I love classic Japanese cars. To a lot of people "Classic" and "Japanese Cars" don't go together. The truth of the matter is the Japanese have a long and interesting legacy of car manufacturing. It's true, the Japanese did event the compact economy box, and a lot of 60's Japanese cars fit this profile. Although they didn't really have any large, heavy, V8 muscle cars they had fast little coupes with a lot of personality.
I get excited when I see a mid 80's Supra or 70's Celica on the road. Like all my hobbies (read obsessions) I feel the need to read up on the subject. I started on amazon.com, I have bought tons of books on American and European cars on Amazon so I thought I would find a lot to read on Japanese cars. I was wrong.
First off there are not whole lot of books on the subject, and hardly a one on classic Japanese cars. I found a nice selection of books on Datsun Z's, but that's to be expected. Most Datsun owners don't even think of their cars as Japanese. Some going as far as cramming SBC engines into their little sports cars.
I did some digging and found a title named The Complete Book Of Japanese Import Cars, Peterson Publishing 1977. I bought a used ex-library copy off amazon for $25. It's a thin hard bound book with a color cover and black and white interior pages. Toyota, Datsun, Mazda, Honda, and Subaru are all covered in it's pages. It has a short description and specs on the cars it features and photo guide instructions on doing simple repairs.
The photos of the cars are all in black and white and there are not a lot of them, what is there is cool enough though. I came to find out latter this is somewhat of a rare book and usually sells for upwards of $50.
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| Typical photos found in the Peterson Book |
Next I ordered a copy of Celica & Supra:The Book of Toyota's Sports Coupes, by Brian Long 2007. This book is published by Veloce, the same people who brought us the equally entertaining Datsun Z book. This book is full of color images of every Celica and Supra released up to 2007. Also included are ad mats from Japan and the U.S. featuring these two great Toyota's. Spec sheets, facts, and opinionated articles are all present making this a solid book.
My only complaint is the price of the book. It's a British book so a high price is to be expected but it retails for $39.95 U.S. Given the fact that it's a thick book and the pages are all glossy one could say it's worth it. I guess it all depends on how big of a Toyota fan you are.
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| An example of just one of the beautiful Celica's featured |
Up to this point these were the only books on classic JDM cars I could find. I was left to scouring ebay for back issues of Motor Trend and Car & Driver from the 70's that had write ups on Japanese imports. Months later I received some back issues of the Japanese Kogal magazine Egg. I bought them from a book dealer in Japan that specialized in Back issues of Japanese magazines. He had stuck a flyer in the middle of one of the magazines. I had seen it before, it said something along the lines of "I can send any Japanese magazine available to the U.S." The thought hit me like a ton of bricks, if anyone would have books or magazines on Classic JDM cars it would be Japan!
I know this might sound stupid given the fact that I order stuff from Japan all the time, but I just hadn't made the connection until then. I emailed the guy and he wrote back telling me there were plenty of books and monthly magazines on the subject. The books start out at about $75 and climb up to $250, magazines can be had for $25 to $40.
Typical Japanese magazines are a lot thicker than American magazines. They're of course in Japanese but are very image heavy with the added bonus of funny Engrish throughout. There are numerous titles available but the best seems to be "Nostalgic Hero" and it's off shoots.
Every month Nostalgic Hero features a number of great restored classic Japanese cars, many never available in the U.S. Back issues are plentiful on ebay, but expect to pay a lot when it comes to shipping.
Coming full circle I was in Books-a-Million last week looking in the automotive magazine section and came upon a new title, Super Street Retro. It's pretty unbelievable but it's a Super Street magazine that doesn't feature one Honda! Weird I know. What is does feature is classic Japanese cars from the 60's through the 80's. Informative articles on build-ups, and Garage profiles. I snatched a copy but don't have it in front of me, so I can't tell if it's a monthly, bi-monthly, or yearly. I don't recall any subscription cards in it though.
And that's my quest for classic JDM car books, believe it or not there are not a whole lot of web sites devoted to the subject either, what I have found is listed below. If you're just looking for eye candy cardomain.com is a good place to go. Just plug in the car of your choice and choose display results year oldest to newest.
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http://www.jdmclassics.com/
http://japanesenostalgiccar.com/
http://www.jassics.com/
