By Alex Hendricksen
There is almost no brand more recognizable than Toyota or Honda in the world today. Whether you’re in a Toyota Hilux in the Middle East, or a Honda Civic in the United Kingdom, Japanese car brands have become a staple in many people’s lives, but they haven’t always been as ubiquitous as they are today. Japanese cars have had a rich colorful history in the last century. Today we’re going to discover that history, and learn about some of the unique culture that Japanese people have invoked in their cars and the rest of the world.
Komanosuke Uchiyama, a worker for Tokyo Motor Works, created the first domestic Japanese car called “The Takuri.” Over the next twenty years, Japan continued to try to produce automobiles, with varying success, but were ultimately limited due to lack of infrastructure in place for mass domestic production. Kwaishinsha Motor Car Co., Ltd. and Hakuyosha Company were the next attempts to create a Japanese car company, producing some relative success in the domestic market, but even this ultimately failed.
Japan had to continue to develop in the pre-WWII era. In 1920, the Jitsuyo Jidosha Seizo Company began producing cars, such as the Gorham and the Lila. Later in 1926, the company merged with Kaishinsha and became the DAT Automobile Manufacturing Company, which would later become Nissan Motors.
Toyota has some interesting roots in a place that you might not be familiar with. Toyota’s origins—instead of attempting to make it into the automobile industry—can be found in the Japanese weaving industry when Sakichi Toyoda invented the world’s first automatic loom. In the following years, the Toyoda Spinning and Weaving Company officially opened in 1918. This amazing innovation allowed for lower running costs and less error in the final product. There was a system set in place where the machine and people could easily stop if an error was found, so it could be quickly corrected before creating a final product. This automatic technology was interesting to the American company the Platt Brothers, who decided to purchase the production and sales rights from Toyoda in 1929. Sakichi Toyoda passed the money earned down to his son, Kiichiro Toyoda, to start a company of his own.
Over the next 8 years, research was done about automobiles. In 1937, the Toyoda automobile company was formed. You may be thinking I’ve been misspelling Toyota, but you would be wrong. Around the company’s launch, one of Kiichio’s colleagues spoke to him about how the name could still have associations with the agricultural industry with ‘Toyoda’ meaning “fertile rice patty” in Japanese. This caused Kiichiro to change the name to ‘Toyota.’
Toyota produced cars successfully in a domestic market from their opening in 1936 all the way to when they decided to produce cars for other countries in 1959. This took Toyota to a new level of sales and catapulted them into the successful company we see today.
Toyota did what all the other big Automakers did during WWII: create vehicles for the war—Mercedes for Germany, Ford for the United States, Toyota for Japan, etc. Other familiar companies such as Nissan, Isuzu and Kurogane started to make a name for themselves in this period for their reliability for the Imperial Japanese Army. After the war ended, people came home and were tired of their cars. Production slowed until another boom in the 1960’s. The Subaru 360 started a trend that would continue in Japan through today, called the Kei Car (pronounced Kay).
Kei cars were about as popular as they were small—and that was extremely small and extremely popular. Though the sizes have changed throughout the years, Kei cars have always remained popular in Japan due to their practicality in big cities such as Tokyo, Yokohama, Kyoto, etc. Since 1990, Kei cars have been required to fall under the size limitation of less than 11 feet, 2 inches in length with a width less than 4 feet, 10 inches, an engine displacement below 660 cubic centimeters (0.6 liters), and a maximum power output of 63 horsepower. These limitations have created unique vehicles for certain categories.
Vehicles such as the Daihatsu Hijet truck were used for light hauling because they had a surprising 76 inch bed that could haul up to 771 pounds of payload. Another example of a specialized car would be the Autozam AZ-1. This vehicle had an unmatched cool factor. The Autozam, produced by Mazda, had a reliable turbocharged 660 cc inline 3 from Suzuki, which also made it reliable for the time. This car, being a mid engined “sports car,” had a great weight distribution for carving up curvy roads. The design took cues from vehicles, such as the Ferrari F-40 with its large angular wing, and the Acura NSX with its sleek profile. Other facets of vehicular transport have been explored as well, such as vans, economy cars, and more.
One of the reasons for their immense popularity would be Japan’s taxation on engine and overall vehicle size. Kei cars having a small engine means they are taxed under their own special category where owners only need to pay 20 USD a year. Vehicles with an engine above 6 liters (which is very uncommon, but as an example) would cost you almost a thousand dollars per year.
