Name: Why Toyota, Honda, And Nissan Continue To Bet On Sports Cars
Uploaded: 2021-05-31T02:56:46.000Z
Duration: 16 min
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

For Americans who lived through them, the 1990s bring back memories of,

among other things, Bill Clinton, the young Internet, certain memorable

But for countless auto enthusiasts, the 1990s bring back memories of

another sort the golden age of Japanese sports cars, the Toyota Supra,

Acura NSX, Mazda RX-7, Nissan 300ZX, Mitsubishi 3000GT, Mazda Miata

and others were all high performance and in some cases relatively low cost

vehicles. That inspired a generation of racers and tuners and made their

way into massive film and video game franchises.

Now, in 2020, trucks and SUVs all but rule America.

But Japanese automakers are not giving up on these small, agile sports

cars. Some have been there all along and others are making a comeback.

But why do this now when some automakers are determining that cars are less

Are the new Japanese sports cars living up to the legacies of the old?

When Japanese automakers first began importing vehicles into the U.S.

in the 1950s, the cars they sold were mostly conservative and affordable.

There were even a few stumbling blocks for these importers, including a

skeptical American public and a lack of knowledge about the American

In 1973, Toyota set up a design studio in the U.S.

to help executives in Japan understand a market so different from their

own. Japanese companies also made major innovations in manufacturing that

yielded low production costs and strong, consistent product quality.

They focused especially on reliability and earned a reputation for making

cars that were far more dependable than those made in Europe and the U.S.

But they weren't content with this reputation.

Honda, Nissan, Mazda and Toyota also became forces in racing throughout

the 20th century in the hope of proving to the world that Japanese

engineers could also hold their own on the track.

And that's one of the things that we've learned just got the research

recently, is that consumers associate Toyota with QDR quality, durability

and reliability. Toyota became the first Japanese automaker to win the GTO

class in the International Motorsport Association GT series in 1987.

Actor Paul Newman raced Datsun's and Nissan's in the 1970s and 1980s,

winning several races during that time, including two SCCA won

The second of the two was Nissan's fiftieth national championship.

The Mazda RX-7 won several IMSA races in the 1980s, winning over 100 races

by 1990 and becoming at that point the most successful car in IMSA

history. Japanese automakers were already trying to lure American

performance enthusiasts at least as early as the late 1960s.

And early example that garnered a lot of attention in America was the

The 240Z was the car that got Americans thinking, well, wait a minute,

maybe Japanese cars are not just about inexpensive economy cars that I

commute to work. And that 240z popularity convinced Japanese makers that

performance cars were worth the effort in the U.S.

At first, these efforts were incremental.

Some of the names that became iconic began as variants of other cars.

For example, the Toyota Supra began as a variant of the Toyota Celica.

I love the idea that the Evo still looks like a Lancer or I love the idea

that the WRX still looks like a Subaru Impreza.

Like that's cool. And Americans thought that was cool, too.

And so they kind of took their formula and said, well, we can do it a

different way. The vehicles were also different from American sports cars,

which tended to be larger and stocked with eight cylinder engines.

Japanese sports cars were compact light and had smaller engines, often

using turbocharging to ramp up horsepower.

They took advantage of technological developments such as electronic

engine controls. The Mitsubishi 3000, for example, had a very

sophisticated all wheel drive system for its time.

They were also cars that took risks and did things differently from each

Mazda, in addition to the Miata, they had the RX-7.

It was powered by a local rotary engine, which was unique in the industry.

Nobody else but Mazda was building Wankel by that time.

You know, there were some German vehicles in the 1960s that had wankel's,

but nobody else is doing it at that point.

Mitsubishi went for all in on technology to try and use technology to make

Toyota with the MR-2, they decided to make a lightweight mid-engine sports

car. You know, again, something quite different from what its competitors

were doing. So there were different approaches.

You know, it wasn't all variations on the same formula.

And while they were not exactly cheap, some of them could be had for less

Notable cars from the era included the Mazda RX-7, the Toyota Supra, the

On the less expensive end, there were cars like the Subaru WRX and Mazda

Miata. Honda even tried its hand at making a supercar, which in the U.S.

It started at just above $60,000 in 1991, equivalent to about $150,000 in

2021 terms. Despite some criticisms, the ambitious vehicle impressed the

auto world and was significantly less expensive than many high end exotics

What made these cars different is that it was really the first time that

you see a lot of really high performance bordering on high end Japanese

cars, because typically those cars had been about efficient performance or

It was really a time when Japanese manufacturers had kind of come into

their own and American buyers realized those cars offer a lot of bang for

the buck. But over time, many of these cars and others like them

disappeared from product lineups in the U.S.

or became overshadowed by other concerns.

By the time it was discontinued in North America in 1998 and in Japan in

2002, the Toyota Supra had become something of a Hollywood star, thanks in

part to the 2001 film The Fast and the Furious, where the car was driven

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Why Toyota, Honda, And Nissan Continue To Bet On Sports Cars

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