Clarkson's Car Years - How Japan Took Over The World... And Then Lost It.

interesting at the end of the second world war the japanese car industry was on its knees but then it stood up again in fact the present-day nissan skyline gtr is very probably the most advanced car on the planet it has twin ceramic turbo chargers four-wheel drive and four-wheel steering fifty years ago japan was wiped out yet now they're making cars as good as this so how did they do it well it was thanks in no small part to austin after the war they sent british engineers to japan and invited datsun engineers over to longbridge and in return for this extraordinary generosity austin got 2 million pounds and a lovely thank you letter one of the dats and engineers wrote to his british teacher and host afterwards saying that one day he hoped to make cars and trucks as good as those from austin japan exported its first car to britain in 1965 and here it is obviously with the power of hindsight i'm able to see that this does have a number of endearing features it's got a sweet little gear change it's got a lovely engine excellent all-round visibility opening quarter lights but contemporary road testers thought it was a bit of a joke oh how they laughed those japanese are building cars they went they said that the acceleration was too slow to record and they may have had a point on that one they also said that the brake linings were made out of bamboo they pointed out that its nipples had to be greased every 500 miles and that it cost 800 pounds 300 more than a mini and then they observed that the styling appeared to be half fiat half austin the handbook was a particular source of amusement it referred to the cockpit as a room and described the headlamp flasher as a light hooter and think carefully about the era here it was a duffel coat wannabe in an afghan carnaby street world of my generation the daihatsu was not so much the who as the what and remember it was aimed at the middle-aged family man who knew all about the japanese just a few years earlier he'd help them build a railway through burma they didn't even get the name right companio bellino actually means family saloon japanese car firms have never been very good with names toyota for instance gave us the toyo pet a name dreamed up by the american importers after toyota themselves wanted to call it the toyolette nissen very poor we've had the sylvia the gloria and a particular favorite of mine the cedric and then there's this uh now apparently mitsubishi wanted to call it the stallion and that's a very good name very butch but someone at the american advertising agency i think misheard okay starion we'll have the brochures printed tonight mitsubishi starion marvress so why on earth did japanese class get a job well it was simple at the time british car makers would make you pay extra for a heater whereas this came as standard with everything even terry hogan it's a major breakthrough for cardigan broadcasting and there was more if you came out of your house on a cold miserable winter's morning and tried to start your 1970s morris it would respond by making a noise like this whereas the 1970s datsun would respond by making a noise like this until the japanese came along we all assumed that cars break down of course they did they were complex and difficult it's only natural that every so often one of the fifteen thousand parts would break and there was another issue too outlined nicely in this 1971 top gear report this is harrich on a sunny tuesday morning and i'm surrounded by cars cars of good quality reasonable price and cars above all that are available today are not tomorrow they are unfortunately japanese now the japanese don't sell a lot of cars in britain yet but these are toyotas and toyota are one of the biggest car manufacturers in the world so this is a trickle that could soon become a menacing flood now of course this being a weekday morning there's a strike somewhere in the british motor industry find me a day when there isn't in fact this morning there are 30 000 men out british leyland are having to make cars with no wiper motors because of a dispute at lucas we're not just opening the gates to the japanese we're laying down a big red carpet with welcome on it all the way to the showroom don't think however that strike itis was a british invention the japanese had had all sorts of problems with lead lobo in the 50s 3 700 striking car workers were sacked and nissan managers barricaded themselves inside the plant for 45 days behind the barbed wire they formed the ultimate oxymoron an in-house company trade union and amazingly it solved the problem as the rest of the world was coming out on strike japan went back to work and productivity went through the roof good evening to understand the massive changes that were going on in the world motoring climate you need to take a global view in 1978 detroit was basking under a warm front general motors made 14.9 cars per employee and they considered this to be pretty good and it was compared to what was happening in italy here they were experiencing a period of extremely low production alfa romeo made just six cars per employee whereas in japan the sun was shining brightly rising over the whole country toyota made not six not 14.9 but 43 cars per employee in 1978. the outlook was good no the outlook was very good japan was on its way to becoming the most successful automotive nation on earth then there was this the toyota corolla by adopting a no-nonsense attitude to to just bear with me for a second no no no no no no oh sorry here it is sorry um the toyota corolla went on to become the best-selling car the world has ever seen nevertheless driving a corolla is like eating flour it's as interesting as the night sky when it's cloudy in fact it is a cloud a damp white shapeless lump when all is said and done though the simple fact of the matter is this more than 24 million corollas have been sold making it even more successful than the volkswagen beetle desperate to prevent meltdown european governments imposed import restrictions on japanese cars but this didn't work at all first of all japanese car companies forged partnerships with euro car makers to create some truly horrific crossbreeds the triumphant claim succeeded where even the tr-7 had failed and finished off the triumph name for good and then in italy a deal between nissan and alfa romeo spawned one of the worst creations in the whole of history and here it is the alfa romeo anna now it might have worked if they'd married japanese build quality to italian design flair but they did it the other way around so what we ended up with was a terribly ugly listen cherry that had alpha sud electrics can you imagine anything anything worse i was extremely disappointed to find that they actually made 62 000 of them but then quite