JDM: Japanese Domestic Market
“JDM”, a term excitedly spoken among car circles.
Now, I don't know about you but these are the images popping up in my head: S2000, AE86, RX-7, NSX, Supra, and so on. These cult classics don't even need pictures.
You will also realise that most of these cars are from the 90s. With the exception of perhaps the S2000, who began production in 1999 and stopped only in 2009. Which was already 11 years ago, by the way. Either JDM really faded somewhere decades ago, or my brain solely runs on an IV drip direct from Initial D. Which begs the question...
Does JDM still exist in the present tense?
Well, lately we had the GR Supra, and the Honda NSX NC1. But you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who would confidently point at those and call them JDM. I have a soft spot for the GR Supra, though. They have at least given aftermarket tuners a big playroom and they aren't afraid to let us know it. Stock to stock, it also looks better than the Mk IV. Fight me.
Then you have the contemporary popular picks who are alive and well today. I'm talking about the MX-5s, Imprezas, Swift Sports, and GT86s. To be honest with you, it wouldn't be fair to claim JDM is fading when these cars are still tearing up roads and circuits all over the world. But since we mentioned the Impreza, it's a good chance to bring up a recent casualty.
Lancer Evolutions. I had chills going down my spine as I wrote that. The fearsome sister/rival to the Impreza has delighted fans for generations, starting in 1992 and was announced to cease production in 2015. Damn... it's been gone 5 years already. Similar stories can be told for countless other Japanese sports cars.
…the biggest betrayal to your sports car users.
-Chief Engineer, Mazda MX-5
So maybe the concern with JDM isn't in its existence. We've proven that reliable examples are on the roads today. It's the scale of its existence, it's been downsized. Sensitive word in the current economic climate, I'm sure. But the two themes (JDM and economy) aren't that much separate from each other, which we will explore more later.
If I asked you to give me a list of 90s JDM cars, you would probably come up with one as long as Kim Jong-un's lifetime achievements. Although among those achievements, there's one that says he could drive since the age of 3 so I suppose he would be happy with your list as well.
Try the same experiment for 2010s JDM cars, and the list will shorten to a length similar to one detailing Donald Trump's profitable investments.
Enthusiasts used to have such variety, a blooming ecosystem of Nippon goodness. Nowadays it does feel a bit more... restrictive. The range wasn't a B-team of random wheels either. Japanese automakers in the 90s produced world-beaters on the race tracks. RX-7s embarrassed the Americans at IMSA GT, clinching class wins at 24 Hours of Daytona 10 years in a row. The Honda NSX (1st gen) won at Le Mans featuring Keiichi Tsuchiya. Let's not even get started on WRC.
That Toyota Yaris WRC though... winner of the 2018 and 2019 World Rally Championship (WRC), with a road-going GR Yaris coming out in 2021. Plenty of eyes on that one.
Winning cars at the year-end FIA Gala 2018. Source: FIA
Nürburgring. The lap time to rule all lap times. Number 2 on front-wheel-drive leader board is none other than the Civic FK8R, with 7:43.80 on its timer. In fact, the Civic has held the top spot several times in the past, being only recently dethroned by Renault. That makes it a world-beater. But that sort of performance comes at a price. And it’s the sort of price that may no longer cater to the segment who popularised the Civic in the first place. Kudos to Honda for repositioning the Civic product into a more upmarket segment, credit where credit is due.
Then reveals the question we should ask ourselves, does JDM come with a price association? Is there a threshold on how much a car costs before it loses the common hearts and minds? These are hard questions to answer given that money is relative. Does it cost more than your regular Corolla? Yes, and rightfully so. Is it prohibitively expensive like a Ferrari? Not really.
So, it stands to reason that using a price marker to determine JDM-hood isn’t reliable. Neither is it possible to establish a single marker, anyway. When the Skyline R32 first came out, it wasn’t something you saw 10 of in one day. Oh, and how dare they remove the ‘Skyline’ badge in the R35.
By now it’s become clearer that the label ‘JDM’ represents more than just a category of cars or its country of manufacture. It’s more than ‘coupes’, ‘sports’, ‘dorifto’, or strictly being right-hand-drive. It’s a brand, and brands are emotional by nature. They make people feel things unique to the brand. The Skyline is only one example, where they opted for a generic extension ‘GTR’ for their flagship supercar, while the ‘Skyline’ trademark whose brand value they’ve been building on since 1957 was given to a consumer sedan.
Nissan’s 2019 Skyline sports sedan. Source: Nissan Motor
But Nissan is a dumpster fire when it comes to branding anyway, so we’ll leave that for another day. Main point is- a group of Japanese cars used to make us feel a certain way. And like an increasingly regulated drug, those highs are getting harder and harder to come by. The kick from a BMW inline-6 engine, does it have the same DNA as a 2JZ? That’s the worry.
Or- it could just be a sign of a generation growing older and getting hit with the nostalgia which they laugh at their parents for. For all we know, young children could be pasting posters of R35s, NSX NC1s, and GR Supras on their bedroom walls. And thus a new generation of JDM is born.
Old and new. Note that the Mk IV has a totally-not-stock body kit. Source: Reddit
And true enough, nostalgia does sell. The GR Supra is outperforming the BMW Z4 in sales despite costing around the same. There’s no better way to motivate Toyota in performance vehicles than a healthy balance sheet.
No more boring cars.
-Akio Toyoda
It seems like Japanese automakers are finding their way back to the light. The President of Toyota declared the above in 2014. Cars today like the CH-R, GR Supra, and the latest Camry are the fruits of that labour.
Not forgetting faithful Mazda too. The continued presence of the MX-5 is no fluke, or coincidence. The Chief Engineer of the GR Supra actually consulted his counterpart at Mazda, and the Mazda man had some sobering advice to give.
If you develop a sports car knowing it won’t make much of a profit, it’s fine as long as times are good. Economies get better and they get worse. And when it dips, the cars that are unprofitable are the first ones to get dropped. And that is the biggest betrayal to your sports car users. It’s the biggest betrayal that you can make. So once you start a sports car, you must never stop building it—even if it’s on a small volume. You have to protect the sports car users who bought your car. That’s the way we have done it for 20 years.
-Takao Kijima, Chief Engineer (2nd and 3rd generation MX-5 Miata)
Source: Hagerty
And that, is how you win hearts and minds.
I’m hopeful that we won’t be ‘running in the 90s’ for the rest of our lives.