Japanese Carmakers Driving Backwards

Something that has been bothering me lately has to do with the Japanese. Not the fact that they are recovering from an earthquake, or that their nuclear plants have gone underground, literally. No, somehow the Japanese car makers are ruining it, for themselves. Remember the good old days when you would dream of owning a Subaru Impreza WRX, or a Mitsubshi Lancer Evo, or a 9000rpm revving Honda Civic Type R? Ordinary saloon cars became bedroom poster heroes. Nowadays I would not even put my dead body in any Subaru, or Mitsubishi, nor Honda. Why?

Everyone who has ever looked for a second-hand car knows them, those overly engineered but lethally boring Japanese cars from the 80s and 90s. The outside was all-right with lots of options and colours to choose, but the inside came only in one colour: GREY. Dashboard, seats, carpet, doorhandles, sunvisor, everything was grey. It is really like driving a block of concrete; tough as hell, but everything you see is grey. Still Honda, Toyota and others survived. Old people are grey themselves and like something to last for ages, that's why they bought Civics and Corollas en masse. And as the Japanese could make them for 12,50 a piece they even made money out of it, great business it was. Moreover, in order to appeal to younger people, they employed the most mental engineers you could find in Japan who turned those cars into rally car. Which were then released into forests around the world, and more importantly: the streets where real people drive on.

Unfortunately, modern old people (contradiction on purpose), don't want everything to be grey, dull and more reliable than the universe. Therefore the Japanese had to innovate, making their cars more Lexusourious and still last till Infiniti. This all worked rather well until a good five years ago, when they thought the world was ready for Japanese design. To me, Japanese design still stands for paper walls, very very low tables and honeycomb hotels (although I never saw any of those in real life). Japanese car design however, stands for vague design languages (which I dislike in general) and cars which seem a little odd, but not in the good bonkers retro Citroën way. The Japanese have a sickening obsession with lines and folds on the bodywork of the car, their cars are almost wrinkly, so many lines are there on their skin.

Kings of vague design languages are Mazda. First they came up with 'Nagare' where:
"the challenge was given to the team to invent a novel means of registering motion in vehicles whether they were moving or still".
But why? It would just make me unsure if the handbrake was working properly or not. Imagine a street parked full of Nagare-inspired cars and having to cross it, that's Japanese roulette, not a design language. Looking into the names of various concept cars the designers took this as a chance to put a lot of Wind jokes into car names, but more of that later. After the 'Moving or maybe not or maybe it is' generation they were asked to put more soul in the car by adding 'the expression of faster, more forceful movement'. And thus far, the cars which should be looking like Fiat Panda's struggling up a hill don't even look that bad surprisingly.

With such a design language come cars which are themed around the concept of playing with farts wind. Best known is probably the Furai, which translated from Japanese means 'The sound of a wind'. Why they didn't call it the Mazda PFFFRRTTT! remains a mystery.

Ever wondered what the atmosphere looked like? Please look further, because Mazda's Taiki (atmosphere) is not really what you hope to be living in. "The challenge was to incorporate elegant and refined design treatments that express Japanese concepts of mysterious beauty and intelligence within a dynamic body shape". Never mind, could be worse, they could have actually produced it.

One of the worst concepts (in my opinion) is this: the Mazda Hakaze (Ha=leaf, Kaze=wind). Believe it or not, it is not designed in Japan. Some megalomanic German Japanese of Mazda's European Design Center came up with this 'compact crossover with a roadster feel'. “The design team took inspiration from sports and outdoor activities in the wind or in the water giving the sensation of being free and allows us to break boundaries,”. Unfortunately not sir, you're still stuck in a Mad Mazda, now please follow that man in the white coat. 

But what I miss most in the modern Japanese cars is any bit of Samurai, they are so modest, so average. Yes, the Japanese are champions in making cars which are average, when the Europeans are trying to be different. Japan used to deliver sport coupes which any European car maker thought to be unprofitable. Supras, Celicas, RX-7s and 8s, you name it. Even putting slightly oversized engines into average cars produced brilliant things. But not anymore, now only Hybrids are made in Japan, and wrinkly cars.
You used to be cool.

Surprisingly, Saab Soap Stops

Yes world, and all Saab fanatics, I am sorry on behalf of the Dutch for cocking about with your favorite Swedish manufacturer which doesn't produce flat-pack furniture. Allow me to give a brief overview of what went wrong and who is to blame for it.

I'm desperately trying to avoid turning this post into a Victor Muller rant, yet it is largely due to him and his overoptimism that he is now left with nothing. It all started so well in 1999, he acquired the rights to the Spyker name and presented a beautiful retro sports car with proper engineering under the bonnet. This went reasonable for the first five years, also issuing a spider version which also raced (not quite successfully) at Le Mans. Problem number one is that this car has been produced till 2007, and by the time the production discontinued, Spyker didn't have the money to build any new model.

So far, so....reasonable you might think. Well, no. Around 2004/2005 Victor Muller went a bit mental, he started suffering from megalomania. All of a sudden the small car company, building a very small number of cars and only producing one model had to acquire world fame and should be as well known as Ferrari, Porsche etc. So what they did was buying an unsuccessful, overpriced F1 team, and acquire expensive Ferrari engines that didn't fit properly in the designed chassis. Don't ask me where the money came from (never ask that in the case of Spyker), but the point is that it costed more money that they could ever afford and were pretty rubbish for the whole 1 season they ran their team. Luckily they found Vijay Mallya to buy the team (be it for far less than what they bought it for) and were able to continue building a few cars and showing off concepts that would never be produced.

After another few unsuccessful years without any profit, Spyker found out that Saab was for sale. After Koenigsegg did not get permission from GM to buy over Saab (what a dream team that would have been), Spyker bargained like only the Dutch can and got the go from Detroit. With more non-existent money and obscure shareholders the minute Spyker acquired Saab for about 400 million dollars. More than double what the F1 team costed and that for a car company which has not earned a profit since the 1980s, good one Vic.

Saab never got running properly under Dutch command, Spyker was left with a huge debt after the acquiring of Saab, and daily business consisted of pleading for more loans from the Swedish government and the European Investment Bank. As Saab did not turn profitable within a year, Muller started taking his company apart, he sold Spyker to Vladimir Antonov for just 15 Million Euros. He planned to sell the factory in Trollhattan and hire it from the possible buyer, just to get money for a moment. Everyone saw that this car company was in trouble and it came as no surprise that production has ceased in april of this year. Luckily  the Chinese came along and fancied a go at a Swedish car company. More on that in a following post.