Do you like how I included that parenthetical in the headline there, lest anyone actually think that my skull had been shattered into innumerable little shards and flung about, as my brain explodes from the sheer wonder of these special edition Japanese Volkswagens? I did that for you, since it’s too early in the morning for you to be confronted with the notion of a head exploding like a cantaloupe filled with M-80s. That’s a miserable fate for either head or melon.
But that is not what we are dealing with here! We’re dealing with delight, delight at the learning of something once unknown, something fascinating and wonderful. Something about a series of Volkswagen special edition, limited run cars from 1977, part of the Yanase dealership in Japan.
These came to my attention via this Instagram post:
The post is, of course, fascinating, and shows a flyer from Yanase, the Japanese importer of Volkswagens since 1952, and these seem to be their 25th anniversary editions, coming out in 1977, which checks out with the math. Some sources say Yanase started importing Beetles in 1953, but this ad says ’52, so I’ll trust it.
In honor of this anniversary, Yanase offered a line of special edition (only about 30 of each seem to have been made?) Beetles designed in conjunction with various famous people – artists, photographers, architects, fashion designers, and so on. The results are pretty striking:
Look at that brick one! It seems to have been done by architect Kiyoshi Seike, and the style of brickwork is known as Flemish Bond, which does seem to be A Thing. Seike seemed to be delighted by the impossibility of the material for a car.
The black-and-red one is from fashion designer Hiroyuki Yamamoto and is based on a zipper design, revealing black underneath red, like unzipping a jacket to reveal a shirt.
There’s also photographer Yoshihiro Tachiki, cartoonist Isao Kojima, and Toko Adachi, a flower arranger who created the deliberately asymmetrical cherry blossom (I think?) design:
Also interesting to note are the vertical indicator repeaters on the front quarter panels, which seems to be a Japanese market exclusive. The overall spec of these is a bit like a mix of European and American spec, with the bumper-mounted indicators of late Beetle production, rubber impact strips in bumpers like on post ’74 US cars, but without the shock-mounted 5mph US bumpers. There is a padded dash as on US cars, but right-hand drive, of course, since it’s a Japanese car.
The Insta post shows that at least one of the cherry blossom ones survives, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find that some more are around as well; these are too special to just be discarded, wouldn’t you think?
What happened to carmakers collaborating with artists and designers and flower arrangers to make special editions of entry-level cars? There should be more of whatever one calls this in the world.
AloJapan.com