D Car — July 2004
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About this issue
246 available scans from D Car — July 2004, in right-to-left reading order. Japanese OCR and English translation drafts are available throughout. Drafts have not received exhaustive image proofreading; unreadable source remains recorded in the archival data.
Page 39 — English draft translation
This gullwing Celica turns heads with vibrant purple paint, embroidery, and vinyl graphics. It is a demo car for OGUM, an apparel brand popular with sport-compact fans. Depending on the light, its pearl-rich paint can look blue. The Lamborghini-style gullwing kit opens slightly outward, showing off embroidery on the door trim. JT front-bumper and side-step parts and a Grand Design rear bumper were modified to fit; the large blue driving lamps in the bumper stand out.
Captions and page details
Brand not identified · Lamborghini-style door kit · Inquiries: Success Speed Works · Tel. 042-852-9913
Kit
The owner’s friend bought this coilover and damper kit in the U.S., so the exact details are unknown. The kit is the same type as the Lamborghini-style kit widely imported into Japan. In Japan, S&S G handles it.
A dragon graphic in a color close to the body paint adds personality to the exterior. Inside, monitors are built into the dashboard and both sun visors. Simoni Racing parts add polish, while purple leather upholstery ties the seats together and gives the cabin a refined feel.
The door trim gets embroidered, too!
Embroidery with the kind of exceptional design you’d expect from an apparel-shop demo car. The piece shown below is an original by Untouchable.
Italian brand Simoni Racing…
The dashboard area is painted purple as well.
The front seats carry the OGUM logo and are reupholstered in purple leather; the rear seats match.
A small-diameter steering wheel…
The cockpit.
Flip up the monitors and the cabin becomes a three-screen mini theater.
OGUM’s prized cars
An oriental-style gullwing
A MOMO shift knob whose shape recalls a bird’s beak.
A monitor is also built three-dimensionally into the passenger airbag area of the dashboard for a futuristic finish.
Welcome to
OGUM
…and the Untouchable shop. T-shirts are the main item this season. 1-2-3 Chuo, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Miyagi · Tel. 022-266-3445
Shop data
For Asian style, go here! A select shop focused on OGUM sportswear…
Store manager Mori
Gullwing doors trace their roots to Mercedes’ upward-opening doors. The boom took off with the X-5 in 2003.
01
Gullwing
Gullwing trivia
The name “gullwing” comes from Mercedes coupes whose doors opened upward, just like a gull’s wings. Lamborghini-style doors that swing forward were later also called gullwings; in Japan, the terms are often mixed. If it looks cool, there’s no need to get hung up on the name.
The original gullwing: a Mercedes. Hinged at the center of the roof, the doors really do look like a seagull’s wings.
What D-Car calls a “gullwing” is technically a Lamborghini-style door. Still, “gullwing” has a nicer ring to it!
The style broke out in Japan after a crowd of gullwing demo cars appeared at last year’s Makuhari X-5. Back then, one-off builds were overwhelmingly popular.
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