The heavy handed attempts to put the Japanese car industry in its place were totally unnecessary. Japan is perfectly capable of doing this all by themselves, with the help of the Godzilla-strength yen.  Over the last issues, we have been chronicling the exodus of Japanese carmakers to lower cost countries with softer currencies. A trend even today’s yen intervention by the BOJ won’t stop. The last one we would have suspected of hopping on that bandwagon to cheaper shores was boutique carmaker Mitsuoka. But the purveyor of fine retro romance is also outta here. (Read More…)

Japan’s boutique car builder Mitsuoka may be more known for the retro-classic cars depicted above – if Mitsuoka is known at all beyond the realm of Nippon. Now, the folks at Toyama’s most famous car manufacturer can’t help themselves any longer, and must join Japan’s current fad … (Read More…)

Sure Mitsuoka is a weird company, with a penchant for changing somewhat-boring modern cars into profoundly quirky tributes to classic designs. For example, if you really want a Nissan Versa that looks like a Jaguar Mk. II (and really, who doesn’t?), they’re the folks you go see. But is anyone imbalanced enough to desire a Mustang-based quasi-Rolls-Royce Drophead? Or is this just an attempt by Mitsuoka to out-ugly its own Orochi? There had better be a good reason for this monstrosity, because this Roller rip-off is deeply, almost intentionally hideous… as if the designer felt that the Mustang’s flank lines actually compliment the tacked-on Rolls hood. And we thought it was impossible to make the Geely GE look good…