Your Japanese word of the week is...

"honyaku" which means "translate". And last week, I finally got off my butt to figure out how to get Vista to write in Japanese. It turns out it's ridiculously easy (it took 30 seconds) so now I can also write the kanji for "honyaku", 翻訳. But people more often use "tsuyaku" 通訳 even though, according to the dictionary, it means "interpret" as opposed to "translate"...... I suppose it's the same in English though...

Anyways, like I promised, I'd found some time to flesh out some awards for the Tokyo Auto Salon last week. Some are new awards, and some aren't, but here we go...

Worst Colour Combination Award

No, you're eyes aren't fooling you. And no, neither is it noise from my camera. The car really is a poo brown over-saturated with metal flake.....

What probably is fooling your eyes, however, is the car itself. When I walked up I thought to myself, "There's something wrong with this Porsche"..... I couldn't figure it out until I saw the front......

If you know what's wrong with this picture and, even better, can figure out the origins of the name, feel free to leave a comment...... you might get a prize =).....

But despite its many glaring problems, it still managed to fool quite a few people.......

Most Under-Appreciated Car Award

It just wouldn't be me if I didn't award an Evo something hehe....

But I think this particular Evo IX deserves it because while the Evo X is a good car it doesn't impress me as much for some reason.

It certainly looks nice and is technology laden (active centre diff, active yaw control, active steering, twin-clutch gearbox), but it's also heavier and I find its performance slightly underwhelming.

I also happen to like my cars rather raw and this Evo IX delivers much better in that respect. I like that journalists say the steering could be considered almost overly-sharp. I like that some find it noisy. I like that others find it stiff. I don't even mind the bland interior and a body based off some middle-of-the-road bleh-mobile.

The Evo had it where it counted and proved it could go beyond its image and humble base to be recognized world-wide. Thus, this clean Evo in the Varis booth deserved much more attention that it got...

Random interesting picture...

No room for the groom?

Best Booth

Mazda. I will say, though, that no booth was particularly overwhelming (unlike Mitsubishi's darkness-of-space booth last year) probably since car show budgets were being trimmed as, apparently, filling booths with modified cars and pretty models is not as important as preventing bankruptcy... who knew...

But Mazda had every car in their line-up on display all dressed up in the same colour and same detailing (seats, stripes, wheel & bodykit styling), and had them open for everyone to try. It really created a cohesiveness to the display admist a sea of flashy colours and outrageous engine transplants.

An honourable mention goes to Subaru who built a rally car from the shell up in demonstrations over the three days. This is the techs putting in the rear axle and suspension.

It never ceases to amaze me just how fast cars rally cars can be taken apart or put together. I didn't stay for the whole show but they only scheduled, like, 15min for this bit.....

Best Tifosi

Tifosi is the Italian word for a group of sports fans. Increasingly, it's become synonymous the ravenous Ferrari fans at Formula 1 races. Y'know, the one's who dunk themselves in red paint and hold up a gigantic flag for 4hrs in the rain...

Well, despite there being only ONE Ferrari in the entire show, this guy still came in his Ferrari hat. And jacket. And sticker'd phone...

If you must know, he was taking a picture of a Nissan...

This was the only Ferrari in the building, an F2008 that Bridgestone brought along. The F2008 was the car Ferrari contested for the '08 season. For '09, they changed the rules for the allowable wing sizes and now the cars have strange full-width (reaching to the outside edges of the front tire) front wings and extremely narrow rear wings. It's not very attractive..... there's also an option to install a hybrid system (like in a Prius) which allows the drivers to use the batteries to provide a maximum of 6.6 sec (per RACE) of extra power....

The "What The Deuce" Award

Last year's award went to the company Nate for producing the frog car. This year's award also went to Nate for producing this "chick" car......

They hatched it out of a red egg lined with tin foil...... I think that's saying enough......

Best Model

Unlike last year's award which was won by a headless, armless, and legless mannequin, this year there were lots of models worth mentioning.

But try as they might (Suzuki and Toyo in particular tried quite hard), it goes to this nice girl in the Dunlop booth.

I didn't take a brochure though... Dunlops aren't really my thing =P...

Or maybe I should just put the rest of the pictures up and have a vote instead =)...

Best GT-R

With the GT-R being the darling of the Japanese performance scene and the GT-R Spec V about to be released soon, the show was flooded with them. But the Zele GT-R wins because aside from the surprisingly becoming orange paint scheme on their cars (they had a new 370Z as well), it's a very well put-together car with lots of neat and subtle features.

My particular favourite is the carbon fibre bumper that looks identical to the stock one except with two brake ducts put in. I never liked the stock bumper's lack of ducting (a sadly increasingly common styling element) and the Zele bumper looks different, functional, and simple all at once.

Best of all is that in a recent GT-R shootout, Zele's GT-R ran the best time of the day, beating other well-known tuners (like Mine's) on the track.

Car of the Show

Unequivocally- the Mugen NSX RR Concept.

As you might have figured out, I like things that are subtle, pragmatic, functional, and thoughtfully designed/engineered. I like details. I particularly like when something is designed with a clear goal in mind and, like the Evo's quick steering or stiff suspension, isn't ashamed of what it is.

The Mugen NSX RR Concept checks all those boxes. Despite being a car that's been out of production for almost 4 years, it still managed to captivate everyone. I watched it spin around slowly for nearly 15 minutes...

It's not just the body. Yes it resembles their endurance racer, is made of carbon fibre and aluminum, and is gorgeous like a race-car should be, but some panels were moulded to the body shell and they filled in the standard car's side air intakes.

It's not just the brakes. Yes they've got massive calipers and disks, but the entire wheel hub assembly was redesigned to push the wheels out, making use of that wide-body design.

It's not just the aerodynamics. Yes it's got a big wing and a hood extractor, but it's also got relocated exhausts for better rear floor aero and it has the air intake on the roof first seen on the 2002 NSX-R and their race car.

It's not just the interior. Yes it's the same as the normal one, but it's completely redone with new gauges, new steering wheel, new nav screen, new dash/switches, and new seats, all upholstered in red Alcantara.

It's not even the engine, which is the normal 3.2-litre V6 which is puny compared to fast cars of today. But Mugen turned it 90° so it now sits longitudinally (the crankshaft lies front-to-back) instead of transversely (side-to-side), just like their JGTC GT500 race car.

No, this car impresses because it's all those things but put together with a level of quality reserved for top-level race teams with big budgets, which Mugen is. Despite Honda pulling out of F1, this car proves they still know what they're doing.

And with all-but-confirmed rumours that the next NSX will be a front engined, V-10 powered, all-wheel-drive sports car (everything the previous one wasn't), the RR Concept, like the Nismo R34 Z-Tune from last year, is a fitting farewell for one of the most enduring sports cars in Japan, if not the world.