1992 Mazda Autozam AZ-1 - Jay Leno's Garage

I mean it feels really quick [Music] what minute episode of Giles garage - the car was featuring today well you try to figure out what it is because you don't see them here in the United States but you start seeing more and more of them now that we can import them because they're 25 years old we have that rule here in the United States it comes from Japan its right-hand drive you know there's a whole category of cars in Japan under I think old kei cars not like what we have for kei cars not those chrysler things these are cars 600 CCS or less they're obviously small there's sort of commuter vehicle city vehicles this one here belongs to a young engineer named actually De Luca who imported from Japan actually come on in good to see you thanks thanks for coming thanks now tell me what kind of automotive engineer are you mechanical engineering okay so then what kind of work you do do you superchargers turbochargers stuff like that so when I bought this car I was working as a turbocharger engineer doing project engineering kind of design work testing for turbochargers in the US and Japan okay and you speak Japanese I'm not really enough to get by okay but you lived in Japan for what a year a little over six months oh okay okay and what did you just fall in love with these when you saw him on the street so a couple years ago I ended up getting an opportunity to move to Japan for my job and basically I went out there and I bought the car within you know a week of living out there okay before we go tell us exactly what is is a Mazda Suzuki so the car is an autos am a z1 exam autos and then z1 correct so autos an is a sub brand of Mazda kind of like the relationship between Scion and Toyota I guess okay autos am was the small car you know dealer named for for Mazda where they sold other kei cars and small displacement cars and and why were you someone to Mazdas if you have Mazdas here so yeah I actually I have a Miata and I used seven rx-7 and I race and you know the Miata was kind of the first car it's a you know good good car to kind of get into racing it's inexpensive and you know it's gonna ask you why did you sell the rx-7 that's a great car I bought that car from the original owner and it had been sitting for five or six years not driven at all so if that was my only project car it would have been a car I would have kept but it was just so much maintenance so much to get the car up to a good running standard right right well I love mods I got an rx-8 and I got my Cosmo do you see my Cosmo over there I did see your cosmetic well they engine in that one oh so it's got it's about 200 horse now I've got a Weber carburetor - it's fabulous to drive I just love them you see many of those in Japan when you were there I did see a lot I went to a Cosmo sport owners club in a Hiroshima last year and an Fuji Speedway and they we got to do a parade laughs I got to ride in oh right one of the cosmos sort you know took it around the track with an owner and took tons of pictures you know they're great cars and there's a huge rotary backing you know in Japan the people that have rotaries are huge enthusiasts and that Fuji Speedway I was fortunate I got to drive the LFA you know I always thought they were okay I drove one here once and he couldn't get up to speed but with that v10 what thing hits nine brand oh my god it's the best sounding engine and just coming down the Fuji straightaway it was just fantastic it was pretty exciting yeah they had an exhibition for some of the older you know historic racing cars so they had the 787b and all of that you know they had all those you know do sound tests and stuff down the front straight and everyone's filming it and stuff because there's only like a half a dozen Kosmos in the United States and might be more how many did you see like in the owners club how many show up is it like a hundred two hundred no no not that not that amount people had to drive all their cars there people don't really tell them out to the event so I think maybe around fifteen twenty showed up that's what he goes oh it was a pretty good pretty good turnout or most of them white with the Czech Interior like mine yeah so most of were white there was one maroon one and then there was a couple like very light baby blue colored well let's get back to this so this is a Mazda Suzuki now why didn't Mazda Mazda build engines why didn't they just put their own engine in their car Suzuki had already been making this motor the same motor for this car was used in the Suzuki cappuccino as well as the alto works and so I guess they just decided to do a collaboration between the two they had been working on the concept for this for a few years before they actually ended up putting it into production so I guess between them making the motor and Mazda wanting to make a weird quirky car it kind of you know came to fruition three cylinder a three cylinder yeah three silver 600 CC yeah 660 it's a little under six hundred sixty okay turbocharged and what are you looking at maybe 50 so it weighs a little over 1500 pounds I think it's 1584 pounds as I move along pretty good because it's like like you smiling you say you know this quirky little car but in Japan it's not really seen that way it's just seen as it's not really a little yeah it is a tiny car - yeah so they see it as a tiny car people don't really look at it the same way people look at it well you know just because there are you know equivalently sized cars but people are paying attention a lot more for small cars in Japan too when you're doing yeah I