I'm going to add this rant because I think history is interesting. Not directed anyone in particular, just for the sake of discussion.
Let's be real for a minute. Early Japanese sports car design was
all about copying existing cars. Why? The first reason is because the culture hadn't been about independent thought and originality for 95% of its existence. This country was still a freaking empire until 1947. They had a legit emperor. Japan was getting into mechanical manufacturing for WWII, but creative industrial design really wasn't a thing.
Now, who normally makes the new designs for cars? It's normally young men. Where were the young Japanese men? Well a lot of them were at the bottom of the ocean, killed in the war. So Japan really had no source of originality, but due to the oil crisis and changing market demand, they were seeing more export demand than any car industry had ever seen before. What does Japan do to satisfy the wants of westerners? Japan builds them western cars.
The Celica copies the Mustang
The 2000GT copies the E-Type. (Also the 240Z to a cheaper extent)
I know this picture is of toys. Shhhhh.
The Skyline copies the Challenger
The 510 copies the BMW 2002.
There were endless copies of the Mini.
The Datsun 2000 copies the MGB
And yes, the S600 also copies MGB.
Then the 80's happened and this picture got posted to GTP for the umpteenth time...
Anyways...
We can say "Oh the Japanese didn't copy the western designs, they just used the generic X door Y body generic car design." This holds merit, but honestly, I think a big part of the reason why there's an X door Y body generic design is
because the Japanese created these copies.
I don't see this as bad-willed, partially because of how blatant it was in some cases. The Japanese car companies were basically saying "We know you like your sports cars, so here's our cheaper, more reliable version." And it worked. Part of being cheap is simplifying the design process. The Mustang went from this:
To this:
Think that was cheap? I don't.
In summary, Japanese car culture in the 1960's and 70's flourished at a rate nobody could match, it was arguably the most dominant force that the market had seen since the advent of mass production and the Model T. However, we the design inspiration/copy/ripoff isn't something we can ignore when we study it.
This serves to make the effect of cars like the AWD Turbo R3X Nissan Skyline GT-R and Wankel powered Mazdas even more interesting. Cars like that were the symbol for Japan coming into its own and using technology that nobody else had really played with to compete on an international stage.
I corrected that one.
