THIS LEXUS-POWERED 1972 JAVELIN IS THE RESULT OF A TRANS-PACIFIC LOVE AFFAIR
Use your imagination and place yourself on a busy Tokyo street. Pachinko machines go plinkety-plink and multicolored electric signs strobe and scroll. The seething crush of pedestrians moves like a tide around you. Hulking curbside, with a presence that cuts through the frantic city like a scalpel, is an alien-looking car. A bronze-gold coupe with a long, long hood, fenders flaring with menace, and a pert, truncated deck. The coupe’s passenger compartment is so small relative to its mass as to be obscenely irrational. It is a 1972 AMC Javelin; the property of lifelong Javelin enthusiast and Tokyo resident, Richard Koo.
The AMC’s path to Japan was convoluted, and like an invasive species, the Javelin’s presence in a foreign ecosystem had an outsized influence: It was discussed in the highest government circles in Japan and the US. Japanese economic policy was changed because of it and the car would eventually get a Lexus heart transplant from Toyota itself, with the giant carmaker learning a thing or two in the process.
Koo was born in Japan and immigrated to San Francisco as a youth of 13 with his mother and younger brother in 1967, and not long after, his self-described “love affair” with the AMC Javelin would begin to blossom. The family’s trans-Pacific relocation was economically challenging, but with diligence, after four years in the States, the Koos were ready to purchase an automobile. “My mother insisted it had to be an American-made car,” he recalls. “The reason for that was, in the 60s, Japanese cars were poorly made. My mother, who used to drive a Toyota Corona in Tokyo, wanted a car that did not need 20 minutes of warm-up time before it could move forward.”
The now 17-year-old Koo was tasked by his family with selecting a car. “Given our economic condition, our goal was to find an inexpensive car that had maximum interior space for minimum exterior dimensions. Given those requirements, I went through quite a few publications and catalogs, and concluded that, based on published specifications, American Motors’ Rebel would best meet our requirements.”
This practical brief brought young Koo to the Avenue American dealership on Van Ness in San Francisco. “Apparently, [the] Rebel was not a popular brand, and even though this was February 1971, a few 1970 Rebels were still in the showroom. As I was looking at a white top, yellow-bodied Rebel, I noticed a green 1971 Javelin sitting next to it. One look at this car and I was totally blown over by its unique styling. I had never seen such a beautiful blend of feminine curves and masculine straight lines in an ordinary car with rear seats – and I thought I knew something about car designs even though I was only 17!” The evocative Javelin was too costly and impractical, but Koo vowed, “One day, when I have enough money, I will get one.”
It was entirely natural that choosing the family car fell to the teenage Koo. “I was into cars as a kid from two influences”: a father who was a motoring enthusiast and the burgeoning slot car hobby. Koo recalls driving around Tokyo with his father in a 1954 Alvis Grey Lady, a [Chrysler] Imperial, a Mercury Comet, a British Vauxhall, a Toyota Crown, and, finally, a Nissan Laurel. “I remember talking a lot about cars with him,” he says. Building and racing slot cars “got me interested in designing cars; I thought it would be cool to have the cars I designed running in the streets.”
Youthful dreams gave way to a career as an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The upshot was that young Richard Koo now had the means to make good on the promise he’d made to himself in the San Francisco showroom years before. By this time, AMC was under the stewardship of Renault and the last Javelins had left the factory nearly 10 years before. “I was only able to get a pretty beaten-up 1973 Javelin with a 304 engine from a high school kid for $500. It was far from an ideal Javelin in that it had a column shift, and its interior was in poor condition, but I was happy that I finally got my hands on one.”
The pleasure of Javelin ownership was short-lived as Koo was headhunted by the Nomura Research Institute which meant relocating to Tokyo. “I had to reluctantly sell the car and get myself ready to move to Japan,” he recalls. After parting with the Javelin, Koo learned that it could take up to six months to begin work at Nomura because “the Japanese government in those days was slow in giving visas to non-Japanese.” This put him in the position of suddenly needing a car again while the wheels of government turned. “It just so happened that another Javelin was on sale, and it was a green 1974 AMX version with a 360 engine.” It was in need of refurbishment, but Koo bought it with an eye to eventual restoration. Before that could happen, Nomura informed him the visa was granted ahead of schedule and he would have to depart for Japan soon. Arrangements were made to leave the second Javelin with a friend in Maplewood, NJ, in anticipation of returning to the US at the end of an employment contract that was set for a two-year period. “That was in 1984, and I am still with Nomura in Tokyo in 2024,” relates Koo. “Because my friend in Maplewood had to move to Brazil in 1987, my second Javelin, which was no longer running, had to be junked save for its raised AMX hood, front grille, and rear spoiler that are now store in my San Francisco home.”
