Recently I began watching Initial D. It is a cool anime about a high schooler who unknowingly is the best drifter in his region of Japan. While I can do without all the high school drama, the cars and drift scenes are awesome.
The cars are a huge factor in the show, obviously. Watching it nearly 20 years after it was made, it is entertaining to see how the characters ogle the vehicles that were for their time, absolute monsters. They have Mazda RX-7s, Nissan Skylines, and many others.
Then there is the lone hero car. He drives a 10 year old car at the time, a Toyota AE86. In the United States, that car is known as an “A E 86”. The eight and six are said in numeric form as “eighty six”. In the show, they constantly refer to it as an “eight six.” They do the same for other cars as well, like the Nissan GT-R 32. In the States, we refer to it as an “R 32” or again, numeric format of “thirty two”, where as they refer to it as a “three two”. That fascinated me enough to write this blog.
Maybe it all comes down to region. In the United States, “pop”, “soda”, and “Coke”, all mean the same thing, a carbonated soft drink. It just depends on where you are. I’m curious, what other things in the automotive world are referred to differently in different countries or regions? Please let me know all the cool stuff from where you are from!
All Out Octane 
You come up with very clever titles for your articles. Personally I have a hard time with cars that are named with just letters and/or numbers. I prefer the name to actually be a word as I can remember it better. Mazda and Nissan did have some sharp looking cars. I always had an eye for the Mazda RX-7 back in my younger days. The show sounds like it would have so good drifting scenes and I’m sure it would be so much better without all the high school drama.
Thank you! 🙂 I agree with you, I do wish that car companies would actually name their cars. Throughout the last decade, Cadillac has had some amazing concept cars with truly stunning names, but they have never brought them to market. The design elements that they do bring to market all go on cars with letters and numbers. It is a subject that fascinates me because 1.) letters and numbers make things sound more like an appliance, something expendable, rather than something you want to take care of. If something has a name, you tend to take care of it. Which leads me to my next point 2.) People who do not like numbers will struggle liking cars. They can like the shape and colors, sure, but if it doesn’t have a name to capture what they are feeling, it will be hard to relate to. I think that is why lots of people name their cars. They want to give it a sense of life to make sure they care for it. While manufacturers can name cars and people don’t agree with it, or they still name their car something else, it still seems to work better.