Now that I have had my car for a couple of months, I thought I would make a few brief comments. Exterior: The motoring press has made a lot of comparisons between the Swift and the Mini. Many comment that the new body shape of the Swift is a copy of (or homage to) the Mini. I am not so sure. If anything, it looks like Suzuki have been borrowing from (inspired by)  the designers at Audi. Compare the front of the Swift and the TT. . . . . Perhaps my favorite external feature of the car, are the subtle twin exhausts. It may seem like a strange pet peeve, but the asymmetry of a single exhaust on a car niggles me. However, a single central exhaust like on the Porsche Boxster just looks a little odd. Of course no exhaust would be even better, but the Tesla Roadster is a little out of my price range. Interior: One of the best features of the Japanese spec car is the option for  grey Recaro sports seats rather than …

Gran Turismo is a car racing simulator for the Sony Playstation. As the Playstation evolved from PS1 to Ps3, the game also grew in size and complexity, each time amazing gamers with super realistic graphics and incredibly realistic driving.  The popularity and importance of this game to Sony is huge, over 50 million units have been sold. The release of Gran Turismo 5 is comparable to that of a hollywood blockbuster. Although there is no set release date, the first trailers have appeared. Things have certainly come along way since the days of Pong.  

   3rd generation Toyota Prius   Toyota announced the arrival of the latest version of the Prius hybrid car on May 18th. You see quite a few of the new Honda Insight hybrids as rental cars on Okinawa at the moment. It will be interesting to see how the sales of the new Prius compare to the new Insight. The Toyota Prius is a fantastic bit of technology, it’s just a little bit too big, and a little too ugly plain for me. On a related note, I just read on the Guardian website: “America’s gas-guzzling automobiles were heading towards extinction yesterday as Barack Obama set strict limits on car exhaust emissions and directed producers to make a more fuel-efficient vehicle fleet. The policy requires US auto makers to produce cars and trucks that achieve an average 35.5mpg by 2016, and will reduce America’s carbon dioxide emissions by 30%.” After a bit of time with a calculator. I managed to work out 35.5mpg is 15km per liter. 15 kilometers a liter is what my little Suzuki Swift …

What do you get if you cross the Pixar movie Carswith the high octane thrills of Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift? Six minutes and thirty five seconds of pure brilliance. There are numerous clever cameos by Japanese cars: Mazda Miatas (brings a tear to my eye), the Toyota (Lexus) Crown, the Nissan Skyline ninjas. It was very interesting to see that the restaurant the truck flies through was called Harryhausen (it was written in Japanese script). Nice nod to the film making genius Harryhausen who created one of the most fantastic movie scenes I’ve ever seen, but will leave that for my next blog.

Stage 1 – Find a car The first thing you will notice when trying to buy a used car in Japan is that almost nobody sells their own car. Old cars are scrapped or tend to be given away to a friend or relative. Cars that still have some value, are usually traded in when purchasing a new (or newer) model.   Outside of the foreign community, there seem to be very few private sales.  You don’t see cars with the Japanese equivalent of  FOR SALE signs in the window. Used car magazines and even internet auctions are almost entirely filled with cars being sold by dealers rather than individuals. Having to purchase from a used car dealer makes things more expensive, but does mean they can help you with Stage 2 – the labyrinthine process of producing and filling out the correct paperwork. I browsed through the various internet sites and a few cars caught my attention. These are a few of the cars that were of interest, but not quite what I wanted: Honda NSX …

The South Yorkshire police recently acquired a new pursuit car in the form of a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. British police have for several years used Mitsubishi Evo’s and Subaru Imprezas which have helped catch numerous wayward motorist and provided a steady stream of exciting chases for shows like the BBC’s Car Wars.  The main police car in Japan is the Toyota Crown (rebranded in the US as a Lexus) but they also have a few special cars including a Godzilla… and a wonderful, yet somewhat impractical, Honda NSX.