Sunday, September 9, 2012

Update: Daytons in Japan


Apparently my nickname for the outrageously vintage and well appointed roadster stuck.  Daytons hit the Japanese mainland and within months was splashed accross the pages of a popular moto-culture magazine. Good work Sehoji!




Fly Wheels magazine --half car/half motorcycle, all vintage stuff.  It is one of the many publications catering to the American nostalgic Japanese motorist.  It's large format, with high quality images of cars, bikes and events make it one of the best. It is reminiscent of the popular US magazine/book, The Rodders Journal, but on matte finish paper instead.

I have to thank Sehoji again for sending me several copies to keep and give out.


I don't read, nor do I know anybody fluent in Japanese.  So what is written in the margins is left to my imagination.  But I'm going to assume the stories told about the car is about its distant and recent past --perhaps I get a mention?




Some of the small detail pictures are out of the photo album of original pictures that went with the car.  By themselves, the reader gets a good idea at the car's vintage.  But again if you can't read Japanese, the story is missed.


Despite the few changes & additions made to the car, it's still the same car.  Some I'm sure are for safety like the new rear tires & turn signals.  But the car really looks great.  Yeah, I sometimes miss the car.  But I'm really, really happy to see it in good hands.

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Update, comments left Sept. 14:

"Hello! I'm Ayako and my husband Souichi Oikawa, who wrote the Daytons story, is the chief editor of Fly Wheels magazine. The Daytons story is mainly based on the article in Rod & Custom, and of course, this blog. First I translated those to Japanese and then my husband wrote the story based on them. And yes, you got a mention! You can see your name on page 40 and it explains that you found the car, which was far from in good condition, and did the excellent job to save it. The most important mention is that you had no intention to change the look of the car because that's the style Bill Bair had taken as perfect 50 years before. We were impressed by that. And what you did was just like a time-warping effect on the car, the story says. BTW my husband is happen to be a long-time reader of this blog. He had already known all about Daytons when he heard it's coming to Japan. FYI he's not very good at English--that's why he needed my translation--but he can still enjoy your blog..."

Thank you Ayako for leaving that very nice comment.  The magazine article is very classy, everybody I have shown it to has been impressed.