But that's just one small part of car culture, which is then overlaps with other cultures like national, regional, and other specific tastes or philosophies. Anything else is just adds too much weight, it's not about power, but how your drive and how the car handles without tricks like down force or traction control or automatic gearboxes. An engine in the front, gearbox in the middle, and drive shaft going to the back. I myself identify to the small 4 cylinder N/A coupés, with my ideal car being an MX5 (going to get one soon ) I do so because I believe its what driving is all about. While some one in Japan or America might point toward the classic Falcon XB Interceptor as an 'Australian' car, many of us in Australia will point to the nearest v8 Holden ute (without chev/waker badge). Like MOOG said it's a cultural perspective. For those interested, below is the unedited footage from Mr Sato's office. JDM in Japan is not what we perceive JDM to be here. In this case, the Japanese expert, in Japan, who works with these cars every day of the week will have the most genuinely Japanese result, and we agreed to go with his vote, regardless of whether we agreed or not. Marty and I made clearly defined rules, and we decided to stick to those rules. Certainly a huge proportion of the cars in Japan, including Kei cars and trucks, have a boxy hard edged look making the Subaru clearly look more "Japanese" than the S15. He may take it as more commonly seen in Japan, or more stylistically representative of Japanese design and car shapes. We gave no restriction and 100% room for his own interpretation. It was up to him to interpret this how he wanted. ![]() But we pressed him to try and define, with his years of experience which car was more Japanese. When translated, the question to Mr Sato in our video was "Which car do you think is more Japanese?" (what we termed "JDM") Of course this question was looked at with the kind of blank face you'd expect when asking someone what is fruitier out of an apple or a pear. In our video, we wanted to find out from Mr Sato (Vice President of the Used Car Association of Hokkaido and a well known and highly regarded man in the used car scene in Japan) which car was more "Japanese". Over here we've seen similar sets go for over $1500 on eBay. An example of this is the Rays rims we bought in Japan which were $40 each. We thought to ourselves, "but they are Japanese, surely they must know that JDM stuff is cool?" They had no idea what we were talking about and even when translated by our amazing MCM Japan Correspondent Steve King they found it hard to grasp. In fact the first time we mentioned the term 'JDM' in Japan people just stared at us like we were crazy. We often have a chuckle that in Japan the front cover of Performance Import magazine usually has an AUDI or a VW because in Japan they refer to Euros as "imports" Its cultural and reflected in the enormous size of Autobacks and YellowHat (Car accessory shops the size of Bunnings) There is no mystique or extra "coolness" or "JDM Bro" because to them their own cars are local (similar to the way we may think about a Holden). It's just a way of life and nearly every single car is modified in someway. The way they mod their car is just what they do. Hence why you can buy a car from the auctions for $1000 that over here would be worth $5000. And why would they? They don't have the love and admiration for our cars like we do for theirs. ![]() In our experience in many travels to Japan, Japanese people don't have a concept of what WE think JDM is. In the USA its even used in regular non-car talk in some circles to just mean "cool". ![]() There's a few takes on the term JDM, of course being literally a Japanese Domestic Vehicle, and then modding your car in a JDM style. In fact its the interpretation thats makes any dilemma and interesting one, and thats why some clearly defined definitions, or rules help keep the argument in check. Why? Because it doesn't really mean any one particular thing and the interpretation is what made this an interesting point. Its easy to see why the result was controversial. In the Mighty Car Mods video: Nissan VS Subaru the question was posed "Which car is more JDM".
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