release of the iconic ‘blue marble’ whole earth in space photo by NASA which galvanised the environment movement. His Whole Earth catalog series also went on to influence the ‘back to the land’ counterculture movement that sprang out of hippydom. It is no coincidence that groups like Greenpeace and Friends Of The Earth were founded around this time. The first Earth Day happened in San Francisco in 1970. As the counterculture movement went around the world in the early 1970s, so did green-orientated political parties. Without Boomers there wouldn’t have been an environmental movement. Extinction Rebellion (XR) stands on the shoulders of direct action groups like the Greenham Common women and Greenpeace. There is however, anecdotal evidence to suggest that public interest in environmental issues dips during an economic recession and this seems to have been the case after the 2008 financial crisis.
    • Gen X are slackers. They came into a world that had much less economic opportunities than their parents generation. The lack of balance in corporate culture was as unattractive to young Gen Xers as it was to Gen Y and Gen Z first jobbers. As outlined earlier, the move to deregulation and globalisation led to increased cynicism thoughout generations at the time when Gen X entered adulthood. Yet on the flipside, their entrepreneurship has been lauded over the years. Though often that entrepreneurship was forced upon them as industries globalised. It is interesting to see how the slacker label moves. The lying down movement in China amongst new graduates and 20 somethings sounds very like ‘slacker culture’
    • Gen Y are tech savvy, demand work life balances and are narcissistic in nature. Pew Research indicates that Gen Y do indeed adopt smartphones and tablets, but despite the research article headline of Millennials stand out for their technology use, but older generations also embrace digital life – the difference with Gen X is just three percent in terms of smartphone usage and tablet usage is broadly comparable across generations
    • Gen Z are digital natives and are socially conscious. A classic example of how the truth is more complex and nuanced than this is a recent Kings College London research done into UK attitudes and behaviours towards COVID-19. In it is a group called resistors. They buy into the fake news around the virus, are more likely to violate the lockdown regulations and the majority are in the 16-24 year old category.

    Massively parallel cultures

    Cultural movements used to align in a serial manner to moments in time and space. There was a serial progression as one cultural movement was created in reaction to; and on the legacy of another.

    The nature of media and connection changed with technology. Cheaper air fares mean’t that the world has become much more accessible. I am not saying that it is cheap to fly to Australia, Japan or Brazil – but it is cheaper than it was. In my parents life time in Ireland, families and friends used to hold a wake for members of the community emigrating to the United States or Australia.

    The reason for the wake was that the distance was only likely to be bridged by the occasional letter and post-departure it was unlikely that they would be seen again.

    Media is no longer something that has a time slot like the morning paper, drive time radio or prime time TV; but a membrane that surrounds us. It is in our pocket with us everywhere. We are the media; we have a portable broadcast studio of sorts in our pocket and the means of transmission.

    To give you an idea of how revolutionary this concept is, here’s a clip from Back To The Future which was released as a film in 1985. Note the sense of wonder that the 1950s era Doc Brown has when confronted with a 1980s vintage JVC camcorder.

    Victor legendary video camera
    The iconic JVC GRC-1 camcorder. It is branded Victor for the Japanese domestic market.

    The Victor / JVC GRC-1 camcorder had been launched the previous year and was the first all in one VHS camera and recorder – so at the time of the film release this was still cutting edge stuff.

    The ‘Mondo‘ series of documentaries shocked and thrilled audiences with practices from around the world that would have seemed fantastical. At least to the average member of the public in the Italy of the directors, or mainstream audiences in the US. As the introduction to the English dub of the film says:

    Intro to Mondo Cane

    By comparison e-commerce and websites allow us to sample culture and products from around the world. You have access to Korean dramas and beauty tips, vintage Hong Kong movies, Brazilian funk carioca music from the ghettos of Rio De Janeiro or Chinese rap. The web isn’t a perfect memory, content disappears or often never gets seen.

    Content is often mediated through algorithms governing e-commerce, search and social platforms. But despite those impediments; culture evolves and morphs in a massively parallel way. Which makes a mockery of generational stereotypes.

    Consumption is becoming an attenuated concept

    Part of the focus on generations is due to a focus on grabbing early life time spend. Brands want to get consumers as young as possible. An oft-mentioned heuristic was that half a consumer’s spend was done before they reach 35. There are a few things wrong with this approach:

    Marketing science research has shown that consumers are brand promiscuous. Light consumers are more important for brand sales than heavy consumers. So an exclusive brand building focus of going after young consumers like a game of ‘capture the flag’ isn’t the most effective approach.