mean it's great looking it's kind of cool-looking did they ever make an open version a roadster version they did not so initially at the Tokyo Motor Show I believe they ended up having three versions released when they kind of debuted the car there was an ABC version you know there was different things about each of them I think the a version had pop-up headlights the B version was a little bit more sport oriented and then the C version looked like a you know like a prototype race car or something like that and even though the C the C version car got the most you know popular feedback the a version was what they ended up putting into production and then they took out the pop-up headlights in it it has khylin mr2 C at X 19 I mean with these grilles back yeah and it looks it doesn't look like a 25 year old car it doesn't know it looks contemporary especially the front and the tires are meaty looking tires they're pretty good sized tires for such a smaller I thought it would have you know like pre a small tire I mean these are thirteen by five and a half even though they're they look big on this car they're still well but I mean but it's a wide tire yeah they are yeah yeah and it looks fairly roomy and and these are like a Gullwing door aren't they they are so that's kind of cool yeah I think it's a neat looking car now what would you pay for something like this in Japan and like an American money when you bought it how much what can I ask yeah so when I bought the car two and a half years ago I paid equivalent it was seventy one hundred dollars yeah and then plus around four thousand dollars to import it yeah because in Japan they don't really like older cars on the road I know I mean the older your pair is the more you pay like here the older car is the less you say they want old cars off the road don't they say yeah they just want to get this stuff out of the country yeah basically when you register these cars you end up having to pay a recycle fee when you purchase them so you know in five years that's like kind of a standard time that you own a car in Japan when you're done recycle it and it's done you know off your hands new car I know it's funny because you'd think I mean it's in such beautiful shape you think you'll be rewarded for taking care of it and not getting a new car yeah but not the case really luckily for the smaller displacement cars they're a little bit less expensive to keep longer but you know for the white plate or like the higher displacement cars over 660 CC that gets expensive and automatic transmission oh it's a manual transmission how many speeds high speed high speed transmission okay and you mentioned before you said there was a governor they put a governor on the engines oh yeah so the car came with a speed governor on it so you couldn't go over a hundred and thirty kilometers per hour which is a little over I think it's like 84 miles an hour okay and so that was like one of the first things to go I got the car what kind of speed can I get to can you hit a hundred you can um I think that that's about where the car I mean to be totally honest I don't know how fast it goes cuz the speedometer only goes up to 140 kilometers per hour so you're just kind of pegged over use your cell phone okay tell me now you have two gauges there all those aftermarket and those factory they're aftermarket there's a boost gauge and a temp gauge oh okay okay and it's turbocharged okay the turbos like the size of my fist it's super small yeah well the engines not much bigger too and it's uh obviously runs on premium fuel way it does and how much does gas cost in Japan carries yeah they sell it by leaders there's how much leave it uh I can't remember at the time was it I mean did you find it way more expensive no no not at all on this car only has a six gallon tank so when you go to fill it up I never paid more than like twenty dollars to fill fill the car and sale okay and what kind of mileage you yes this gets the best mileage out of any car that I own right now it gets somewhere around 40 mpg highway Wow I'm a little over 40 very good high 30s you know driving around town is it this breaks all the way around drums in the back what is it yeah I think it's dis Disko around okay it's a great look I mean it's I think it's great and from the back the taillights actually make it look like a big car it looks like a full-size taillights in the back there that's kind of cool yeah I think they had to make them higher so people can actually you know yeah see you're driving the car around now in Japan they don't have this third brake light do they or get in there yeah there is a third brake light it kind of sits right up in oh okay okay the back has like a really bad time right when you get a lot of looks driving this around or people go one you must get stopped and everything besides being an attractive person and you're driving a usual car you just bother you all day long with this thing um it's one of two things you know I get a lot of people that are coming up and then they walk over and they're like what the heck is this thing I've never seen anything like it before or you get people that you know they know what it is and then they kind of geek out like well I know I've seen the Nissan makes the figaro is that's the one I think yeah and then then there's the cappuccino this seems like the sportiest the other ones seem like little shopping cars I mean it just seems like this seems like it could be kind of a sporty car you can actually even race something like this can you yes I have tracked the car before the other two are pretty