History Lesson: Japanese Stock Car Racing

Stock car racing is probably the most polarizing motorsport in the modern world. People either love it or absolutely hate it. Personally I am not a huge fan of present-day NASCAR although I do follow it from time to time and I think that it is under appreciated by many.

The one thing that is for sure is that stock car racing was more genuine and fun to watch in its early days. I have always loved stock car racing's "glory days", when the cars were "stock" and legends like Richard Petty, Cale Yarborough and David Pearson battled it out on the high banked speedways of Darlington and Daytona and road courses like Riverside in their muscle car-based machines.

While big news was made last year when Toyota became the first foreign company to compete in the Nextel/Sprint Cup, It is little known is that Japan actually had its own American-inspired stock car series back in the '60s and '70s. I stumbled across some of these photos while looking for something else and ended up scouring the 'net for more info about it.

It turns out there is very little info on old Japanese stock car racing even on Japanese websites. I did manage to find a few photos and a little bit of info though.

A lot of the info and photos came from a Japanese site dedicated to racing driver Seiichi Suzuki who competed both American and Japanese stock car events. Tragically, he lost his life during a 1974 crash at Fuji Speedway. An interesting bit of trivia is that Suzuki is actually the founder of the famous Tomei tuning company.

The Japanese stock car series existed in various forms from the early '60s until the early '70s.

Here is an early Prince (Nissan) Gloria stock car. Both the car's color and number are a tribute to Richard Petty, the "king" of stock car racing.

Here we see a very early 130 model Nissan Cedric stock car.

Another slightly newer Cedric. Many of these Cedric's were running the H30 3.0L OHV inline 6 from the larger Nissan President.

Check out this Cedric sporting a spoiler yanked straight from the famous Plymouth Superbrid/Dodge Daytona. Looks a little like '60s Bosozoku style.

Nissan's were not the only cars involved. There Toyota Crown's as well as others including some American cars. From what I have read, the stock car series did not have much factory backing so there were plenty of crazy cross-maker engine swaps including Ford V8's into the Cedric and Nissan H30 inline 6's into the Toyota Crown.

The craziest would have to be this Toyota MS50 Crown apparently powered by a supercharged rotary engine. A blown rotary in a Toyota sedan? Nuts.

This particular MS50 Crown was running the Nissan H30 inline 6. Some of the Crown's also ran the early Toyota V8 from the top of the line Century.

Now just for comparison's sake here is a shot of Richard Petty's famous Plymouth from about 1964.

It has always been known that the styling of early Japanese cars borrowed heavily from American cars but the similarities are amazing when the cars are seen in stock car form.

Another Nissan Cedric. Check out the side-dumped exhaust just like the old American stockers. So cool.

Lastly, a shot of a 230 Nissan Cedric during one of the later races.

While early race cars like the Hakosuka Skyline GT-R and Toyota 2000GT represented the early roots of Japanese OEM racing programs and factory performance, the stock car series with its unorthodox style, and gritty cars more represented the roots of the Japanese tuning car movement that would take off about 10 years later.

Japan's Auto Sport Magazine recently had a special issue about Japanese stock car racing that is probably the biggest source of contemporary info about it. I am really fascinated by this obscure series and I am trying to track down the magazine to learn more.

For now here is a link from a page about Seiichi Suzuki where I found some of these photos-

http://www.mmjp.or.jp/60srace/JapanStockcarRace1.html

Comments

[George Apostolopoulos]

true there is nothing stock about stock car racing only the emblems in front of the car, Toyota and Ford don't even make factory push rod V8s, Chevy dose, but the impala is fwd so are the rest except for charger, but i think they are running avenger witch is ff layout and with the c,o,t car nascar builds all the chassis perrty soon (there is talk) they are going to make every one run the same engine,. it has strayed far from its roots
and is getting perrty laim, thank u for posting Japanese stock car racing it is Cool

[Burabuda]

always wondered what series that 230 ht was racing in. nh has a model kit of that car i believe

http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n26/shakotanboogie/stock1.jpg

[Toyotageek]

Another magazine source for historical pictures and stories on lot's of Japanese racing, from the 60's to more recent events, is the 100 Best Races(?) series by Auto Sport Archive (maybe the same publisher as Auto Sport Magazine?).
Here's a link - http://news1.as-web.jp/book/mrace/back.html?w8G4=1&b6Ec=1&w8G4=1&b6Ec=1&w8G4=1&b6Ec=1
I have several issues & they are excellent... I just can't read them!

[Matt]

Man, that is really really cool. As a fan of NASCAR, I really like to see the other stockcar series around the world, and this really intrigues me. I don't think all of the pictures loaded up though, as I can't see any Superbird spoiler'd car. Also, a 302 powered Cedric sounds pretty rad.

[car accident lawyer west palm beach]

This is really cool. Thanks for letting me see vintage race cars. This is one hell of history. You Rock!

-craig