Bosozoku 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! 🙂
Exhaust of the week: old skool quad pipes
We found these on auctions.yahoo.co.jp with an auction for the big spoiler on the back of this car:
Old skool quad pipes on this Cresta GX51
This Cresta GX51 is a perfect example of the old school bosozoku style we saw during the 90s.
It even breathes more 90s from the front of the car:
Old skool quad pipes on this Cresta GX51
Last weeks poll results
The Nissan Skyline Japan C210 we feature in our logo clearly won the first sudden death!
Winners so far:
Bosozoku style Skyline C210
This weeks contenders:
Bosozoku style Fairlady 280ZX
versus
Bosozoku style Mazda (sexy) Cosmo RX5
So it will be the Nissan Fairlady 280ZX or the Mazda (sexy) Cosmo RX5?
by bosozoku with no comments yetRare 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