Solved: PN #852 -- Jiron Auto's self-built car, 1964

[fyreline]

I finally found this little beast on a page full of unusual Japanese cars - some even more ugly than this one.  Apparently based on a 1960 Nissan Bluebird as you said, it appeared at the 2012 Osaka Motor Show, exhibited by the Jiron Auto Company (whoever THEY are). So I guess it's a 2012 Jiron. There wasn't a more specific model name listed, and my eyes hurt from looking at it so long already. Please don't make me look any more!

. . . and as you might suspect, the back end isn't any prettier!

[pnegyesi]

Fyreline - you found the car! Congratulations. It is not from 2012 though. So locked for you to find the year this one was built.

[fyreline]

Somehow I just KNEW you would find something to make me go back and look for. Oh, well. Everything I found said it was based on a 1960 Nissan Bluebird and shown at the 2012 Osaka Auto Show. I'll put on some dark glasses and see what else is out there.

OK, I'm back. The best I can do, after looking at the 3 or 4 sites that mention this car at all, is that one site makes a mention of it being shown for "The first time in twenty years", so if that showing was the 2012 Osaka Auto Show, that would put it's earliest known date as a completed car at 1992. I'm afraid that's the best I can do.

[pnegyesi]

I am really, really sorry but the year was also part of the puzzle. It is much older. Try one more time please - still locked

[fyreline]

The only other year I see mentioned in one article is 1966 . . . but the online translators are so bad that it's impossible to make much sense out of what was originally written in Japanese. So I'll say 1966, and if that's incorrect I suppose I'll have to narrow it down year by year. I'm just not finding anything else, even on the company's own web site. Oh, well. That just makes it a good, hard puzzle!

[fyreline]

Navigating around the company's web site, there is a sort of "poem" written about the car by its builder which is dated September 1974 . . . so I guess that's also a possibility, although one of the photo captions makes it sound like the car took two years to construct so I'm not sure how it's really titled.

[pnegyesi]

fyreline, good news, I am not torturing you any more. The company's website features the year, 1960 but that's when the donor was made. This car was born in 1964 - so you were fairly close.

[fyreline]

Well, I guess that makes sense - as I said, one of the articles I saw had the year 1966 in it, although the poor on-line translation from Japanese made it hard to determine what that year exactly represented . . . and yet another website said that the car took two years to build, so I suppose a better automotive historical cryptologist than I could have gotten 1964 out of all that.

In any case, it's still ugly.

Great puzzle, as always the research and pursuit of the solution is more than half of the fun.

[pnegyesi]

Here's the original pic

[fyreline]

Man, that is ugleeeeeeeee . . . I bet they had to tie a pork chop to just it so the dog would play with it.