Japan Month Concludes (www.motor1.com)

What a month!

, the Motor1 staff worked for the better part of 2024 to deliver an extra feature story per day during the month of November, including videos, columns, and opinion pieces. Each showcased the best we could offer. We tried our very best to share our joy with you, the reader.

We called the project Japan Month, an ode to some of our favorite vehicles on earth, the people who built them, and our special relationship to the island nation and its cars.

Photo by: Robin Trajano | Motor1

The month started with a bang. We drove every Nissan Skyline on a California race track to crown a Godzilla king. Spoiler: They were all godly. Then our first video of the month dropped, an incredible, narrated time lapse of a Toyota 2000GT model, immaculately assembled by our own staff writer Chris Smith. 

Hot off the heels of our first two features, a pair of Miata delights. The first story, a travel piece to an Italian hamlet for the Miata-obsessed, simply called “Miataland”. The second, an oral history of a current/future classic, the Mazda ND Miata, detailing the car’s creation and execution from ideation to completion. 

Photo by: Victoria Scott / Motor1

Then Motor1 deputy editor Brian Silvestro ventured off to mountainous Washington State, testing the new Lexus GX’s mettle against some of the most beautiful (and challenging) off-road scenery on earth. (Staff writer Victoria Scott even took some slick film photos on the story, too). Scott wrote the next piece, too, a history of the funky 90s EVs you’ve never heard of.

And then something completely different: Another Chris Smith banger, attached to perhaps the best art of the month, a cutaway of Japan’s only production V-12, rendered beautifully by renowned artist Jim Hatch, followed by a history of the Honda Super Cub, the vehicle that put the people of earth on two wheels.

Photo by: Sean C. Rice | Motor1

In our second video of the month, Victoria Scott detailed the Honda EV Plus, the company’s first EV. Hot metal abounded after that, with the Lexus LC500 chasing autumn leaves in Northern Michigan, and a gooey-sunset photo set of the Mazda RX-7 alongside the gorgeous vintage Ferrari that inspired its design.

Then we got into the mechanical weeds, highlighting the only piece of genuinely great marketing ever: the technical document produced alongside the Acura Integra Type R. That paired excellently with another Victoria Scott video pitting the classic Type R against its modern successor, the Acura Integra Type S.

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