    We also know that there are a number of factors attenuating consumption patterns and spend along the generations so a youth focus makes less sense:

    • Older people tend to have more assets and the ability to spend. This is due to property prices, historic performance of pension investments, life insurance policies and a lack of student loans
    • Earning power in real terms has been declining over time. Taking into account a parity in education and inflation; boomers earned more than gen x, who in turn did better than gen y. Gen x managed to keep ahead of boomers only by having both partners in a marriage go out to work, to compensate for the man’s reduced earning power
    • Younger people are having to spend a larger degree of their income on somewhere to live. Student loan repayments creates an additional drag on their income
    • People are delaying life stages like marriage later due to the financial burden and have been having less children in most of the world
    • People are acting younger for longer and this reflects in their consumption patterns. Part of this is down to ageism in the employment market and part of it is down to them continuing to do what they love. I know Dads of college age kids who still skate or do martial arts. I know pensioners who love to buy lip gloss. An exception to consumer attenuation is the luxury sector. Luxury consumers have become younger, but that is also because the centre of gravity in luxury has shifted from US consumers to east Asia. Scions of first generation entrepreneurs from China, Korea, Singapore and Malaysia are not afraid to embrace their affluence

    Life stages rather than generations

    Culture is very important in making brand messages resonant. Culture is also adrift of generational labels. It is ethereal and finds its way to people, now more than ever. Being massively parallel in nature has made culture more democratic.

    Thinking about the brand challenge in a consumer life stage way allows us to build strategic rather than short term communications. It allows to think about meaningful brand propositions across price, place, promotion and product. And then manifest it in a way that resonates culturally over time.

    In an industry when marketing effectiveness is failing and campaigns are taking an increasingly short terms approach. Peter Fields’ report The Crisis in Creative Effectiveness for the IPA highlights the dangerous position that marketing is in. It’s a big hill to climb, but a good first step would be to ditch ineffective stereotypes as part of an effort to improve the quality of long term thinking and ideas.

    Update (August 17, 2020)

    BBH Labs looked at group cohesion data and in the process added another reason why generations don’t make any sense.

    The Group Cohesion Score is our attempt at calculating the relative likemindedness of a group of people. Using TGI’s Jan-Dec 2019 UK dataset, we measured the size of the average majority viewpoint across 419 lifestyle statements. These statements range from the mundane (“I use a refillable water bottle most days”) to the profound (“There’s little I can do to change my life”) to the philosophical (“A real man can down several pints in a sitting”). The available responses are Agree, Disagree, Neutral or Not Applicable. These statements will elicit conflicting opinions in every group, but close-knit, homogenous groups (e.g. Mormons) will have larger majorities than weaker ones (e.g. left-handers). You can access the same data yourself through TGI – we haven’t manipulated it in any way.

    As an entire populace, the UK’s Group Cohesion Score is 48.7%. In other words, the average majority opinion is held by 48.7% of the population. …On average, the generations have a Group Cohesion Score of +1.3, making them only marginally more like-minded than the nation as a whole. For Gen Z, this score falls to +0.2. People born between 1997 and 2013 have no stronger connection to each other than to the rest of the country. There’s an entire industry built on churning out Gen Z insights and it’s complete bollocks. They have no worldview.  

    Puncturing The Paradox: Group Cohesion And The Generational Myth | BBH Labs

    More information

    From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner

    Generation X not so special: Malaise, cynicism on the rise for all age groups | Stanford News Service

    Gallup Historical Trends | Environment

    Living: Proceeding With Caution | TIME magazine

    X Saves the World: How Generation X Got the Shaft but Can Still Keep Everything from Sucking by Jeff Gordinier

    Creative effectiveness is collapsing, claims new IPA report | Contagious

  • Grateful Dead wall of sound + more

    The Grateful Dead Wall of Sound. An amazing documentary about the sound system that The Grateful Dead used to tour with.

    Grateful Dead at the Warfield 10/09/1980
    Grateful Dead at the Warfield 10/09/1980 by Chris Stone

    The scale of it is very impressive. Having listened to Grateful Dead bootleg recordings, the sound system is also extremely impressive for the high fidelity sound that came from it.

    Fantastic case study from TBWA\Chiat\Day for Adidas. Billie Jean King your shoes. The background was that Billie Jean King played her iconic game against Bobby Riggs in a pair of blue Adidas shoes back in 1973.

