To all inter­state and local Ade­laide Japan­ese car lovers, a new event is on the hori­zon! Here’s the low down, straight from the horses mouth:

What is All Japan Day?

Sick and tired of car shows that spend so much time pro­mot­ing them­selves that they’ve for­got­ten all about the cars?

So was the All Japan Day organ­is­ing com­mit­tee! We decided to band together and cre­ate a sim­ple event that ‘got back to basics’ and allowed entrants and spec­ta­tors to do what they love doing best — just admire and talk about the sen­sa­tional cars on dis­play. By keep­ing it sim­ple, we’ve also kept the costs down, which has ben­e­fited both entrants and spectators.

We are very excited about our inau­gural event on 27 April 2008 and we hope its suc­cess will encour­age suit­able entrants from inter­state (maybe even over­seas? Mazda please send us a 787B racer!) in future years.

So, come and enjoy us for a relax­ing day out and be daz­zled by some of Australia’s finest Japan­ese automobiles.

So for those of you in Ade­laide who love Japan­ese cars, head over to the All Japan Day web­site to learn about becom­ing an entrant and spectator.

The Con­cept RA has appeared in Detroit look­ing like a cross between the new Lancer EVO and (per­haps) the lat­est gen­er­a­tion USDM Mit­subishi Eclipse, or even an Audi TT.

The strictly con­cept only (Sorry, guys and girls) Con­cept RA sports a 2.2 litre, DOHC 16-​​valve 150kw/​201HP/​420nm high out­put, clean burn diesel engine, as part of Mitsubishi’s new drive towards eco-​​friendly per­for­mance sports cars.

In order to achieve low con­sump­tion while not sac­ri­fic­ing per­for­mance means the Con­cept RA fea­tures Mitsubishi’s pro­pri­etary MIVEC vari­able valve con­trol tech­nol­ogy, an all alu­minum space frame, vari­able diffuser/​variable geom­e­try tur­bocharger, peizo­elec­tric injec­tor sys­tem and also sports some impact resis­tant, recy­clable plas­tic resin pan­els as part of it’s construction.

Envi­ron­men­tal fea­tures include a new cat­alytic con­verter sys­tem that com­bines a diesel oxi­da­tion cat­a­lyst (DOC), NOx trap cat­a­lyst (NTC) and diesel par­tic­u­late fil­ter (DPF) in addi­tion to the highly effi­cient 2.2 litre clean burn­ing diesel.

Of course, the Con­cept RA sports Full­time 4WD, Twin Clutch SST Trans­mis­sion, and the new S-​​AWC (Super-​​All Wheel Con­trol) most notably seen on the new EVO. As men­tioned before on IJ, S-​​AWC is a com­bi­na­tion of exist­ing tech­nolo­gies, Active Cen­ter Dif­fer­en­tial, Active Yaw Con­trol, ABS and Active Sta­bil­ity Control.

Unfor­tu­nately though, all this is to be shelved as the car is designed purely as a con­cept, and won’t chal­lenge either Honda’s offer­ing in the new CRZ (CRX) or Toyota’s rumored new ‘AE86’.

Mazda has released a made-​​to-​​order ver­sion of the MX-​​5 (known as the ‘Road­ster’ in Japan) called the ‘Pres­tige Edition’.

It’s another in a long line of spe­cial ver­sions that we won’t see over here in Aus­tralia, and dare­say won’t see in the USDM either. Here’s the low­down on what we’re all miss­ing with the new ‘Pres­tige Edition’.

• Heated bucket seats
• Black Leather upholstery
• 17″ alu­minium BBS wheels
• Front fog lights
• Stain­less steel scuff plates
• Front strut brace
• Dynamic Sta­bil­ity Con­trol (DSC)

The new edi­tion is strictly made to order, and will set prospec­tive own­ers back 2,950,000 yen for the six-​​speed man­ual trans­mis­sion and 3,050,000 yen for the six-​​speed auto­matic trans­mis­sion model.

[Source: Nihon­Car]