What a month!

In case you missed the unique announcement, the Motor1 workers worked for the better part of 2024 to ship an additional characteristic story per day throughout November, together with movies, columns, and opinion items. Every piece showcased the best we could offer. We tried our best to share our pleasure with you, the reader.

We called it Mission Japan Month, an ode to some of our favorite automobiles, the individuals who constructed them, and our relationship to the island nation and its automobiles.

The month began with a bang. We drove each Nissan Skyline on a California race, observing to crown a Godzilla king. Spoiler: They have been all godly. Then our first video of the month dropped, an unimaginable, narrated time-lapse of a Toyota 2000GT mannequin, immaculately assembled by our personal worker’s author, Chris Smith.

Sizzling off the heels of our first two options, a pair of Miata delights. The primary story is a journey piece to an Italian hamlet for the Miata-obsessed, merely referred to as “Miataland.” The second is an oral historical past of a present/future essential, the Mazda ND Miata, detailing the automotive’s creation and execution from ideation to completion.

Then Motor1 deputy editor Brian Silvestro ventured off to mountainous Washington State, testing the brand new Lexus GX’s mettle towards a few of tEarth’smost stunning (and challenging) off-road surroundings  (Workers author Victoria Scott even took some slick movie pictures of the story, too). Scott wrote the subsequent piece, too, a historical past of the funky ’90s EVs you’ve never heard of.

After which one thing entirely totally different: One other Chris Smith banger, hooked up to maybe the perfect artwork of the month, a cutaway of Japan’s solely manufacturing V-12, rendered fantastically by famed artist Jim Hatch, adopted by a historical past of the Honda Tremendous Cub, the car that put the folks of earth on two wheels.

In our second video of the month, Victoria Scott detailed the Honda EV Plus, the corporation’s first EV. Sizzling metallic abounded afterward, with the Lexus LC500 chasing autumn leaves in Northern Michigan and a gooey-sunset picture set of the Mazda RX-7 alongside the beautiful classic Ferrari that impressed its design.

Then we got into the mechanical weeds, highlighting the one piece of genuinely lovely advertising and marketing: the technical doc produced alongside the Acura Integra Kind R. That paired excellently with another Victoria Scott video, pitting the essentials Kind R towards its fashionable successor, the Acura Integra Kind S.

We lined areas of interest pursuits throughout Japan Month, along with Anthony Alaniz’s business pattern piece on Kei Vans and a key authorized victory for his or her American house owners. There was extra Kei content material and a driving overview of the Honda N-One by Motor1 author (and scorching shoe) Chris Rosales, which Rosales ripped around on some legendary Japanese roads. That overview paired with a different Rosales piece, a meditation about expectation and the journey to Japan, with visits to extra legendary roads and tuners.

For a bit extra funk, contributor Brendan McAleer lined two of the extra visually outsized Japanese tuner scenes in a bit titled Bosozoku Vs. Kaido Racer: A Historical Past of Japan’s Wildest-Wanting Subcultures. Within the context of these wealthy subcultures and the North Americans who undertake them, editor Chris Perkins asked, “When Is a Japanese Automotive Not Japanese?” The Toyota Cavalier was an excellent example of this cultural and mechanical crossing between Japan and America. Sure, The Toyota Cavalier.

If these tales weren’t fascinating, how can a few compare classic Japanese online game cupboards? Or a TOP-SECRET journey into the annals of the Japanese tuner’s historical past? Or perhaps a narrative about how Grand Turismo launched you (and the world) to Jazz Fusion?

In fact, we did not overlook about racing. (We’re racing dorks over right here). We wrote two tales about Ayrton Senna’s ties to Japan through a surprising V-12 Honda McLaren hidden in an unsuspecting warehouse and the Brazilian’s notorious half within the best driving video ever filmed. But it suindeedasn’t all Senna. Senior editor Chris Perkins introduced extra warmth, penning a bit about Toyota’s wildly profitable forgotten racing engine.

Our racing tales have been capped by a two-parter, in which Victoria Scott visited Vermont Sports Activities Vehicles, the store that saved rallying in America, and an interview with Travis Pastrana, who played an enormous role in that very same mission.

Throughout the month, we made room for some stone-cold classics. Managing editor Jeff Perez wrote a considerate about the Toyota Land Cruiser’s American origins and subsequent re-adoption by the same nation that impressed it. Head Honcho Travis Okulski wrote another tweet about That Blue Civic, which kicked off the obsession among thousands and thousands of younger automotive lovers.

It was certainly one hell of a month, one which pushed everybody on workers to the bounds of their time and sanity, however from the underside of our hearts, we hope you discovered multiple story to get pleasure from.

Thanks for all the time you spent studying.

Kyle Kinard
Government Editor, Motor1