    To celebrate this win, Adidas would spray paint whatever trainers you had to look like King’s. There is also a connotation of ‘ownership’ in the graffiti world by overspraying someone else’s work. That makes this campaign work on a number of levels, in particular when you see a Nike Air Force 1 ‘Kinged’.

    The North Face Japan put out this great video that shows how to make a wallet from cardboard packaging. It is interesting the way it strays straight into Patagonia territory and taps into the spare time that people would have self-isolating. It keeps a brand aligned to the great outdoors engaging prospective customers indoors.

    RZA goes in-depth on the Wu-Tang Clan’s love of vintage Hong Kong wishu films and how the influenced their music. It also works as a great tour of all the classics in Hong Kong cinema. I am surprised that this hasn’t been done earlier.

    Great vintage recording of Kraftwerk. What I like about it is how the simple instruments that Kraftwerk had fabricated and played allow the mix to ‘breathe’. There is clear space allowing each instrument to be heard. This was partly due to the simplicity of the technology. It was also influenced by a wider movement in Germany to define how the country should define itself moving forwards. Kraftwerk looked at a modernism as a way to redefine what it meant to be German. The music is somewhat influenced by the Bauhaus school of design.

  • Japanese environmental sounds + more

    The meticulous design of Japanese environmental sounds – ‘kankyō ongaku’ – a strand of Japanese minimalism that emerged in the 1980s to soundtrack the architectural wonders and commercial advancements of the country’s economic boom years. In the west we put up with muzak; but the Japanese environmental sounds are highly engineered minimalistic experiences

    Visualizing the Most Loved Brands, by Generation – you do have to wonder about of the quality of the data

    The Internet Used to Make Us Smarter. Now, Not So Much. | Douglas Rushkoff – we too easily lose sight of what it is that’s truly revolutionary. By focusing on the shiny new toys and ignoring the human empowerment potentiated by these new media — the political and social capabilities they are retrieving — we end up surrendering them to the powers that be – I think this is as much about how is online as the online tools

    macos – How to find cause of high kernel_task cpu usage? – Ask Different – this is quite surreal TL;DR charge your laptop on the right hand side – what on earth is going on here.

    #SafeHandFish – I love this idea of repurposing packaging, but I wonder where they got the blue lids from?

    Amazon makes books, video, music and more available for free – Amazon sees if it can get UK consumers to adopt its services during the COVID lock-in – this is all about habit building

    Imagination Commits to Keeping U.K. HQ – For Now | EE Times – underlying this is very likely to be a worry for Imagination that a move to China could end up with its intellectual property owned by China. And that could worry its major customers, including Apple  — a customer that the now former CEO Ron Black worked hard to win back

    Luckin fraud admission leaves more questions than answers · TechNode – using part of his handsomely-valued Luckin shares as collateral to take out loans, Lu Zhengyao has made away with in excess of $500 million. That amount would have been much, much smaller if Luckin’s numbers were accurately reported. All this makes it hard to believe that COO Liu Jian would commit fraud without the actual or constructive knowledge Chairman Lu Zhengyao, CEO Qian Zhiya and CFO Reinout Hendrik Schakel. My present hypothesis is that Liu, as a long time errand boy for Chairman Lu Zhengyao, has taken the fall to buy time for Luckin’s management to work out their next move – interesting read. It does make you wonder about other Chinese firms

    Booking Holdings to announce lay-offs after securing $4bn loan | Financial Times – (Glenn) Fogel told the 530 employees on the call, which was first reported by the Dutch newspaper NRC, that bookings on the travel company’s platforms had dropped 85 per cent year-on-year in the preceding week and that the loss in revenue because of reduced rates at hotels was even greater. – I’d imagine that’s going to blitz their Google advertising spend reputedly 10 billion dollars a year pre-COVID

    Why China is losing the coronavirus narrative | Financial Times – just wow, it won’t affect public opinion that much, but will affect government and wonks : When Roger Roth received an email from the Chinese government asking him to sponsor a bill in the Wisconsin state legislature praising China’s response to coronavirus, he thought it must be a hoax. The sender had even appended a pre-written resolution full of Communist party talking points and dubious claims for the Wisconsin senate president to put to a vote. “I’ve never heard of a foreign government approaching a state legislature and asking them to pass a piece of legislation,” Sen Roth told me last week. “I thought this couldn’t be real.” Then he discovered it was indeed sent by China’s consul-general in Chicago. “I was astonished . . .[and] wrote a letter back: ‘dear consul general, NUTS’.”