you know they're all kind of equivalent when they released them the Honda beat the Suzuki cappuccino and the az1 all came out at the same time they were all direct competitors to each other yeah but this one you know obviously this is the one that I fell in love with it's in my opinion it's been a great track car I took it out to some of the local tracks in Japan right I took it to Fuji Tsukuba soda Gaara forest Raceway you know all the little they have a lot of little tracks in China and you know that's kind of where this car shines is you know the smaller lower speed tracks I took this to Laguna Seca earlier this year and it was a blast to drive it but you know you're just pegs in fifth like the whole - the whole time you're driving it so and you have a full complement of you got air conditioning and you have electric windows oh you got manuals okay but it has air-conditioning it doesn't look that I you cramped in there you got plenty of room I am personally not cramped cos I'm five foot four but most of my friends are you're taller than me and it's not necessarily the Headroom that gets you it's the legroom yeah yeah fantastic can we open can we see the engine do we open up yeah okay I love the way it opens I'll leave it up I love it so the engines are in front of the axle that's good so you so it's almost midnight is n't mid-engine rear-wheel drive yeah all the snap oversteer yeah I think it's really cool so that's a three cylinder fuel-injected turbocharged it makes about 63 foot-pounds of torque sixty-four horsepower and how many valves per cylinder you know I think it's got four valves for pellets for silly okay now cool performance well sure and he got this brace across here that the fluoride used to call it the Monte Carlo bar when they had that on the Ford Falcon that's what I always call it then people coming it'll call him let me call him run it on your old well a mold that's what we called it back in the 60s a much like your dad smiling over there Calabar that was the brace across it that's what I always call it now I imagine they're probably getting every ounce of power out of this motors probably not much you can do to it right I mean if you left it to be left in stock have you modified anything um so I've left everything pretty stock in the car other than just general maintenance there are options to upgrade it a lot of people that have these cars do end up doing like a turbo swap on it oh yeah a bigger turbo you know you can upgrade like the exhaust manifold stuff like that there's actually an access hatch inside the car that you can unbolt and then you can get to the backside of the motor so it's a lot easier to do maintenance and you can get to the turbo and everything from from you know the inside of the car have you had to do have you had any problems with it I haven't had too much problem just so sometimes with these cars the sender wires for the starters kind of break down over time okay so I did end up having to create like a little relay to power the sender higher to make sure you know it starts every time I did get stranded a couple times in Japan okay and how many miles in this one so it has about a hundred and twenty thousand kilometers on it right now that's about sixty five thousand miles yeah so a little over I mean it looks great yeah this is considered old to them too you know it's sixty five thousand miles like oh my gosh is cars junk you know what's you know I've got a 68 Mercedes over three hundred twenty five thousand miles it runs fine yeah there's this myth that left over from the I think nineteen fifties and sixties when we didn't have modern oils and things were Oh seventy thousand miles of cars were wiped out it's no good I mean BMWs and Mercedes they run hundreds in Japanese stuff yeah there's just less than the longest and they would get rid of it you know I mean I meet motorcycle guys with 150,000 miles of stuff on their bikes it it's it's pretty amazing and I like the fact that the horsepower of the torque rating are just about the same yeah yeah that's interesting and the side vents are actually you know they're actually used functional yeah the intercooler sits right behind this side vent and the intakes on on the other side so you actually get some airflow what's an oil change in this two quarts anymore yeah it's it's really small you only go through like one or two quarts yeah it's really great it's it's so funny he's never caught on here and then well I guess this doesn't have all the safety equipment all that stuff does it yeah so that's the whole thing with the 25-year rule right so this would never ever pass safety standards in the United States there's really no impact zone on this car if you get hit you're kind of toast so you know for about 11 or 12 yeah but the price has gone up a lot since 25 years old so the cars themselves are kind of selling in Japan for ten to fifteen thousand right now okay so but there must be a whole must be some Japanese business guy just rounded these up and just selling them here in the states I mean yeah there's a lot of import companies that have kind of popped up in the last couple years and making a business out of it can we open the front what do you have on the front so the French you would think it's storage it's not it's um basically there's just a spare tire in there and that's where the horn is and like the master cylinder Oh take a look at it right here yeah I'm not a lot of TV on there yeah basically all that they put in here was a spare tire and I do have upgraded horns in here you know so as people are gonna run me over the entire