Amazing things found on Japanese car auction sites

Jimny cricket! Look at this gaggle of off-roaders! This quick selection represents just a few of the sweet Jimnys for sale in Japan this week, and to be honest there were about 400 different ones to choose from. I picked some of my favourites…

I love this truck. Not so much for the truck itself, but for the decals. Maybe it was used to haul cassette tapes across the factory floor, or was a production vehicle during filming of this old ad.

Now this, friends, is a van. It's the best-looking forward control van (in my opinion), and finding one in this condition took me forever. What's cooler than beige and brown paint that match the beach chairs my parents used to own?

Remember when Japan made fast cars? This is a sampling from 1995 or thereabouts (the GT-R V-Spec is from a year or so earlier), and shows that every single large Japanese automaker had a seriously fast car on offer.

Want a stripped out rally special? There were two. Want a world-beating circuit racer? Buy an NSX Type-R or GT-R. Prefer to cruise at high speed? Get a GTO or Fairlady.

Maybe these cars are legends because we look back on them with rose-tinted glasses. Maybe they all sucked. Right. Bullshit.

Something was in the water back then. But in retrospect it feels like an entire country was trying to punch above their weight, to show the world that they had arrived.

Three-wheeled trucks are wonderful. Trucks called "Midget" are better. Ones with a gated manual shifter are better still. I can imagine the old Daihatsu Midget was a hoot to drive at slow speeds, mostly because it already looks like a turtle and because onlookers instinctively know how precarious three wheels on a truck is.

Who wants to be buried after a slow ride in a boring old hearse? In many parts of Asia, the funeral car is a wildly decorated machine, complete with intricate carvings, plenty of gold leaf, and a handful of fire-breathing dragons.

This 1975 Isuzu Florian is a vehicle I had no idea existed. After some not-that-exhaustive research, it turns out the Florian shares its platform with the ever-pretty 117 Coupe. It was also named after a "fictional Lipizzan white horse," or so says Wikipedia.

HOLY SHIT!! An AMG Mitsubishi! I knew the Debonair V Royal AMG existed, I just figured it was too much of a unicorn to actually appear in the auction listings—and with a good set of photos to boot.

This is an example of the much more attractive Debonair with black paint—you can tell it's an AMG from the badge above the rear wheel arch, as well as the AMG-branded steering wheel.

If you'd like to read more about why this AMG-tuned Mitsubishi is amazing, 7tune has a great writeup. I've been looking for the more common AMG Mitsubishi Galant, and will let you know when I find one…

I know. After the awesome Mazda T2000 yesterday, today we have a terrible Cadillac Escalade ESV. I'm not quite baller enough to understand the blue and white suede-ish interior, though I am digging the blue paint.

A-maze-ing. This is a 1972 Mazda T2000 truck (Japanese Nostalgic Car, as always, has a great article about it.)

The deets? I have no idea. Info on this beast is scarce. Fill us in if you know…

It's truck week, for no other reason than the fact I found a ton of cool trucks on my last visit.

The 1971 Isuzu Bellet GT-R. A rare car by any measure (about 1,400 were made), but even more interesting when you consider a few things. First, it was the first Japanese car to be called "GT," second, technically it was the "GT Type-R"…beating Honda to the punch by more than a decade. 

One of my favourite "unknown" Japanese cars, the 2000 Toyota Origin, got up to more than $32,000 in bidding before the sale was called off. Not sold. The best thing is that it was modeled after a classic Toyota, the "Toyopet" Crown (like the earlier Toyota Classic) and was made at one of the company's most prestigious plants, the Kanto Auto Works.