It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these polls. The previous ones are at these links – Great Britain, Germany, France, America. The main reason for the delay is that I’ve been dreading the final two – Sweden and Italy. They’re going to be soooooo tough.
Thankfully, we have a safety valve: Japan!
This is no pushover, though. How do you define a Japanese icon? Is it one that interests you, or one that best represents the typical traits of the Japanese automotive industry? It’s an important question because the winner of these polls is important, to me at least.
That brings me to the first car that’s NOT in my nominated 5 vehicles: the Toyota Camry.
Toyota is the biggest car company in the world and the Camry has been the company’s biggest seller in most markets for years now. The Camry would have a rightful argument as a Japanese icon, but I’m not going there. Why? Firstly because it’s boring and icons aren’t supposed to be boring, even if they’re supposed to be typical (which the Camry certainly is). And secondly, because you could argue that the Camry is no longer just a Japanese car. It’s an American car, an Australian car, and multiple other nationalities. OK, maybe you can’t argue that, but it’s not being nominated anyway.
To the 5 cars that ARE being nominated…….
Datsun 260Z
The 260Z had a 2.6 litre straight six putting out 160hp driven by a 4-speed manual gearbox. The car was on the market for four years here in Australia so we got the 2+2 seating setup. This was amongst the early Japanese sports cars, the ones that used modern classic sports car interior styling with plenty of gauges to look at, if not quite a lovely, sweeping dashboard.
It was exciting then and a good one is still very exciting to look at now.