All Made Out Of Ticky-Tacky

Curiously, it would appear that all cars in Japan have an English brand name, despite the fact that they are built for the domestic market. The marketing execs at Mitsubishi have probably mastered a Google search by now, so the days of calling cars 'Starrion' and 'Guts' are long gone, but there is still some merriment to be had at the expense of Japanese motor manufacturers.

Whereas western car makers have always had a taste for the flamboyant with marques such as Mustang, Stingray, Spitfire, Testarossa (Italian for 'red head' but far too close to testosterone to be a coincidence), Japan has carved a niche for daft. I must confess that I've never actually seen any of the more infamous names - the Yamaha Pantryboy, the Honda Life Dunk, or the Isuzu Mysterious Utility - but there's plenty more where they came from.

Mazda have a couple of stunning beauties - the Bongo and the Scrum Van - while Honda have the Mobilio Spike and the curiously named That's, which is similar to Suzuki's embrace of inanity with Every, and Daihatsu's boringly obvious Move.

But what is far more disturbing than the names is their sheer ugliness, and these hideous Bauhaus-inspired automotive monstrosities are just everywhere. Nissan started the trend in 2001 with the candidly named Cube (pictured above), which is now in its third iteration. According to their design team: "the four key themes of "naughty, relaxing, compact and agile" are embodied in the design... a design with clear originality, (and) functionality that provides "joy of use, and loyalty-inspiring appeal". Yeah, right. This is design-speak for a brief that screams "give me something cheap and stackable, that won't look out of place in a Japanese car park. Oh, and we can't afford a wind tunnel".

So I thought I'd offer my services to the Japanese motor industry with a bold neo-classical interpretation of modern go-anywhere travel that combines centuries of Asian tradition with a German sense of fun and spontaneity. I give you... the jinja kampa!

(make the most of it, the next blog entry will be about flowers again...)