Yahoo Autos Mitsuoka Is Japan's Weirdest Automaker
From this side of the Pacific, Japan seems comprehensible. By day, it's a land of sensible, boxy kei cars; by night, fire-breathing Nissan Skylines and Mazda RX-7s scorch along the elevated highways. There are lowered Honda Civics, unique custom minivans, and the occasional box-flared Eighties Toyota. However to better understand Japanese culture, you need to understand Mitsuoka, the weirdest freaking car company on the planet.
Yes, Japan is samurai swords and Super GT and giant robots grappling in space, but it is also the home of a wildly popular animated bear called Rilakkuma, which literally translates to “Relax Bear.” As much as the West's view of Japan is all high-tech Tokyo lights and midnight drift teams tearing up the mountain passes, it's also a country of tremendous whimsy. There are mascots for everything, the Tokyo train stations have their own theme tunes written by the keyboardist of an Eighties jazz fusion band, and one of the country's largest plumbing companies has created a talking toilet that gives weather reports and cracks bathroom puns.
Infuse that fanciful sense of fun into cars, and you get something like this, a 1991 Mitsuoka Le Seyde Dore. Based on a Fox-body Mustang, it's the size of a small sailboat, with leisurely performance to match. In the same vein as neoclassics like the Zimmer Golden Spirit or the Excalibur, the Le Syde is a fiberglass tribute to the 1928 Mercedes-Benz SSK draped over then-modern underpinnings. It looks like the kind of thing Cruella De Vil would drive on her way to picking up some Dalmatian donburi.
The thought of piloting this boat-sized droptop around Japan's narrow streets is mind-boggling. It's not particularly wide, but it has the turning circle of the Space Battleship Yamamoto. Not to mention, being a Mustang underneath, the steering wheel is on the wrong side for Japan. (Later examples of the Le Seyde are based on the Nissan Sylvia, and yes, someone has built a drift car out of one.)
This one was imported into British Columbia by JDM Import, a small specialist firm that sources a mix of Japanese camper vans, kei cars, and Japanese-market Minis. Owner Ivan Umin says he keeps an eye out for anything interesting coming through the auctions, and commutes in a lowered Nissan Elgrand van. Even so, the Le Seyde easily overshadows the Delicas and Daihatsus it's parked next to.
And, where companies like Zimmer and Excalibur are now mere footnotes of audacity crushed beneath the pragmatic wheels of the rest of the auto industry, Mitsuoka can point to more than fifty years of continuous operation. It's the Studio Ghibli of car companies, producing oddball artistry that's filled with a surprising amount of heart.
As with Honda and Toyota, there was an actual Mr. Mitsuoka. Susumu Mitsuoka founded the company that still bears his name in 1968, in Toyama, a couple hundred miles northwest of Tokyo. At first, the company was little more than a specialist repair shop, with a particular focus on foreign makes. The company's logo is a stylized copy of the diagram for a simple third-century horse-drawn cart.
In the late Sixties and early Seventies, Japan was beginning to emerge as an automotive manufacturing power, but European marques were still popular. Mitsuoka was himself a confessed British car nut, and echoes of that appreciation can be found in the Viewt, basically a Nissan Micra with the face of a classic Jaguar Mk 2.
At some point, a customer brought in an Italian microcar of indeterminate make for repair. Parts couldn't be found, but rather than simply moving on, Susumu Mitsuoka was spurred to build his own car from scratch.
Well, “car,” is perhaps something of an overstatement. The BUBU-50, launched in 1982, was basically a Japanese version of the Peel P50, with a tiny 50cc engine that provided meagre acceleration, and a body that had all the crash protection of an undercooked meringue. It looked a bit like a droid that hadn't quite made the cut for Star Wars.
Still, the BUBU-50 was a start, and others would follow. Mitsuoka would produce all kinds of toylike single-seaters over the years, most of them seriously deranged-looking, and potentially dangerous. But fun!
It was a copy of the Lotus Seven, fitted with Mazda MX-5 running gear, that would be Mitsuoka's crowning achievement. The Mitsuoka Zero was produced beginning in 1994, and in 1996, it had successfully passed Japan's crash-testing regulations. Mitsuoka then officially became the country's tenth authorized automobile manufacturer.
Absolute insanity continued to follow, not the least of which was the Mitsuoka Orochi, a mid-engined sports car equipped with a Toyota-sourced V6 and a five-speed automatic transmission. A perennial entry on any “ugliest cars” list, the Orochi looks like the dream you'd have after eating expired sea urchin sushi and falling asleep while watching a documentary about giant sea clams. It's the stuff of nightmares.
Mitsuoka's modern range currently extends to the Jaguar-like Viewt, the Morgan-ish Himiko, and the Rock Star, which is a cross between an ND-chassis Mazda Miata and a Sixties Corvette Sting Ray. There are also the Ryugi and Galue, ordinary sedans with front ends that would vaguely remind you of a vintage Rolls-Royce.
Very few Misuokas are produced every year, and the company employs just 45 craftsmen. Each car is still hand-assembled, and few leave Japan. The only way you'll see one on this side of the Pacific is as a grey-market import.
Here's why that's a shame. Meet Mitsuoka's latest creation, the Buddy. Based on the Toyota RAV4, the Buddy's styling apes that of a vintage K5 Chevy Blazer. What with the modern Chevy Blazer being sixteen feet of deeply boring Yet Another Crossover, the Buddy looks like it's ready to be your friend, pal. It's great, and the more you look at it, the better it gets.
In an age where every other vehicle on the road features more grilles than the outdoor living section at Walmart, the Buddy is that rarest of beasts. It's not trying to be serious, it's trying to be fun. It might not be commercially viable if released here in limited quantities, but it's a convincing enough effort to surely have some mainstream designers asking themselves, “Why can't we build something that looks this charming?”
Mitsuoka is weird. It will always be weird. Sometimes the cars it makes look like they're dredged out of the Mariana Trench. But, after fifty years of coachbuilding success, it's good to have a company with a playful sense of delight still around. The industry could use more whimsy. It could use a bit more weird.
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