Merry Xmas and Happy Hol­i­days to all IJ read­ers and all lovers of beau­ti­ful cars from those great folks in Japan!

We wish you and yours all the best in this sea­son. Remem­ber to stay safe and be respon­si­ble on the roads.

We leave you now with a video of this year’s great­est vehi­cle release. The Nis­san GT-​​R. Here’s to a great 2008! We have a few very spe­cial good­ies on the

Wie auch Black­jack erlaubt Caribean Poker den Spiel­ern gegen den Dealer zu online casino anstelle gegen andere Spieler.
way in the new year so hang tight!

It turns out that Mit­subishi Europe has qui­etly released details on the Ral­liart Lancer.

Mit­subishi doesn�t state whether the Ral­liart will be based on the 4door Lancer or the upcom­ing 5door hatch, how­ever Carscoop states the USDM Ral­liart will be based on 4 door lancer sedan, whereas Europe will get the 5 door hatch. Since Aus­tralia clas­si­cally gets the clos­est equiv­a­lent on the JDM, we can expect to see the 4 door on our roads.

The Ral­liart is expected to run a detuned 177KW, 240PS ver­sion of the EVO X 2.0L, dual valve VVT turbo 4 cylin­der. Cou­pled to this is the mag­nif­i­cent 6-​​speed Twin Clutch SST trans­mis­sion, and AWD with Active Cen­tre Dif­fer­en­tial and Active Yaw Control.

The final form of the Ral­liart in Aus­tralia is unknown, but given the com­pe­ti­tion between Sub­aru and Mit­subishi in this seg­ment we can expect the Ral­liart to slot firmly into posi­tion against the stan­dard Sub­aru Impreza WRX — leav­ing the Evo X to tackle the WRX STi.

Being some­what given to fan­tasy here at IJ, we’d love to see that Sport­back con­cept repro­duced in full for the hatch­back. Given the stan­dard new Lancer is being hailed as a run­away suc­cess for Mitsu, a return of the Ral­liart Lancer is sure to be noth­ing less than a added cream in Mitsu’s prof­its in an age of high demand for fast, small, fuel effi­cient cars.

[Source: Carscoop]

 

Just in time for Christ­mas, Honda’s dropped the all new, 5th gen­er­a­tion Inspire.

The new Inspire fea­tures styling cues seen on the new USDM Accord, and a V6 3.5-liter i-​​VTEC engine fea­tur­ing a Vari­able Cylin­der Man­age­ment (VCM) sys­tem. The VCM enables cylin­der switch­ing (based on dri­ving con­di­tions) between 6, 4 and 3 cylinders.

The V6 pro­duces 206kW (280PS) of power and 342N�m (34.9kg�m) of torque while main­tain­ing emis­sion lev­els 75% below 2005 Japan­ese gov­ern­ment standards.

Other fea­tures include

• Col­li­sion Mit­i­ga­tion Brake Sys­tem (CMBS)
• ABS (Anti-​​lock Brake System)
• EBD (Elec­tronic Brake Distribution)
• G-​​CON (G-​​force Con­trol) technology
• VGR (vari­able steer­ing gear ratio)
• Intel­li­gent, dual fully auto­matic air con­di­tioner (uses GPS infor­ma­tion and a sun­light sen­sor to deter­mine the direc­tion and inten­sity of the sun�s rays and reg­u­late tem­per­a­ture and air out­put accordingly.)
• HID (High Inten­sity Dis­charge) Headlights

Unfor­tu­nately, the Inspire is only avail­able in a 5 speed auto­matic transmission.

[Source: Honda]

 

The way it should have been? We’ll leave that deci­sion up to you and the ever vocal purists. But noth­ing can take away from the pure awe­some­ness of the Sky­line GT-R’s donk in that slick, black 300zx body.

Aus­tralian? Want the GT-​​R before it arrives here in 2010? Who doesn’t.

Looks like J-​​Spec have just the thing. There’s a� catch though, this sexy black demon is Race Import only (You’ll need a Level 3 CAMS license)� for obvi­ous rea­sons. But if money is no object and you want a brand new track car not yet seen in Aus­tralia, well, here’s just the thing.� Just be pre­pared to pull $152,000 out of that big fat wal­let of yours.

[Source: J-​​Spec]