Not a dealer, not a flipping blog. A quiet, long-term project to document Japanese cars from the 70s to 90s before the metal, paint and stories disappear for good.
Japanese Car Archive is a small independent project based in Japan, dedicated to preserving visual and historical details of Japanese cars from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
No sponsored content, no lifestyle noise. Just machines, documents and memories – slowly collected, scanned and organised.
Think of it as a digital warehouse: folders of brochures, option lists, race photos and owner notes, gradually opened and catalogued.
Years: approx. 1970–1999
Focus: road cars, sports cars, homologation specials, touring sedans
and a few important oddballs.
Makers: Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Subaru, plus smaller brands where relevant.
– Not a price guide
– Not an auction site
– Not a general car blog
– Chassis codes, trims, factory colours
– Period brochures, ads and race context
– First-hand notes when possible
These decades produced some of the most influential cars ever built:
Many of these cars are now scattered across yards, containers, barns and auctions. Some will be restored. Many will be parted out. A few will simply vanish.
Before that happens, somebody has to quietly keep the record straight. This archive is one attempt at that.
This is not a finished database. It is a set of “lines” we slowly build out – one brochure, one car, one story at a time.
Corollas, Sunnys, Civics and other unglamorous workhorses. The cars most people actually lived with, now strangely rare in original form.
Fairlady Z, Celica, Skyline, RX-7, Supra and friends. Factory brochures, option codes, wheel packages and special editions.
From AE86 and Bluebird SSS to GT-R, Galant VR-4, Impreza, Evo and more. Built for regulations first, then sold to civilians almost by accident.
Market-specific trims, one-year-only facelifts, strange special editions. The kind of cars that confuse export catalogues the most.
Family wagons, company vans, long-roof machines that carried people and goods daily. Often neglected, rarely documented – but part of real life.
The project is built slowly, with a bias toward primary material:
When there is doubt, we say “we don’t know yet” instead of guessing. Corrections from owners, mechanics and historians are always welcome.
As the archive grows, selected lines may be compiled into:
These will be offered in limited, carefully edited form – more as documentation than lifestyle merchandise.
The archive is maintained by a small, anonymous team in Japan – people who grew up around these cars, saw them new in showrooms, and watched them slowly move from everyday traffic to export containers and collector storage.
We are not a museum and do not run public tours. This is a long-term, low-noise project built mostly at night, one scan and one note at a time.
Contributions & Enquiries
If you have period brochures, dealer photos, or detailed knowledge about a specific Japanese car from the 70s–90s and are willing to share, we would be happy to hear from you.
We are especially interested in original export brochures, race support photos, and Japan-only colour and trim schemes.
Email: info@japanesecararchive.com
(If this address is not active yet, the project is still in its quiet early phase.)
If you are also interested in Japanese motorcycles from the same era:
👉 Japanese Bike Archive – 1970s–1990s Motorcycles Preservation Project