Everything about this car confused me. It was a kei car, sold by Chrysler under the Dodge name, and it was called, the Michigan. I just love the idea that Michigan might be considered an unfamiliar name to those in the automaker’s Japanese branch. Also, Michigan is only available in Japan, although Michiganers are so obsessed with their exotic state that they will buy these boats.
I can find very little information about this strange car, other than that it was sold in Japan in 1986 at the beginning of Japan’s Bubble Era. — as the economy seems to grow exponentially with the number of nameplates available to consumers. Ford and GM dominated the auto market in pre-war Japan until 1939 when they were overthrown. Since then and after the Second World War, tyour country will remain its very protective domestic market and retain foreign automakers. American carmakers only really started making significant inroads into Japan in the ‘80’s and’In the 90s, after decades of Japanese cars running on gasoline, market.
American cars will never flood the Japanese market in the same way. Ford was only selling about 5,000 vehicles a year in Japan when it ceased operations in 2016, according to statistics. engineTlace. However, some automakers are just starting to return to the country during the Bubble Era, when the power of nationwide spending spurred more innovation and specialization in all aspects of their vehicles. economy. It took a long time to stand out in the Japanese Bubble Era, and many vehicles were sold in low numbers. This is how Raphael Orlove describe vehicles from this era:
Have you ever wondered why Japanese cars seem to have reached the pinnacle of quality in the 1990s? Why the Toyota Supra, Honda’s NSX, Mazda RX-7, and Nissan Skyline GT-R all grew rapidly until the next few years of the decade, when they all started spinning around for a refresh and then canceled completely? Why is it not difficult to find a 1992 Camry still on the road, why is the Toyota 2JZ engine still the first choice of high-powered tuners? These are all products developed during the heyday of the Bubble Era.
Likewise, if you’ve spent the last 20 or 25 years wondering why don’t Mazda or Toyota or Nissan or Honda make cars like this anymore, staring at a shiny NSX Type R or a Honda Beat or whatever, it’s the same thing. All these crazy projects were cut after the bubble burst. It’s only very recently that we’ve begun to see a return to nearly everything it used to be.
But dang, Dodge Michigan has to be the lowest of the lows in terms of sales. I thought maybe no one would buy them, until I saw the car featured in an animated movie from that era called City Hunter, which, according to IMDB, was summarized as “The Adventures of Ryo Saeba, a gun for hire living in Tokyo, who will take on any dangerous job as long as it involves beautiful women.”
Cool. Maybe the artist was just particularly fond of this car (the show has a lot of really cool cars) but maybe they’ve actually driven around enough for reference?
Excellent bulletin board classic curb posted an image of a sales brochure for Michigan. As they pointed out, Michigan is left-hand drive; has long been a status symbol in status-conscious Japan. The interior is also luxurious, even though the Michigan is a small kei car:
Here, we see Lake Michigan, Huron and Superior make guest appearances when the oil leaks. In addition: the turn signal repeater is in a typical Japanese position near the front of the fender, the large rearview mirror is mounted on the axle instead of the small hard-mounted one in the domestic market, the rear exhaust and taillights are very Busy looks as if they were assembled in a Mitsubishi from the same year (although they are clearly built specifically for this car).
Inside, there’s an attractive aftermarket-style installation of what appears to be a DIN-sized radio placed in place of the taller Chrysler-sized unit. Japanese FM radio stations have an even decimal frequency like 100.2 instead of the odd frequency used in North America like 100.3. I don’t find much out of the ordinary here, do I?
The prices in the lower left corner of the first page of the ad are eye-catching. When these were the first –
sold– offered in Japan, the price was equivalent to about 11 thousand US dollars in 1985, about 40% higher than in the United States. That’s about $28k in 2020 dollars. By the end of the offering, the Dollar/Yen exchange rate had nearly doubled to more than $21k in 1987 dollars (about 2.6 times the price in the US and about $49,000 today). For that reason, among other reasons, it is hard for me to imagine that more than three of these were purchased in Japan, perhaps one for each of the 1985, ’86 and ’87.
Apart from that list, I could find very little about this car. If you know more or know where I can find details, get in touch with me.