“Living in Tokyo and driving Japanese cars was OK, but I really missed [my] Javelin. Then, in one of my business trips to Sydney, Australia, I found a white right-hand drive ‘72 Javelin on the street. I was shocked to see this because I did not know there were RHD Javelins!” The configuration made the car ideal for use in Japan and an excited Koo left a business card under the Australian Javelin’s windshield wiper expressing an interest in buying it. The owner wasn’t willing to sell the car, but the encounter was fortuitous. Koo relates, “He [the Javelin’s owner] introduced me to a Rambler dealer, Mr. Jim Rowe, of Mascot Motors, near the Sydney airport, who just happened to have a ‘72 Javelin for sale.”
AMC products (and many others) were assembled in Australia by Australian Motor Industries (AMI) from complete knock-down kits to circumvent tariffs on imported goods. The 1972 Javelin on offer at Mascot Motors was one of just 48 of that year and model imported for the Australian market. “It was already 20 years old, but in beautiful condition with low miles, so I immediately decided to buy it,” Koo says. “However, I never liked the 1972 front grille, so I asked Mr. Rowe whether it could be changed to a more pleasant 1973-1974 grille. Luckily, he had a NOS 1973 grille, and he installed it in my new acquisition.”
Even without import duties, these largely hand-assembled cars were usually loaded with options and costly; prices were on par with a top-of-the-line Jaguar of the day. Koo relates that this bronze coupe, as purchased, was equipped with a “401-cu.in. V8 with a four-barrel carburetor and dual exhausts, reclining seats, air conditioning, and a thermo-electric rear defogger.”
AMI made much of the soft trim used on the cars it assembled in-house, and many other small components were sourced from Australian suppliers to meet local content requirements. This low-volume assembly may have had an impact on build quality for the better. “The quality of the Australian car was several notches above the two Javelins I had in the US. The doors in the US version, for example, typically started sagging after a few years making closing and opening the doors much less pleasant. But no such sagging is observed in my Australian version fully 50 years after it left the factory. The Australian car also feels much more solidly made,” Koo explains.
Bureaucracy Rears Its Head
Importing the Javelin into Japan from Australia proved to be vexing, with “countless barriers” to be overcome before the Japanese government would be satisfied. “To get the paperwork approved, the importer must explain to the authorities what each digit of the eight-digit engine number represents. Naturally, no one except those who have access to the manufacturer’s data can answer such a ridiculous question. But there are businesses in Japan that supply that information to the importer – for a fee.” Shipping the Javelin from Sydney to Yokohama cost $2000, but to get the car from “Yokohama to my apartment in Tokyo 34 kilometers (about 21.13 mi) away, however, cost $9,000 because of all sorts of import barriers,” Koo laments.
Diplomacy, Javelin Style
The latent adolescent desire to own one of the sexiest things to emerge from American Motors wasn’t Koo’s only motivator in buying the Javelin. He says, “I actually had another highly political reason to want to buy the car and bring it back to Japan”: as an instrument of influence and soft power.
It’s a fact that in the 1980s and 1990s relations between the United States and Japan were strained by trade imbalance. As Koo explains, “US-Japan trade friction was becoming increasingly serious and ugly because Japan alone accounted for as much as 65 percent of [the] total US trade deficit. Washington was very upset that many markets in Japan, including autos, were largely closed to US products. While Japanese [manufacturers] were selling millions of cars in the US, only a few thousand American cars were sold in Japan each year.
Regarded in many quarters as heavy-handed, America’s ambassadorial style had, if anything, weakened ties with Japan. Incoming US ambassador to Japan, former Vice President Walter Mondale, strove to smooth the boiling Pacific when he was appointed to the ambassadorship by Bill Clinton in 1993. Setting the tone, Mondale said pointedly, “I hope to show by my own example that our two nations can discuss our differences with civility and without mutual bashing of each other.”
