Nine Minutes Of (Someone Else's) Stupid Fun.

There's a legend about Japan, propagated by that movie about oversteering through the Japanese capital in a manner both fast and perhaps furious. The legend states that if you're car can progress at a rate faster than the Japanese mandated 111mph limit for production cars, the police won't bother to chase you while you're speeding. I have no idea if this is true.

What I do know is that this limit is of very little concern to owners of stock versions of Mazda's AZ1 because in stock form its little 660cc, 64bhp 3-cylinder will struggle to propel it anywhere near that speed. What we have here is a little different. It's sort of an open secret that these cars are capable of far more given to proper provocation and that power levels as high as 120bhp are possible. Now, I'm not saying that this car is tuned that high, but it's clearly faster than a stock AZ1.

It's a long video, but it made me laugh when I found it, and I thought I'd share it with you. Not a lot happens, it's just a car going down a Japanese expressway in the early hours of June 6th 1999... and listening to an amusing collection of soft-rock. The two times that the car sits at a light for 30 seconds or so while the driver listens to Hall & Oates' Maneater is either a fascinating glimpse into life in Japan in the late Twentieth Century, or the worst television show ever.

I'm not sure what's going on at the end there, though I think that gauge at the top has logged his top-speed of 192kph. Let's just be glad he turns the stero down before the Bonnie Tyler really kicks in.