Weight also plays a big part in how much one may spend per year on a car. Cars weighing the Kei car limit will only be taxed around another 20 dollars per year per ton. Vehicles larger than the Kei car length and width requirements are taxed under the ‘Passenger Car’ category. An example of a high tax car would be the Dodge Challenger Hellcat. Something like this obviously wouldn’t be cheap to own anywhere due to its high initial cost and poor gas mileage, but owning one in Japan would be even more difficult because you would be paying an extra 1,200 dollars per year just on taxes. This kind of high taxation makes small vehicles much more enticing in Japan.
Japan is known for their advanced technology, futurism, and general ability of automation. Knowing that means it isn’t hard to imagine the amount of development Japan has done in the automotive market. Whether they’re developing safety systems, ways to increase power, or whole new drive types, Japan is always pushing the boundaries for what a car can do.
Focusing on innovation, Japan was a large perpetrator of the Wankel engine. This incredibly cool engine was not invented by Japan, but rather by a German engineer by the name of Felix Wankel. Felix worked in a machine shop and discovered a type of half turbine, half normal combustion engine. This engine, called a Rotary or Wankel, would not be a popular engine for several reasons. This engine was first created in 1927, so the technology wasn’t really present for the maintenance that would be required to keep an engine, such as this one, running. The engine used the same formula for making power with an intake, a spot for compression, an area for combustion via spark, and finally exhaust and power. It made its power the same, but instead of cylindrical pistons moving up and down or side to side in a cylinder, it used a triangular rotor to make the whole power stroke.
This engine requires increased maintenance compared to a typical combustion engine, which is why this engine didn’t get put into a production car until the late 1960’s with the Mazda Cosmo. The Cosmo had a 1.3 liter displacement rotary engine that put out 110 horsepower. This was a very healthy number for the time, and the technology just kept getting better.
By the 1990’s, Mazda had gotten very good at producing rotary engines. The fan favorite Mazda RX7 (specifically the FD RX7) made an extremely impressive 255 horsepower from the same size 1.3 liter single rotor engine. This cemented the rotary engine as a powerhouse in the automotive world with some incredibly powerful 4 rotor engines producing more than 2000 horsepower.
Circling back to the RX7, we can see the cultural significance of certain cars due to movies, television shows, and other media. Japan has consistently been in the eye of the media. Some cars have gained extreme popularity due to television shows, such as Initial D and Speed Racer.
Initial D popularized the Toyota AE86. Though it’s just a domestic Japanese Toyota Corolla, the show made it super popular around the world. You could choose to buy a brand new fully specced out Toyota Corolla, or a 40 year old Toyota Corolla with little to no features. After the initial cost of the AE86, you would still need to import it. This would add an additional several thousand dollars depending on where you plan to import it to. Other cars such as the R34 Nissan GTR have been hyper popularized by movies such as The Fast and Furious. The Nissan R34, an arguably worse car compared to its successor the Nissan R35 GTR, is worth several times more. A top of the line Nissan R34 GTR M spec would set you back around $100,000 in today’s value. If you were to look for a used car, though, you would find a car that has quintupled in value with the highest one ever having sold for an astonishing $670,000. All of this goes to show how enthusiasts and wealthy collectors alike have caused the value of these pop culture icons to skyrocket.
With the public eye on Toyota, Nissan, and Honda–Japan’s modern day big three–had to produce better, higher quality cars. A large majority of people cannot afford a $100,000 sports car, so Japanese car companies had to pivot to produce economy cars. This is where they would find their niche and cash cow.
Economy cars were being produced by the millions, whether it was a Toyota Camry, Honda Civic, or even the Mazda Miata, Japan was dominating the economy industry. Nowadays, people just want a car to get from one place to another, so they’ll opt for an Economy Car, which is very cheap to fuel and maintain. This has led Japan to become the second largest exporter of cars in the world, only behind Germany. This is a very impressive feat for Japan because they’ve been exporting cars for almost half a century less than Germany.
Almost everyone who’s seen any kind of car media when they were young had a poster of a Mark 4 Toyota Supra or a Nissan R34 GTR. These were the poster cars for fanboys from 30 years ago, all the way to now. These cars have remained relevant to young audiences due to their interesting and timeless styling and surprising performance during their era. The GTR of the 90’s was only 0.1 seconds slower to 60 miles per hour than a Lamborghini Diablo, which was Lamborghini’s flagship supercar at the time. Lamborghini made almost double the power out of a 6 liter V12, but the Nissan could keep up at least to 150 miles per hour thanks to its 2.5 liter inline 6. This staggering performance has led many people to become lifelong fans of Japanese automobiles.
Japan is known for their super interesting culture, and their cars are a representation of that. It’s easy to see how much of an impact Japan has had on the car industry and how revolutionary they have become, in all regards. Japan has made huge waves in automotive safety, technology, media, entertainment, and more.
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