The town (not city) is called Oishida, and its in Yamagata Prefecture, northern Japan. Here's a photo from 1931. The ladies are enjoying a chat, on the left warming in the spring sun from her 2nd floor, in the centre standing in the street.

Gah. For 1.8 kw read 1.8 bhp.

I live in a small town (pop 10,000) in northern Japan, and we get an average of about 13 metres of snow every winter. Our local authorities are pretty slick.

I'm on my 4th Legacy wagon, all basic, non-turbo. We get an average 13 metres of snow every winter. The manuals have a viscous centre differential, the autos have an electronically controlled clutch. In the auto, if you get wheelspin off the line you can feel it lock up. They all work just fine (winter tyres of…

I can see the problem right there. They mounted the door right where the front wing should go, and that left a big drafty hole where the drive sits. Any fule can see that.

My sister-in-law's mother won a house in a competition run by Kellogs. I don't suppose the fact that she was an attractive young widow, living in digs with a 1yo baby had anything to do with the publicity value. No sirreee!

Daihatsu will sell you this:

The RA271 is even prettier. I took this at the Honda museum at Motegi. It's a fabulous museum well worth a visit if you're in Tokyo and can find a spare day.

The train driver never properly recovered from his injuries and died 2-3 years after the robbery.

Under that Gaz part is a box of Vandervell bearings. Vandervell made thin wall bearings under licence from the US. Tony Vandervell ran his own GP team, Vanwall, in the 1950s. Drivers included Collins, Moss, Hawthorn and Brooks. Engineers included Chapman, Costin and Weslake.

Kat. Thanks.

Thanks for that. We're both singing from the same hymn sheet. 105 series Alfas need to be set up correctly and kept in tune. Neither of these is hard if you or your tech know what you are doing. There is plenty of support, and they are robust vehicles.

He's had a 2 litre engined fitted, and all the US market 2 litre's had SPICA injection as standard. The move to injected 2 litres from the carburetted 1750 (actually 1800) and smaller engines was driven by the incoming US emission regs.

Correct on every point. RWD Alfas are well made, tough and reliable. They are sharp tools, and they need to be set up and maintained properly, but that isn't hard or expensive. One thing you missed: there's a large and dedicated network of owners and parts suppliers in the US (and the rest of the world). Mechanical…

What are the Subaru head gasket issues? I've run four Legacys over the past 10 years, and the only engine problem I had was with the first. It was up to about 220,000 km, the cam belt drive pulley was worn, and the belt slipped a couple of teeth. New belt and pulley and problem solved.

English here. E-type was and is an E-type. Only Americans call it an XKE. No idea where you/they got that from. We had C-type, D-type and E-type. An XJ6 is an XJ6.

Latest figures are 40% of the market with a population of 120 million. The car market here may be "stagnant", but it still adds up to a lot of vehicles.

Suzuki is doing quite well with the Swift. It's a Golf sized hatch with a good reputation for Japanese quality and reliability. They sell shed-loads of keis in Japan, and have all sorts of partnerships across Asia (Maruti Suzuki for example). Suzuki is very clever about making a profit selling small and inexpensive…

There are about a zillion versions of the Honda Cub in Asia, coming in all shapes and sizes. What they share with the cub is they have full-size wheels, telescopic forks, footrests, step-through frame and swinging arm rear suspension. The may or may not have alloy wheels and disc brakes. The technical term for these…

The centre knob was a carry-over from the past. Earlier Austins like the A35 had the switch there to work the semaphores. I guess the budget for the A35 -> A40 re-skin didn't run to developing/fitting a column mounted stalk. That said, my 1959 mini had a column stalk.