Off Topic

Or is it?

I've been debating the next part in my mini-series of the bounty I found whilst pillaging Croyden, and by the time I'd decided what to do, about a week has passed. No blog for a week? Blame my think box.

Anyway, here was the dilemma. This blog is kinda like the Jalopy Journal, but for models. Well, that's the goal...Ryan's writing skills and eye for a good story are a whole solar system away from my sporadic ramblings, but the stuff that he features is all the kinda stuff I like. On the accompanying message board, Ryan and his operate a stict rule; traditional rods and kustoms only.

My rule for this , inspired by personal taste than an attempt to ape someone else's formula, was no tuners on this blog, however cool. There's enough amazing stuff to feature here without branching into something I don't know much about. Don't get me wrong, my 1:1 daily is a 3 year old 'hot' hatch, I got nothing against people who wanna build this stuff, but my plan was to stick to the old stuff here.

Then, in my haul, was this cute little 2 seater Suzuki. It's got after market alloy wheels, carbon fibre on the silencer and the plate indicates it was tuned by computer rather than screwdriver. And yet, I think it fits. Why? Let me explain.

First up, its tiny, light. Not silly money. Long bonnet. Rear driven. Kinda classic looking, like some kinda relative to the Austin Healey Sprites and MG Midgets for the 60s. The Japanese do retro pretty well (see the Mazda MX-5's resemblance to old Lotuses - no accident, it was part of the design brief), and in it's metallic British racing green finish, it's not hard to see where they might got some of the ideas from.

Sometimes stealing liberally from the past works out pretty well (New Beetle), sometimes its questionable at best (PT Cruiser), but in this newer-is-better-gotta-get-the-newest-thing-now world, the fact that anyone in these big companies is even looking back to what's gone before is pretty damn cool.

JB

Postscript: Regardless of how off topic the model itself was, the blog it inspired was DEFINITELY left of centre. Do not adjust your set, normal service will be resumed shortly...