The Honda City Cabrio, as spotted by Retro Car BotPhoto: Honda (Retro Car Bot)
It’s once more time to bless your timeline with a Retro Car Bot, a bot that tweets out retro cars and information about them. That’s it. It’s so great.
In fact, @Retro_Car_Bot is more than just retro cars popping onto your feed, as it is really Retro Car Introduction Bot, designed to introduce you to retro cars, particularly oddball Japanese ones from when the Japanese auto industry went completely loopy in the Bubble Era.
Any and every niche was pursued, which is why there is such a thing as the Toyota Deliboy, a high-roof economy van with a troubling brochure that even I had never heard of until about five minutes ago.
トヨタ デリボーイ(1989) – 「日本初の大衆クラスのウォークスルーバン」と銘打ち販売。アーバンサポーターほど大きくなくグレードによってはセカンドシートも搭載可能なためカスタムベースとしても万能。名前がなんか恥ずかしい。 pic.twitter.com/esawf8NLBN
— レトロカー紹介bot (@retro_car_bot) May 16, 2018
I first noticed this kindly addition to the Good Internet when obscure-car-knower Chris Haining tweeted out that he’d found a car he’d never heard of before, which is saying something.
I was ashamed to have not been aware of the Autech A10. Now I realise my shame might have been hasty. https://t.co/CVBQZHDMGv
— Chris Haining (@RoadworkUK) May 15, 2018
Let’s look a bit more at that Autech A10, a kind of in-house custom retro homage to 1960s Alfa Romeos. Sources will argue about what car it’s based on but as best as I have found it was a custom-bodied Nissan Rasheen, a kind of post-Pike crossover production car that had a different East German retro style. This chassis code shown here seems to back that up.
オーテック A-10(1996/非売) – 日産特装車を手がける同社が創立10周年記念と社内技術継承のために作製したワンオフモデル。ベース車のラシーン(4WD)をFR化しフルチューンのSR20DEを搭載、最高出力180PS。pic.twitter.com/g1jGJeyA4t
— レトロカー紹介bot (@retro_car_bot) May 11, 2018
Thanks Retro Car Bot. I mean, I don’t really need to thank you. You can’t hear me. You’re a bot. This is what you do. But I appreciate it anyway.