Another Sunday Tokyo sojourn and another interesting find – actually sharp-eyed readers may recognize this location from a previous post – yes, the pristine Nissan Laurel “Givenchy” edition is still there – I stopped by about six months ago and the owner happened to be outside – I asked him if the Laurel was for sale and he gave me a “non-answer”, which in Japanese means “no” – evidently knows what he has and intends to keep it. But I snapped this shot the other day to give our non-Japanese readers a little vision of parking, Tokyo style…
Actually, you won’t find parking spaces this small in Japan – the owner of this shop (service and a little selling) has more cars than he has space for – and with land so expensive, sometimes you just have to make do with what you have. Though it’s tough to make out in the photo, there is no metal-to-metal contact – though my eyeball guess is about a quarter inch separates them.
So what do we have here? Let’s start on the right – this is s very clean late ‘60s/early ‘70s Mercedes Benz 250 CE Coupe. Outside looks good with just a little faded paint – Inside from a distance (couldn’t get any pics – lot chained off) looks brand new. Not surprising as most Japanese owners are fastidious when it comes to the inside of their cars.
I like the look and stance of these classic 3-box Mercedes – styled by Paul Bracq. Interesting to compare this upright styling to the new 2017 400E Coupe with its swoopy C pillar.
Nissan Skyline (C10) GT-R Sedan from internet
On the left we have a ‘68-’72 Nissan Skyline 4-door. All the badges have been removed but my guess is it’s a GT model – don’t think it’s a GT-R as the interior looks pretty stock. It’s in somewhat poorer shape than the Mercedes but these older Skylines have a devoted following here – and there are quite a few shops that will take on a restoration.
Mercedes M114 Nissan L28
These two have something else in common – their engines. If this is a GT, then the Skyline has a 2.0 liter naturally aspirated version of Nissan’s strong SOHC L-series inline 6 – good for 120 hp. I’ve read at several different times that Nissan got a little help from Mercedes when designing the L-series back in the mid-60s. The 250 CE has the M114 straight 6 – 130 hp with Bosch D-Jetronic fuel injection. Take a look at both these engines – appearance-wise, they do look rather similar…
Hope on the next trip by the owner has sold a few cars so he has little more room to maneuver…
“Terrible parking job, Steve. You’re fired.”
“What? Did I get too close? You told me to save space!”
“No, too far. You wasted 1/8 of an inch. Show some effort next time.”
I have long had a thing for those W114 hardtops. They were never commonly seen here in the US but during my law school years there was an older woman who was in school who drove a brown one of these. There was certainly not another in the parking lot.
The Nissan Laurel is new to me. The sculpting in the rear doors and quarters is quite odd. I think it wrecks an otherwise attractive car.
That fender sculpting was a styling “trademark” of this model that lasted through many model changes. Think of it as being (vaguely) similar to the “trademark” Pontiac split grille.
Kind of reminds you of that “bit” in the 1st Police Academy movie where Steve Guttenberg’s character tries to tell his boss that their parking lot is FULL, and the boss tells Steve to park the car….which he does, literally, on top of 2 other cars.
I’ve been to Japan but can’t say I’ve ever seen cars parked as closely as the ones pictured here. I have seen cars “snuggled up” so close to buildings, tho, that you would swear a sheet of paper could not be passed between car and building.
I did have a tiny bit of experience with the “non-answer”, answer. Japanese are too polite (?) to say no, but always quite enthusiastic when the answer is yes.
Ah Tokyo
Every time I go, I end up bringing back more Japan Domestic Market (JDM) watches for my collection. I tend to focus my collection on Seiko and Citizen JDM watches.
Here are some of the ones from the last trip
I bought a Seiko alarm clock on my 2nd visit to Japan, 35 years later it still works great.
In the early 70s, when I first joined the Navy, I bought a very expensive ($65-$75) watch at the Base Exchange….a Seiko “self-winding” watch. VERY beautiful watch, but I wasn’t active enough to keep it wound, so it either stopped or lost time. I see that Seiko still advertises these “self winding” watches, but I’ve switched to Casios.
I would imagine that the Seiko you bought was a diver called the Seiko 6105 Diver which is now worth lots of money if original.
Yes Seiko does make automatic watches still and they are popular on the watch forums.
Like you I found I sat to much to use a automatic watch while at work and I did not wear them while being active out doors due to possibly damaging them.