bag yeah so basically what happened in Japan when they released this car I I think between when the car was approved and when the car was getting released they realize having a spare tire directly in the front is not very safe so they ended up releasing as you know an announcement that they would like you to take the tire out of the front and put it into the back in this bag okay and I like what to say it says exciting dual overhead cam turbo midship instill event cam terrible exciting micro coupe why is it in English if this is it yeah they love putting stuff in English because we do that here like the Maserati Quattroporte everybody says it sounds means it's four-door yeah sort of but quadra-port sound so much exciting so I guess in Japan and I liked it they say it's exciting see if you didn't know the car is exciting it's an exciting car to drive very cool yeah there is boy there's not much room in there at all so I mean you could take the spare tire out I guess and put half of a grocery bag in here and it costs the same brace you have in the rear you have here yep is that it almost looks after mark is that is that an aftermarket piece so this particular one is aftermarket okay there was a Mazda speed version of this car that they released towards the end of the production for it and they did have a Mazda speed specific front strut brace and one in the rear as well so if you bought let's say the stripper version of this in Japan it would not have this correct okay I see but yet it's drilled for it and that's everything is there yeah yeah well very cool very cool so we're about ready to take this thing for a ride can we do that yeah no problem anything else it's debatable cool okay here actually it's pretty easy to get in with these go wing doors like Chang she's like might just like my gull wing my over Sadie's let's put it in here oh okay not bad do you fit yes fine Schnatter up [Music] whether your room I've note that pattern goes the other way that no no straight back at first is all the way to the left yeah feels quick and that's I mean that's really the whole thing yeah one of those parts when you're driving and you're like well I'm going so fast and then you look yeah you're like oh I'm going maybe 40 right exactly but it's really I think this is really cool I will buy one of these yeah they're seriously an absolute blast I have enjoyed every minute of owning with you driving it around it's great doing you know any mountain driving tight roads yeah it's a lot of fun it's fairly easy to work on it's not all electronics yeah there's really not that much we've found much to it she's totally on it you know everything's manual barely get to but I was thinking right I forgot [Music] right right [Music] right you can work on your motor oh it's fantastic so who in the market be for this car in Japan would be like millennial young men and women out of college no family I was you can't carry more than one for you couldn't carry one person and even a small child yeah you're you're allowed to have I think they kind of need the car maybe for young honey for the younger generation but it tries to be like a city car so me someone that like a worthy professional young working professional yeah you know they really narrowed down their target demographic for this playdate doesn't really appeal to the masses like can really go a long trip so there's no difference right well it's like having an f40 Ferrari or something I can't go anywhere in that either yeah but the price point for this was also a lot more attainable than exactly and I love the fact that it's only a six gallon gas tank yep that's hilarious you have to like stand there operably and holding oh yeah let it go right but then you only have to fill six gallons I mean it feels really quick it's aware of that look at that infants are feeling [Music] a lot of fun to drive and your red line is 9000 that's not a Ferrari when you have a lot of weight in the car you know yeah like me if you have few people in here groups as one person you can feel it a lot more than you would another part I'm like a third the way to the car yeah when you have this in Japan did you park on the streets and you have to buy a parking but has that work so when I was living in Japan I actually had two cars I had a company car and so I ended up reading that extra party paper by Hartman Oh I ended up leaving and I end up storing it there for about a year actually a parking lot that a bunch of a theone or easy one owner all store their cars in because they don't have extra parking spaces at their apartment so there's about five six easy ones that all parked their cars in this one line so I joined in on that and gave one of the owners my key and say it started up once a month and you took it out took all these pictures of it every time I check it out and where does the name easy what does that mean what does it signify to any idea I have no idea it just sounds American I mean it's American letters eight honey because when I was a kid Japanese cars in America and Japanese make the lie lock the fair lady though they had very flowery Japanese garden kind of names which didn't and then a guy named mr. K told him the Americans like Z the extra so now it sounds like they going to American name a z1 I mean that sounds like zr1 you know it sounds like very English style so they actually thought of that [Music] I don't know why they changed but they also ended up selling this and it's the exact same car as a it's a lot of fun i love this i feel like i said i got my 6400 overhead cam roll the very kraang Reds 295 run open it