cheered when i called the dvla the other day and found that on the roads of britain only 341 are left make that 340. seeing that the joint venture attack wasn't really working the japanese decided that the best way around the euro import quota system was to build their own factories over here nissan arrived in sunderland toyota in derby in wales honda in swindon jacques calvey boss of peugeot in france once said that britain had become like a japanese aircraft carrier off the coast of europe but now the japanese are all over france too they're all over everywhere and then when they'd smothered the world with their factories they started to hit us with some of their incredible dvd mp3 micro technology it may appear that this mitsubishi evo 6 has crashed into a halford shop window and all the bits have just sort of stuck to it but it's every bit as fast as a ferrari 360. except when it's raining when it's raining the four-wheel drive evo is much much faster it works with the precision of a japanese drum machine but thanks to a turbo charger the size of leads and the sheer grip it has the power and majesty of the kodo drummers oh and here's its chief rival the subaru impreza turbo a undrum ho-hum two-door saloon made into something entirely different thanks to all sorts of costume jewelry now this of course is a p1 which unlike the rb5 that preceded it doesn't have a little button on the dashboard which sprays cold water onto the intercooler what that does is it increases the density of the fuel air mixture and therefore maximizes the boost do you need a little button which sprays cold water into the intercooler which increases the density of the fuel air mixture and maximizes the boost of course you do let me put it this way this is a british amplifier it's very elegant very simple with just one knob and it makes a lovely smooth sound very nice now this is a japanese amplifier look it's got a button here for adaptive control and another one here for vgca and if we pull down this smoked panel here we find blue fluorescent lighting and a great knob here to adjust the subwoofer low-pass filter now if we fiddle with all these knobs and switches for about a month we can make this sound exactly the same as that so which is better for this one obviously first rule of being a bloke more buttons equals better you see it's all very well jaguar giving us the xjr which in a plain simple way goes like stink but where are the buttons well i'll tell you exactly where they are here these cars are fabulous big fish the tuna and the halibut but both of them are blown into the seaweeds by the killer blue you get the sense with the nissan skyline that it was never intended to compete with a bmw or a porsche this thing was very obviously designed by the arcade game generation to take on the sega rally machine it's a 50 000 pound play station you don't so much drive this car as cling on for dear life it makes even the most ham-fisted driver feel like they've been suddenly fitted with god's feet you can get into the most terrible mess and the computers just sort everything out for you then there's the interior ordinarily in a japanese car you look at the dashboard and think oh dear but in this you think my word what's that well that's a sort of electronic readout computer thing and if you press this gives you a different set of readings i've got my boost pressure my throttle position injector something or other oil temperature but this is the best one okay this is my g meter now when i break it goes like that and when i accelerate it goes like that but what you have to try and do is get it off the scale on the lateral g which means being quite vigorous really right off the scale then more than one g while cornering and the great thing is is that you can download this information into your pc on this connector here and then you can compare your drive home from work with the drive home last night should make you a hit with the girls and don't think this japaneseiness is restricted only to the world of performance cars it isn't this is a honda insight which has a one liter petrol engine in the front and a selection of electric motors in the back here's how it works when i put my foot down the electric motors assist the engine giving me more power and more torque and then when i lift my foot off again like when i'm going downhill then the engine is used to charge up the batteries so i don't have to want to get home the end result is a top speed of 114 miles an hour and an average an average of 85 miles to the gallon this can be achieved without having to trail power cables across the pavement at night and without resorting to a filthy carcinogenic diesel but the best thing is that you can buy an insight for 17 000 pounds which is exactly 8 000 pounds less than it costs honda to make it this is a very clever car but is it the future well no not if the latest generation of japanese engineering students have their way this is all very impressive but despite everything the japanese still have an achilles heel the lexus is a case in point it's very quiet it's very brilliant but it's also very similar to a mercedes benz then there's the mazda rx-7 awfully fast and awfully like the porsche 944 and what about the nissan micra total reliability wrapped up in a body that owes absolutely everything to the mini when they were designing the mazda mx-5 they had tapes of the precise noise an mg gearbox made and they copied it all the best japanese cars are fact similes of something that was first dreamed up in europe and they've been at it for years the datsun 240z for instance is a cross between the alpha spyder and the e type jag maybe it's because when they don't copy europe things go wrong this is the new toyota yaris estate just savor the awfulness there's something else too all japanese cars from the nsx right down to this yaris have a mass-produced feel there's no sense of personality no sense that it was made just for you it's just an entry in a company's balance sheets it's why i think we call japanese cars boring the upshot of all this is simple the rising sun is starting to set today ford owns mazda general motors owns isuzu and last year that nationalized dinosaur renault took control at nissan europe has learned from japan how to make a reliable car but they don't seem to have learned from us how to make something with a heart and a soul we've whipped away their only advantage our search for the car of the year continues at 9am tomorrow here on people make sure you watch for exclusive footage of the competing cars and then vote for your chance to win the fabulous prize next tonight though it's more from clarkson's car years

Channel: Iain P.

Views: 3,272,556

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Id: LSYD4a3RzW4

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2013