I switched manual winding watches (I wind it each morning), quartz watches, tuning fork watches(like Accutron) which hum, electro-mechanical watches (like the Hamilton Electric/Seiko Elnix and Citizen Cosmotron)
I’ve seen a kind of motorized watch-shaker to take care of that very problem, so long as you don’t mind strapping your timepiece into it every night. Those are beautiful watches you have there; your whole collection must be spectacular.
yes, i actually bought one of those electric winders for my automatic watch about a year ago. if you don’t wear the watch everyday it makes sense. the stem is so delicate that i have broken it on three occasions adjusting the time after non-use. also, the winder is supposedly better for the movement than letting it sit idle.
I am not certain that early model Skyline sedan came in GT-R form; its coupe sister started the GT-R legend. Those old Benzes always looked so classy; the new C-Class coupe is growing on me, but M-B should have done more to distinguish the S-Class coupe as it looks too much like this one, and the SUV coupes are pointless IMHO.
The Skyline 2000GT-R was first made available as a 4-door sedan in 1969. It was highly successful in touring car racing before the coupe version was introduced in 1971.
Clones of GT-Rs are very common today, as fewer than 2000 examples of this first generation were produced, split among sedans and coupes.
Parking in Japan gets pretty crazy. Here is a picture of reserved parking at my friend’s apartment building – yes, one layer of cars are parked underground. Edit – sorry the picture is sideways – tried to edit it but failed
It escapes me as to why the owner jammed two highly rare cars up against each other so closely that they can be damaged; it looks like there is plenty of space around the cars to park them a little further apart. Getting into the cars and maneuvering them out of their spots will be further complicated as the Skyline is right hand drive whereas the Mercedes is left hand drive.
The Skyline’s condition and lack of a license tag suggests that it is not roadworthy. Japanese motor vehicle inspections are pretty rigorous, often to the point that 7-8 year old cars are often replaced/traded in because the cost of repairs needed to pass the shaken (car inspection) approaches the depreciated value of the car.
Where do some of these older JDM cars go? They’re often exported.
I cant say this about many cars, but man oh man that Mercedes coupe has come a LONG way towards looking better! The ’70s model is way to stuffy for a 2 door…the look works fine as a sedan, but coupes are expected to be sporty. Nowadays with 4 doors trying to look swoopy and aggressive, that’s exactly ass backwards, IMHO.
Expected by you. But why should a manufacturer conform to your specific predilection?
Those W114 Coupes are nice drivers but not quite as nice as the W123’s that replaced them .
A few years ago I ran across a one owner W114 250CE, it has Bosch D-Jetronic fuel injection and ran very very nicely and was even Chinese Red (like Fire Truck red), I offered the Nice Elderly Japanese fellow who owned it $3,000 for it and he demurred, two months later he called back saying I was the only one who actually showed up to inspect and test drive it and I could have it but it was too late .
I’d purchased a Diesel Coupe that’s much cheaper to run, these suck gas like crazy .
I hope the Skyline gets a full restoration then put back into daily use .
-Nate
Do you think the Mercedes gets driven? In the US, a parking job like that would clearly indicate a vehicle that is permanently parked. It looks remarkably free of upper surface grime for a non-moving vehicle.
Nissan inherited that OHC engine when they merged with Prince, it was they not Nissan who got the Mercedes clone, Old Prince cars have quite a following in NZ they were assembled here in the early 60s.
I must have been in law school with Cavanaugh. At my school (UM 1977-80) there was such a woman with such a car in my class. I was driving a ’72 220D.
A problem with parking them so close together is that if a tire on one of them goes flat, you can get a slow-motion grunching of the bodywork into each other.
That is a very good point! Not likely worth the risk to gain an inch of space.
I don’t imagine the M-B moves very often, it may even have been positioned via a go-jack or similar rather than being driven.
in my apartment building here in nyc, the attendants regularly park vehicles with one or two inches clearance on every side. they also will park them several cars deep so that it requires moving half a dozen cars just to get yours out. they usually do this with the customers who don’t use their car everyday.
i no longer own a car but i used to call down the night before i needed it so that they could bring it to the front. they requested one hours notice. you often find foot prints on your door because they climb in through the windows. one time i noticed that a piece of my center console was cracked. i pointed it out to them insisting that the most likely cause was someone stepping on it while entering the car through the window and they had the car repaired for me by their contracted body shop.
the garage is filled with range rovers, benzes, etc.. the rates are now about $600/month. this is why i no longer own a car.