In the 1990s I came close to perfecting running out of petrol: on lonely country roads, on empty motorways at the crack of dawn and, once, in the middle of a downtown intersection. My pièce de résistance was running out while waiting in line at a service station (in Japan). The attendant had to help me push the car up…

In a review of the Jaguar XJS in Car magazine way back when, LJK Setright called it the best American car in the world... that the American car industry could never build.

More space! More power!

Japan: come to a full stop before crossing an open level crossing. If you are caught going straight across it is a fine and points on your licence and the police will lie in wait to catch you out. All level crossings have lights and barriers and in 28 years I have never heard of a crash caused by equipment failure.

I genuinely felt like I caught a whiff of Castrol R at the 16 second mark...

Honda Beat seats: good hold, comfy and zebra stripes with matching floor mats.

Fear of imperfection: atelophobia

Yup, for a nominal fee. When we bought our second Mini Cooper S I had the bright idea of getting 32-98 (mi.ni-ku.pa) until the dealer told us that is what everyone does (and we started noticing it after that). He still managed to get us 7-32 (Seven-mi.ni) without us asking or paying, which sort of counts because the…

In 28 years I have seen four vehicles on their roofs after collisions; three were SUVs, all in single vehicle collisions, even though they only make up a tiny proportion of traffic here in Japan.

Thank you for posting this (the Lamborghini Athon). It is one of my favourites from Bertone and if you hadn’t posted it, I would have myself.

Um, not quite... our Toyota van is 8 years and 250,000km old, perfectly legal and, apart from filters, belts and the like, the only parts we have replaced are worn out front suspension boots and bushes.

Tractor-trailer rigs are very rare in Japan - 99% of big trucks are rigid, even container haulers and the big box-bodied ones like those in the movie. The law on trailers is very strict and they must be registered with the tractor, so no trailer-swapping like in the US and Europe.

I think I’m in love.

I love it too, it’s a drug I know I should stay away from but can’t:

Same story, 6 months apart, no Photoshop:

The same story, 6 months apart, no Photoshop:

Meanwhile, here in Japan, Toyota runs entire shopping malls with Toyota and Daihatsu dealers inside. This works because dealer chains are group companies of the manufacturers, not franchises, and because you don’t buy a car off the dealer’s lot, you order one and wait for delivery.

It’s completely irrelevant to this thread, but there is something weird about the juxtaposition of these photos in the links below the article:

Big lump of Kudos for illustrating this with the 512S Speciale, one of my favourite show cars of all time.