Koo, an American of Japanese heritage, was to play a part in Mondale’s new diplomacy. As an expert on economic and financial issues, he was a frequent guest on Japanese television, and Mondale believed he could be a valuable asset: “He asked me whether I can represent the US position on trade issues to Japanese television audiences. He was worried that the American side of the story [was] not correctly understood [by] the average Japanese. I accepted the challenge because I did not want to see the relationship between our two countries worsen further.”
With full briefings from the US embassy, Koo represented US trade interests on Japanese TV discussing everything from Kodak/Fuji issues and agricultural products to, of course, the motor industry. In this capacity, he tangled directly with “hostile Japanese trade hawks” who favored aggressive, protectionist policies. Regarding the import of American cars to Japan, Koo explains, “One of their strongest arguments was the lack of RHD American cars; by bringing my Javelin to Japan I shut them up by saying that there were RHD American cars and that one of them was sitting in my garage!” Koo adds slyly, “I never told Japanese [government] officials that there were only 48 of them made and that the company that made them went bankrupt, but one example was all that was needed to break their argument. Even though the name and make of the car involved was never mentioned, my third Javelin did play a historical role in silencing Japanese trade hawks from complaining about the US carmakers.”
The story of the bureaucratic quagmire that turned importing the Javelin from a $2,000 expense into a $9,000 one for Koo was related to “Ambassador Mondale, and he used it in many speeches” to illustrate the needless barriers that complicated importing cars into Japan.
Reflecting on his time in the red-hot breech of international relations, Koo says, “It was a great honor to represent my country at the behest of our ambassador and a former vice president, but it was a risky undertaking given how confrontational the issue had become.”
The Toyota Connection
Fuel efficiency was not a Javelin design vector. Its 255-horsepower, 401-cu.in. V8 delivered single-digit fuel consumption in heavy traffic; the 15.9-gallon tank would be bled dry of fuel in short order and to potentially disastrous effect. As Koo recalls, “I could not even make one round trip between Tokyo and Hakone, a favorite resort just 80 kilometers (about 49.71 mi) away from Tokyo, on one tank of gas. Sunday afternoon made the trip nerve-wracking because I had to watch the fuel gauge move ever closer to empty while praying that the car will not run out of gas on the jammed freeway before reaching Tokyo.”
It was painfully evident to Koo that improved fuel economy and cleaner exhaust emissions (even though the Javelin, as a 1972, was compliant with Japanese environmental law) would make the AMC easier to live with. “Those concerns led me to ponder the idea of putting in a modern, fuel-efficient, reliable, and clean engine into my Javelin,” he says.
As logical as this epiphany seems, execution would be complex, thanks again to the morass of Japanese regulations. “My frequent inquiries on this possibility with various workshops in Japan always resulted in a negative answer for both technical and legal reasons. Unlike the US, it was almost impossible to switch engines in Japan because the authorities required unbelievable amounts of paperwork with a million structural calculations before they would issue a road-worthiness certificate to the modified car.”
As an economic expert, it is not surprising that Koo was acquainted with Toyota’s then-CEO, Mr. Katsuaki Watanabe. Plans were being laid for Expo 2005, a massive exposition of industry and culture slated to be staged near Toyota City in Aichi Prefecture. Toyota, naturally, was heavily involved with the Expo. Koo says, “Mr. Watanabe asked me, ‘How should Toyota present itself in the upcoming Expo 2005?’” “That question, together with my thoughts on the Javelin, led to the following proposal: I told him that Toyota’s involvement with the Expo meant many car buffs visiting Aichi [who] will expect to see tons of Toyota or Lexus goods there, as someone visiting Detroit would expect. Because of the horrendous regulations against modifying cars in Japan, they are not going to see many shops selling customized engine parts for a Toyota 2000GT or special suspension kits for Supras. In order to avert their disappointment, I suggested that Toyota announce a project to develop a modular engine where necessary components such as oil pans, alternators, and pumps can be attached to the engine block in very many different ways and locations so that the engine can be made to fit in a large number of classic cars. I argued that if such an engine is offered, car buffs around the world would perceive Toyota as not just a manufacturer of reliable but not-so-exciting economy cars, but as an indispensable supporter of classic cars.”