    ‘A level playing field’: digital giants will have to pay for news | Sydney Morning Herald – interesting move ‘Josh Frydenberg will impose a mandatory code on the digital giants after losing faith in their work on a negotiated settlement with Australian media companies to reimburse them for news and other content.’

  • The dream garage

    My friend Adam came up with the dream garage. By some quirk of fate you are wealthy. No fucks given kind of wealthy. You have a garage and it has 10 spaces. What would you put in this dream garage and why?

    Assuming that you aren’t legislated out of using the collection in the dream garage; I thought about this in terms of use cases.

    I’d want at least a couple of vehicles that would be useful. A couple that would be fun and the rest would be kept for my appreciation of some part of their design. I’ve not given any thought to maintenance or depreciation and have assumed that any challenges can be handled with enough money.

    Useful

    BMW M535i (E28)

    1986 BMW M535i (E28) (preferably in a dark colour where the original owner opted for the debadged option. In its day it was a car that hid its performance with mediocre looks. Now its still a respectable performer that won’t turn heads. So ideal for nipping to the local supermarket for the weekly grocery shop. Its also mercifully free of computerised user experience.

    Mercedes G550 4×4 Squared

    Mercedes G550 4×4 Squared (not a US market car though). The Mercedes G-Wagen is a capable off-roader already. But re-engineering it to handle portal differentials from the Mercedes Unimog made it even more capable. The portal differential means that there are is less to catch underneath the car. This allows the vehicle to have a ludicrous ground clearance. You could have got away with a relatively modest diesel engine. But Mercedes wants to sell this to plutocrats and professional footballers. So you get a twin turbo V8 petrol engine and a luxurious interior. If I had the chance I’d have it refitted with a diesel, waterproofed electrics, a heavy duty winch, a truck like exhaust and air snorkel to aid fording water off-road. I figure that if you have a ten car garage, you probably also have a good deal of land to go with it that requires good off-road capability.

    Fun

    Fun is immensely subjective and this makes anything that I put in this use case open to debate.

    Mazda Familia GT-Ae

    Mazda Familia GT-Ae. In the mid-1980s the FIA shut down Group B rally cars because of some high profile accidents. They replaced them with cars that were much closer to production cars called Group A. Manufacturers like Lancia, Toyota and Mazda saw and opportunity further burnish their reputations through motorsports. Outside of Japan the Familia was known as the 323. The GT version was their entry into Group A. It featured a 1.6 litre engine. It had four valves per cylinder and used turbocharging to force air into the cylinders for more power. It saw some success in world championship rallying when it was introduced in 1985. The GT-Ae was released in Japan three years later. It had a number of enhancements including a rear viscous coupling differential and a little more power.

    The GT-Ae is less famous than peers like the Lancia Delta Integrale or the Toyota Celica GT4. But that means its relatively discreet by comparison, the average car buff wouldn’t realise what you had.

    I also like the idea of small, lightweight capable hatchback that isn’t festooned with electronics. The Familia GT-Ae is sufficiently rare that it is hard to find material about it on YouTube.

    Ford RS200

    Ford RS 200 was an attempt to claim back honour. The early 1980s saw Ford of Europe humbled by manufacturers like Audi and Peugeot. Ford had historically put a halo around its car line-up through motorsport and warmed up versions of its own road cars. That formula had been up-ended by the arrival of the VW Golf GTi in showrooms across Europe. Worse still, its rally cars, notably the Ford RS 2000 was rendered obsolete by the move to Group B and the Audi Quattro.

    Ford eventually addressed this with the RS 200. The formula doesn’t sound that promising. A small dumpy looking coupe, assembled by the Reliant Motor Company. The engine was a warmed over design from the 1960s which had originally been put in a failed project to build the Ford Escort RS1700T. The engine suffered terribly from turbo lag at low revs, which was part of the reason why the Escort RS1700T never got off the ground. But this is only half the story.

    Short and dumpy has benefits in handling like the Lancia Stratos. What owners bought was a lightweight Ghia of Turin designed couple, with handling developed by a designer who had cut his teeth in formula one. It had a low driving position and sure footed grip with Ferguson Formula derived four wheel drive.

