Bosozoku lifestyle: Takenokozoku dancers
What would a bosozoku do on his sunday afternoon? Drive around on his bike or in his zokusha? Don’t think so: he would rather dance in Yoyogi Park next to Harajuku station:
According to the poster of the video the guy in slowmotion @1:35 has a pompadour of 50 cm in size! Amazing!
Officially this is called Takenokozoku, which roughly translates into bamboo shoot kids. This cult started out in the mid 70s and took on till the mid 80s. What happened is that gangs of school dropouts just start dancing in public places (parks, sidewalks, streets) on music played with portable music playes (what we would call ghettoblasters). Back then it was a big rebellion against the old generations and considered as immoral to do!
Most of these guys and girls were bosozoku and they still do meet up regularly in this park on Sundays to do their act. So if you ever visit Tokyo you definitely need to go to Harajuku and go have a look in Yoyogi Park!
by banpei with no comments yetRare Bosozoku cars: Nissan Cedric 230
This week we feature the Nissan Cedric (and Gloria) 230. In contrary of the Cedric/Gloria 330 it is a rare bosozoku car and we had a very hard time to find more than one picture!
Some time ago we featured a video of it already:
This full version shows everything about this great Cedric: it is spacious, it looks bad, got a great horn and this hardtop version doesn’t have a B pilar!
We even managed to find a picture of this beauty:
#23 Bosozoku style Nissan Cedric 230
You see, it even got the stance right!
Compared to that this kyusha styled Cedric suddenly doesn’t look that stunning anymore:
Kyusha styled Nissan Cedric 230
The Cedric and Gloria 230 did share the same floorpan and body, but in contrary of the 330 they did not share the same face: they still had their individual front ends. Only starting with the 330 Nissan finally merged the two cars fully!
Factory stock Nissan Cedric 230
Both cars were featuring several L series inline 4 and inline 6 engines, so the L20, L24 and L26 were all available.
Factory stock Nissan Cedric 230
The Nissan Cedric/Gloria 230 is a rare sight at the bosozoku meetings and we do have an idea why. First reason:
Many 70s and 80s Japanese police series used/abused the Nissan Cedrics and Glorias to make spectacular car chases. It was not uncommon to wreck up to 15 or 20 cars per chase! And the biggest problem was that the Cedric and Gloria were mostly used as policecars, so they were wrecked in masses!
Second reason: the image of a policecar is not really appealing to a bosozoku!
And the third reason: rust! There are not many Cedrics and Glorias left.
Personally I do prefer the Cedric/Gloria 330 over the 230 and that’s probably just like every bosozoku boss would!
by banpei with no comments yetBosozoku lifestyle: Kishidan
Kishidan (founded in 2000) is a Japanese pop group and they mainly play retro rock. Their music is more pop than rock, while their image is more rock than pop. Their music isn’t that interesting but their outfits are!
They mainly dress up old fashioned Japanese school uniforms (gakuran) with bosozoku haircuts. I guess their target audience should be the wannabe bosozoku school boys. A good example is this video:
Their songs are mainly about motorcycles, conflicts at school, hanging out with your gang and adolescent love.
And in this video you can see the school boys hang out with the gangs and ending up as a bosozoku themselves while having some adolecent love with a teen girl:
But if you look at this video you probably slowly get the idea what they really are: a joke group set up by big record companies to earn loads of money for them:
How deep is your dish?
This week we do not have amazingly wide wheels like we used to, but a set of 8J wide SSR Mk II rims!
But why feature these wheels then? Well, simply because they have a set of 185/55 tires stretched on them!
SSR Mk II 14 inch 8J with stretched tires
In this picture you can really see how stretched the tires are:
Dunlop 185/55 R14 tires stretched on 8J SSR Mk II
Now that would look great on a kyusha style car! 🙂
Rare Bosozoku cars: Mazda Savanna RX3
It is a bit weird: in contrary of the Mazda Cosmo AP RX5 the Mazda Savanna RX3 is a very rare Bosozoku styled car. We could only find two pictures of one single car!
Bosozoku style Mazda Savanna RX3
Even though the Cosmo AP RX5 is a much bigger and meaner looking car, the Savanna RX3 is looking a lot meaner than its predecessor the Mazda Familia Rotary R100 and should really appeal all petrolheads.
Bosozoku style Mazda Savanna RX3
The Mazda Savanna RX3 also had a big racing history: it debuted in 1971 at the Fuji 500 Tourist Trophy race and won instantly! It came just in time to prevent the Nissan Skyline GT-Rs from getting 50 consecutive wins for the Japanese Grand Prix!
Winning Mazda Savanna RX3 on Fuji Speedway Tourist Trophy
If you are interested in this race, Japanese Nostalgic Car blog wrote an excellent article about this race!
The RX3 then continued to race for many years afterwards and even got over 100 victories at the end of 1976. It even is still being used for many different races nowadays: amoung them dragraces as well:
Mazda RX3 drag racer
The RX3 is based upon the Mazda Familia 808 platform (in some countries called 818), but then powered by a rotary engine instead of the inline 4 of the 808/818. The outside of the car remained the same except for the twin round headlights at the front and the round taillights at the back of the car.
Factory stock Mazda Savanna RX3 4 door saloon
On the inside the interior was a bit more sportier than the standard Familia: the dash remained the same but it featured semi bucket seats.
Mazda Savanna RX3 interior
What really helped was the weight of the car: the Familia only weights 865kg, so adding a powerfu
l rotary to such car makes it an instant winning combination! However the car still featured leaf springs and a live axle, so the handling of the car was not as good as the RX2 Capella. But what can you expect from a family car?
Factory stock Mazda Savanna RX3 4 door saloon
The Savanna was not only limited to the Coupe version of the Familia, but also delivered on the 4 door saloon and 5 door station van.
In Japan, Australia and Europe the Savanna was delivered with the 10A engine, while in the US only the 12A featured on the car. Starting from 1975 all it got an update and since then all Savanna RX3s got the 12A engine.
Mazda 10A Wankel engine
Of course the sporty image of the RX3 had to be mentioned over and over again. Take for example the poster for the RX3 SP:
Mazda RX3 SP: not a slowpoke
All in all I don’t really understand why the Savanna RX3 is not a popular bosozoku style car: it looks bad, it had racing history (with wide fenders!), it features a rotary and best of all it was also available in 4 door saloons! A large package of elements which create a good foundation for a popular bosozoku car!
Maybe that is the whole point: it just reminded too much of the Familia family car. Or maybe it became an instant classic and the price remained too high during the 80s and 90s? Or maybe it was just the wrong car: the car that killed the 50th consecutive victory of the Skyline? Or maybe it was too small: the car is the size of a Nissan Sunny or Toyota Corolla. Who knows?
by banpei with 4 comments