Grand Touring - Japanese car photos needed
Discussion
As regulars on the General Gassing forum may be aware, I have a book about Grand Touring cars in pre-production at the moment. I am working to an extremely tight (ie nonexistant) budget, and I am relying on the goodwill of enthusiasts to provide me with photographs.
I need interior, exterior, engine and 'arty' shots of the following Japanese cars:
Lexus SC/Toyota Soarer (the '90s coupe, not the Merc rip-off drop-top)
Mazda Cosmo (praise be to anyone who can get photos of one of these - there are only about 8 in the country)
Mazda RX-8
Subaru SVX
Hyundai Coupe (yes I know it's not Japanese but it looks like your sort of thing)
Mitsubishi 3000GT/GTO/Dodge Stealth
Toyota Supra Twin-Turbo (the last model, ie Gaz's)
Photos need to be a minimum 300dpi in a 'flexible' format - tiff, eps or uncompressed jpeg.
Unfortunately, you will not be paid for any photo submissions. However, your contribution will be credited in the caption, you will be thanked in the acknowledgements page and if anyone else wishes to use your photograph and contacts me or the publisher about it, you may be able to charge them.
Many thanks to anyone who can contribute.
My email address is: samdawson_jps72@hotmail.co.uk
I need interior, exterior, engine and 'arty' shots of the following Japanese cars:
Lexus SC/Toyota Soarer (the '90s coupe, not the Merc rip-off drop-top)
Mazda Cosmo (praise be to anyone who can get photos of one of these - there are only about 8 in the country)
Mazda RX-8
Subaru SVX
Hyundai Coupe (yes I know it's not Japanese but it looks like your sort of thing)
Mitsubishi 3000GT/GTO/Dodge Stealth
Toyota Supra Twin-Turbo (the last model, ie Gaz's)
Photos need to be a minimum 300dpi in a 'flexible' format - tiff, eps or uncompressed jpeg.
Unfortunately, you will not be paid for any photo submissions. However, your contribution will be credited in the caption, you will be thanked in the acknowledgements page and if anyone else wishes to use your photograph and contacts me or the publisher about it, you may be able to charge them.
Many thanks to anyone who can contribute.
My email address is: samdawson_jps72@hotmail.co.uk
Twincam - pop over to www.mazdarotaryclub.com and post up a request in the 'Rotary and General Chit-Chat' section... Much more likely to get a decent response there if you do. Make sure you mention cosmo and rx-8 in the title...
Gazboy said:
What about the Skylines, 300ZX and RX7's?
Skyline is a sports saloon. True, most of the ones over here are the two-door versions but it is a saloon as opposed to a coupe, and whilst being shockingly fast, it's not that relaxing to travel in and not exactly luxurious either.
300ZX. Difficult one. I considered the Z-Cars but to me the 240/260/280Z are sports coupes like the Capri or the Mustang, a bit of fun but not very refined. The 300ZX might be, but the problem is that there are two 300ZX's aren't there - the Capri-rival '84-'89 one which isn't much of a GT, and the '89-'94 one which strikes me as a vast improvement but stil essentially more of the same.
The RX-7 is a sports car, rather than a GT. Why else would Mazda market the likes of the Cosmo and the RX-8 alongside it as more practical propositions?
True, it can be used for touring, but its primary purpose is as a sports car, like the Porsche 911.
ApexClipper said:
How come you have missed out the Honda Prelude Vtec? (4th Gen or 5th Gen)
(I stuck up for you in the last thread!)
This is the problem with 'generations' of cars. The later Preludes might be considered GTs, but the first Prelude, remember, was basically a 2-door Triumph Acclaim that later gained four-wheel steering and pop-up headlights.
OK, so it was gradually refined, but it's difficult, nay impossible, to draw a line and decide when it definitely stopped being a sports coupe and became a fully-fledged GT.
It's a problem I've run into with a lot of American cars, actually. They update them every year or so, and either change them for the better or the worse. The American cars I feel confident calling 'GTs' are the ones that either lived for a short time completely unchanged, or whose name lived on under another platform, but are considered definitive as their original iteration, like the Buick Riviera or the Oldsmobile Toronado.
I can certainly get you some photos of my 3000GT when I get it back this weekend. I'm not an expert at photography though - some of the guys on www.gtouk.co.uk should be willing to help you out as well.
MarkK said:
I can certainly get you some photos of my 3000GT when I get it back this weekend. I'm not an expert at photography though - some of the guys on www.gtouk.co.uk should be willing to help you out as well.
Excellent. I'll get cracking on the write-up.
_VTEC_ - yes, it's very true. I'm thinking there should be a PistonHeads book published entitled 'our favourite cars'. It would be three times the size of the Encyclopedia Brittanica and by the time the last volume was out the first would have been revised beyond recognition. Truth is, anything with an engine and wheels can be driven over a long distance. I know a guy who drove a Grinnall Scorpion from London to the 'ring, but it's about as far from a GT as you can possibly get.
Gaz - I've been given a lift in a Skyline and an XJS back to back last weekend. The XJS was a proper 'wafty' GT car, all wood and leather, nicely-finished instruments and an engine that felt like it had come out of a Spitfire. OK so it didn't dart round corners like a startled rabbit but you got the idea you could take it to Monaco only having to stop off for fuel, cigars and '70s film soundtracks and still feel like you'd just got out of the bath.
The Skyline's ride shattered my spine and everything inside seemed to be grey plastic injection-moulding. It was like a minicab on speed, and although it makes for one hell of a sports saloon (the speed the driver cornered it had me thinking we were going to end up in a hedge/wall but somehow it stayed glued to the road), it wasn't designed with the same intentions as the XJS.
And it's the intentions of the designer that make a GT car. It's how I've managed to narrow down the list into something publishable, after all. The truth is that not many Japanese sports coupes are designed for long, sporting journeys in the same way the European GTs are. It might have something to do with the nature of Japanese roads, but I have found that the Japanese cars I have included, such as the Cosmo and the SVX, were export-market-orientated and clearly aim at the European GT idiom.
Think about the likes of the 240Z. That car was aimed at the old Austin-Healey 3000 market and the new Ford Capri. This is about 1969, when your typical GT is something like an Aston Martin DBS or a Jensen Interceptor. The Z-cars have always occupied this bracket of great sports cars that are almost, but not quite, GTs.
As for the comments regarding the Ford Puma, I know it's a controversial choice. Thing is, since the fifties people have tried to make GTs based on small cars like Minis and Imps. These cars didn't perform like GTs because their underpinnings just lacked the ability. Throughout the ages, the practise waned but small cars got better and more capable. Then Ford built the Puma in the '90s in the same vein as something like the Ogle SX1000 or Lancia Fulvia of the '60s, only this time, you could conceivably use it like a miniature GT. It's nowhere near perfect of course, but that's not the point - it demonstrates how far 'ordinary' cars have come.
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