    Yes Reliant cars were made so bad Ford had to have them reassembled. But Reliant did make lightweight composite plastic based cars. The interior had parts predominantly taken from the Fiesta and Sierra product lines. But that lack of luxury, also meant easier to replace parts and less weight than luxury switchgear. An article published by Autocar outlined the potential of the Ford RS200 if Group B rallying had continued.

    I wouldn’t want a highly tuned version because I am not a skilled professional driver, but I would like the high travel suspension. Again there is a lack of technology to distract from the driving experience.

    What looks like publicity footage shot by Ford to demonstrate their new car. It rides a bit high as the suspension is set up for rallying. The YouTuber claims that the driver is the late great Bjorn Waldegard. It is more likely to be fellow Swede Stig Blomqvist, it is definitely Blomqvist in the last bit of the montage as he is clearly recognisable behind the wheel.

    Art

    Honda S800 coupe

    I love small cars. For my sins the best and worst car that I’ve ever owned was a Fiat 126. The engine was terrible, as was the drum brakes and it was tiresome to drive anywhere for anything more than an hour. But it also put a smile on my face more times than any other car that I owned. It handled really well. You could go sideways around corners and still stay in lane. You had a ludicrously low seating position and an exceptionally direct gear change. But the Fiat 126 looks uglier than the previous Fiat 500 and wasn’t well made. But it made me like the idea of small cars. The first car that I chose was the Honda S800. This beat out cars like the Abarth Fiat 500, the various one-off Bialberos and the Alpine A110. I love the way the Honda engineers took motorcycle engineering to formula one and then to a small sports car for the road. And to top it all off they then made it look very pretty. Japanese car companies have continued to make sporty looking kei cars, but the S500 and subsequent S800 were the originals.

    Actor Daniel Wu has the version that I want. He built it and it was displayed by Honda at SEMA. Its a mix of gorgeous period details and warmed over specification and flared wheel arches. I’d like it in white in tribute to Honda’s 1960s era racing cars rather than low level gangsters.

    Via Hoonigan AutoFocus

    Porsche 911S

    The Porsche 911 needs no introduction. I particularly like the 1973 version. The Porsche 911S is the most advanced version of the car, that kept the purity of the original design. You get a moderately powerful fuel injected engine, the alloy wheels by Otto Fuchs KG, a five-speed manual gearbox and seats with head rests which provides a degree of comfort on longer drives. So why 1973? Later the design became adulterated and added to with detail elements like the US safety bumpers. The current models of Porsche 911 look too elongated compared to the 1973 model. So even though my bedroom wall used to have a Keith Harmer airbrushed painting of a wide body late 1970s Porsche 911, I actually preferred the clean lines and smaller stance of the ‘narrow body’ 1973 car.

    https://youtu.be/JN0DWXlhSZg

    Toyota 2000 GT coupe

    Most westerners know the Toyota 2000GT as the ‘E-type’ like sports car in You Only Live Twice. That’s the Sean Connery Bond film set in Japan with the ninjas and a paper mâché mountain as villains lair. The resemblance to the E-Type Jaguar is no accident. Body stylist Satoru Nozaki was inspired by European grand tourers including the E-Type.

    Yamaha did the engineering of the car. They offered it to Nissan first, who turned it down. They then took it to Toyota with low expectations and Toyota said yes. Yamaha took the engine from Toyota’s Crown saloon car and turned it into a sporty 2 litre inline 6 cylinder. When sold they cost more than Porsche and Jaguars of the day. Only a few hundred got made to provide a halo product for the Toyota vehicle range. Toyota reputedly lost money on each vehicle built. It’s just a gorgeous looking car and hence has a place in the dream garage.

    BMW M1

    During the late 1970s through to 1981, BMW built a stunning looking mid-engined sports cars called the BMW M1. The original idea what the Lamborghini would build them on behalf of BMW for production car racing. Lamborghini did engineering work on the car, but then went bust. James May alleged that BMW had to break into the closed Lamborghini facilities and steal back the M1 body moulds. Given Lamborghini’s reputation for temperamental cars around this time it was probably for the best.

    The body was glass fibre reinforced plastic, for light weight. It was styled by Giorgetto Giugiaro. This gave it a clean, futuristic, aggressive straight-lined design. Giugiaro then did designs in a similar vein for the Lotus Espirit. You can see the heritage of the BMW M1 design in the BMW i8. Giugiaro’s styling alone would get into the dream garage.

    The beauty of the BMW M1 was more than skin deep. The body panels were hung on a tubular steel monocoque frame. It had a 3.5 litre straight six cylinder engine. A version of which later appeared in the E28 BMW M5 and the E24 BMW M635CSI.