was in portions to the haunted be a billion dollar car yeah totally this car originally like on the market view from dealership was like around $12,500 really even expensive you know to consider what you're getting for your money yeah I mean it's pretty so basic it it's not like it's a mall pushrod flat it in exact I mean the three cylinders four valves with some other turbo got the handling like a good fire type of mom it really does it really does let's hit 9 grand on the tag really is a lot it's a lot of fun to drive I wonder small electric versions of this have replaced the Kei cars the six they're starting to come out with some stuff like that and they're starting to you know kind of recreate some of like the older cars like Honda came out with like 2x all right but Matt I feel like I've sat in one of those cars it's really tiny you know like it's more cramped I feel like then the interior when this car was built was just a really great time that like you know they've kind of just let the engineers go haywire right yeah go for it we just want you guys to make a cool car like I would have given anything to be on a project like this you know as a this is like your dream right you're like given the freedom to do anything you want make some weird funky going door card got to hire dues like just go for it anybody ever try to speak bigger engines into one of these and you will see that you know everyone always jokes about Hayabusas laughing needs hayabusa slapping these oh oh yeah but putting like a liter motor in or something right there's room for it but you know and there are a few cars that run around in Japan that have over 200 horsepower in these me personally I feel like this car be really unmanageable if you put that much power into it because it really wasn't meant to be going that bad right right yeah it was I mean it's already a handful and it's got 64 horsepower now so it does get kind of unstable not completely unstable but when you're at like high speeds on the freeway the car just bounce it bounces around you know that's finally where they have the governor on there it is yeah back to probably go to New York even LA at tiny apartments would be funny how big was your place in Japan I actually had a really good-sized apartment in Japan really because I lived in the countryside I lived in Hangzhou Saitama which is like it's like really rural I guess like you know and you tell people that over there they're like wow it's in the middle of nowhere why do you live there yeah but that was where our plant was it was in Kodama apartments out there like I had a two-bedroom apartment parking spot two bedrooms and had a small little living room in a kitchen and you know a hallway with some like cabinets and stuff to put you know storage and bedding and stuff and I think it was like four hundred dollars a month or four new colors oh yeah no one wants to live in the countryside Wow how far outside Tokyo were you about an hour 40 minute drive oh yeah but on the Shinkansen it was only like 40 minutes your Japanese car friends gonna come to America this isn't you they haven't been here I've had a few friends come visit most of my Japanese car friends come out for seven stock a huge group of rotary people come out for seven stock okay what is that 100 what seven stock 7 stamina yeah it's put on my mindset is that usually at Fontana California Speedway oh it's just a huge rotary festival mods that comes out brings bunch of different hey I got to go to that and I gotta bring my egg Cosmo there yeah they were loving everybody would you know freak out but they always have like a whole group of people come out from Japan every year for that event so it's really not much different than the lamborghini miura to drive at any size wife actually well thanks for bringing this by it's really exciting I love that you're an engineer and you work at the car business and you race it and you use it and and it's great I mean this is real not real expensive way to go racing I mean it's fantastic it's a great yeah it's a great track hire great you know fun hard to put around town with it yeah I love it it's a real attention-getter I wouldn't mind finding guys next week [Music]

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 725,344

Rating: 4.9078851 out of 5

Keywords: jay leno's garage, Mazda, Autozam, AZ-1, turbocharged, JDM, DOHC, mid-engine, midship, Japanese cars, gullwing doors, mechanical engineer, micro coupe, lightweight, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, compares cars, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, car gear, McLaren P1, Porsche 918 Spyder, Camaro Z28, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, episode, motorcycle, ford, corvette, tour, dodge, lexus

Id: X4RcyRYVa6U

Length: 32min 41sec (1961 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 05 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/wArchi]

love AZ-1's, shame he did not get the mazdaspeed one

[u/daphilosophersstoned]

I’m no expert Jay but I think AZ stands for AutoZam...

[u/alwaysthinkandplanah]

Run your finger along the underside of my hipster dick, it's an Autozam.

[u/IComplimentVehicles]

I love those wheels and I can't put my finger on why since they're just steelies.

[u/Haacker45]

I really want to see a liter bike engine swap into one of these.

[u/Landpls]

People need to stop giving this car exposure so that I can afford to buy it in 10 years >:(

[u/jacked_monkey]

This shows up right after i watch Tom from Toms turbo garage get an AZ-1. Love it!

[u/psyoperator]

So so cute. And I like the car too.