Japan’s ‘Bōsōzoku’ scene is a sub-genre of car culture that we really don’t understand, but that we’re really glad exists. Ralph Savelsberg is too, having created this magnificent Bōsōzoku-ed Nissan Skyline C110 complete with a wild bodykit, skywards exhausts, and a cool-looking Japanese character to drive it. See more on Flickr at the link.
This is a 1970s C110-series Nissan Skyline GT-R, known as the ‘Kenmeri’ because the advertising campaign for the C110 Skyline featured a couple called Ken and Mary. Yes, really. Still, Nissan’s marketing department were to take British old people’s names literally soon after, with the ‘Silvia’, ‘Gloria’, and even the ‘Cedric’.
Back to the C110 GR-R, which was only sold for 6 months – and only in the Japanese domestic market – before the oil crisis of 1973 ended sales at less than 200 units. High performance cars were looked down upon in Japan during the crisis and the Kenmeri was quickly pulled from production, making it an incredibly rare car today.
TLCB regular Jonathan Elliott has added one more C110 GT-R to the list though, with this brilliant 7-wide Speed Champions style recreation of Nissan’s rarest Skyline variant. Jonathan has captured the real car beautifully there’s more to see at his photostream – click the link above to make the jump.
Not all Skylines are equal… You may know the Nissan Skyline as the all-wheel-drive turbocharged supercar killer, but the reality is it’s much more than that. By ‘more’, we might also mean ‘less’ though, as this boring 1600cc estate car is in fact a Nissan Skyline.
The Skyline name in Japan (and elsewhere) is used on standard family boxes as well as the turbocharged monsters that were exported to Europe and America, which are based on these humble beginnings.
This particular Skyline is a C110 series, produced from 1972 to 1977 and marketed as the Datsun K-Series in some export markets. A GT-R version was available, fitted with a 2000cc straight-six, but most were 1600 and 1800cc inline-fours making well under 100bhp. The estate, as built here by previous bloggee Matthew Terentev, was a peculiar thing in that it had no windows between the C and D pillars, making it sort of a van. Until we looked this up we had assumed Matthew had chosen to blank off the rear windows to hide the Power Functions remote control components that he has fitted to his model.
As it turns out, his design is remarkably accurate and one that’s worth a closer look. You can do just that at his Nissan Skyline 1800 Wagon album on Flickr. Click the link above for the most boring route into Skyline ownership…