    It had a comfortable but basic interior and air conditioning. What you end up with is all the best qualities of an Italian and German sports car.

    Nissan (C110) Skyline GT-R (Kenmeri)

    The Nissan Skyline GT-R became famous in the early and mid-1990s. But the Skyline GT-R has heritage that stretches back much further. I chose the 1973 Nissan (C110) Skyline GT-R (Kenmeri) vintage car over later more capable models due to its styling which is why it sits in the ‘art’ section of my dream garage. The slope back, spoiler give it an amazing look. But it also had great technology for its vintage, notably disc brakes all around.

    The C110 Skyline GT-R was made for less than 12 months due to the 1973 OPEC oil crisis. It featured an in-line 6 cylinder engine designed by the Prince Motor Company, whom Nissan bought out in 1966. It had four valves per cylinder which was very rare at the time. This engine would also appear in the Nissan Fairlady Z 432R – a faster limited edition version of the Fairlady Z developed for production car racing.

    Nissan Autech Zagato Stelvio

    Boom-era Japan saw manufacturers like Nissan doing all kinds of interesting things, none more so than the Nissan Autech Zagato Stelvio. This was back when the land of the imperial palace was based on in Tokyo was worth more than the entire state of California. This also explains why Nissan tried to sell a car that cost 18 million yen new. Or more than a Honda NSX.

    Autech was Nissan’s equivalent of Mercedes’ AMG at the time. They had to improve on the Nissan Leopard coupe. Fortunately the Nissan Leopard coupe shared its floor pan with the equivalent Nissan Skyline. Autech put in a good effort working on performance, handling and braking.

    Autech reached out to an Italian design house to give the car a distinctive yet classy look. Interestingly, they chose Zagato. In the end you ended up with a distinctive Italian car with Japanese build quality – which sounds quite appealing. The interior reminded me a bit of the pre-Fiat Maseratis Biturbo models, particularly in the use of walnut wood veneer and leather.

    As well as the boom times of the 1980s property bubble, Japan also had a huge cultural surge. Anime from original manga like Akira and Ghost In The Shell coming out with their own take on cyber punk. I think its partly this time of creativity and cultural relevance that makes the Nissan Autech Zagato Stelvio dream garage material. It definitely looks as if it has come off the screen from the original Ghost In The Shell anime film

    A second reason is the way Zagato always seem to go off in their own direction from a styling point of view. Some of it might be ugly but it is highly distinctive. I know what you’re thinking, it weird as hell. And you’d be right, but it has some interesting ideas. Those front arches have the wing mirrors built into them to reduce drag.

    The wheels are specially designed to funnel air into the disc brakes for cooling and at the same minimise aerodynamic drag.

    The oddness of the car meant that only about 100 or so were produced in the end and hopefully one of them would make their way to my dream garage.

    I’ve talked through my ten choices. What would be the ten cars you your dream garage?

  • Princes music + more

    I have been listening to this mix of Princes music. Prince had a diverse song book and the mix covers Princes music catalogue in some depth. It gives a great sampling of the talent we lost when Prince died

    YouTube has a cornucopia of content including this great documentary on house music interviewing a succession of insiders to tell the story of how house music became a global phenomena.

    Spoon + Tamago had an article about how public baths in Japan were providing online videos for the locked-down customers. Whilst one might not be able to enjoy a good soak, they can enjoy at least some of the ambience. It rather reminded me of the slow TV programming that Norwegian channel NRK, (if you get a chance to watch them, they are remarkably soothing). More on Japanese related topics here.

    A quick film on the Hyman Archive of magazines. Reputedly the world’s largest collection of magazines according to the Guinness Book of Records. It is more important as a source of cultural insight over time. I do feel that something is lost in the digitising of the archive. Vogue Italia or Japan isn’t only about the pictures but the overall heft and feeling that you have holding the magazine. Digitisation only gets you so far.

    A good presentation to listen to on emerging marketing trends. It calls BS on crypto. I’d have been a bit more skeptical on digital and marketing effectiveness. Terence Kawaja and Geoff Ramsey of eMarketer provides some great data points to back up their opinions on emerging marketing trends. It is refreshing to hear them shred crypto. Their approach to trends is very sensible. I always think about Robert X Cringely’s discussion of trends in terms of surfing. That if you go too early you fail to catch the wave.