01
Origins
Susumu Mitsuoka's small Toyama company graduated from microcars to full manufacture with the Le-Seyde of 1990: a Nissan Silvia given metres of additional bonnet, freestanding headlamps and side-mounted spare — neo-classic 'Zimmer' styling executed with Japanese build quality and complete sincerity. All 500 sold immediately, funding the company's licence as Japan's tenth recognised automaker. Critics gagged; customers grinned. The Le-Seyde established Mitsuoka's permanent business: donor-car mechanicals under handcrafted nostalgia, from Jazz-age fantasy here to the Viewt's English decorum later. Japan's most eccentric carmaker thus began with its most extreme statement — proof that in a homogenised industry, forty craftsmen with panel-beating skills and no shame constituted a viable national institution. Later limited revivals of the design sold out just as quickly, confirming the appetite was never a passing joke.
1991 Mitsuoka Dore · TTTNIS · CC0