“Mr. Watanabe, together with Mr. Ishii, the CEO of Central Motors, which is a subsidiary of Toyota, found my proposal worth trying, and it was decided among the three of us that my Javelin would be the first guinea pig for the project.” As Koo’s car was to benefit from the new engine and Toyota’s expertise, it was arranged that he would pay for the modifications to the tune of an estimated ¥7.5 million. “It was a kind of risk-sharing arrangement,” he explains. “These arrangements, all made at the CEO level, were the easy part. Once work was started it was discovered, to their horror, that none of the group of companies had the necessary experience for this kind of work, and, eventually, the job was given to a specialized manufacturer of prototype cars named Art International, located in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo. There, an engineer/mechanic, Mr. Taniuchi, was put in charge of the project with full support and supervision from Toyota.”
Taking stock of the American machine, the Japanese engineers determined that a powerful V8, such as Toyota used in the Lexus line, would be the best engine to retrofit. But which one? “By then, there were already four generations of top Lexus engines,” says Koo. A practical approach was deemed best: “Mr. Taniuchi acquired four used Lexus sedans from different years and took out their engines to see which one fit the best in the Javelin.” The second-generation Lexus V8 was the closest to ideal out-of-the-box, but it had been out of production for some time and Toyota had no backstock, “so the company built one from the ground up.”
Finding the engine that was the best fit was only one of the difficulties Mr. Taniuchi and company encountered. The Lexus V8 was designed to operate with feedback from many different sensors that the Javelin had no means of accommodating, so the computer had to be bluffed into thinking the necessary data were being provided. Even then, Koo says, “The alternator gauge on the Javelin’s dashboard simply refused to work with the Lexus electronics, so it had to be disconnected to keep the Lexus side of the electronics working properly.” For the new powerplant to fit “one of the steering rods had to be made from scratch to avoid hitting the oil pan.” The aluminum Lexus V8 was also lighter than the cast-iron AMC item. The front coil springs were shortened accordingly to prevent the Javelin from adopting a nose-high stance. Besides those changes, the chassis remained stock.
Maintaining the Javelin’s identity was always core to the project. The engineers “went out of their way to make sure that both the interior and exterior of the car would remain as close to the original as possible.” The Javelin’s floor-shift was adapted to operate the Lexus automatic transmission; an overdrive button was added to the dashboard, so the factory shift pattern and gear indicators could be retained. In deference to congested Japanese driving conditions and small parking spaces, modern convex side-view mirrors replaced the flat originals, and a rear-facing video camera was fitted.
It was initially estimated that the Lexus-ification of the AMC would take three months; in the end, it took 17. But the results were beyond satisfactory. Koo says, “The engine room is so well arranged that most people would think it was designed this way from the very beginning.” As an official project the build was fully documented, and despite the time overrun, “Toyota charged not a cent more than the originally agreed amount.”
The Javelin, Today
If the Lexus V8 was successfully adapted to power the Javelin, and the needed data gathered by Toyota, why isn’t there a robust line of modular Toyota “crate engines” and other accessories available today? As Koo tells it: “Although a very modern and smooth-running Javelin with catalytic converters and dramatically improved gas mileage was created, the fact that it took 17 months to do so reduced the initial in enthusiasm within Toyota for the modular engine idea for classic cars. The urgent need to develop EVs and fuel cell cars to fight global warming, together with the retirement of Mr. Watanabe as Toyota’s CEO in 2009, unfortunately ended the project.”
Within Toyota itself the passage of time, and the fact that much of the work involved was handled by subcontractors, means that the “Javelexus” and the stillborn modular engine idea, are a largely forgotten chapter in the company’s history. The car is still looked after by Mr. Taniuchi, and he has tailored it even further to meet the needs of its owner. In 2015, Koo’s aged father “started pressuring me to take over the fishing company” he’d started in Taiwan, where they drive in the American fashion. “So, I had Mr. Taniuchi install a video camera on the left-side mirror housing so that there will be no blind spot to the left rear when the car is merging to the left on Taiwanese or American highways. After all these modifications, however, I was told that Taiwan does not allow any RHD cars on the road, period. That means my beloved Lexus-Javelin will have to stay in Tokyo, or go to San Francisco, if and when I get to go home — that is, of course, until someone who is crazier than I am about Javelins presents himself or herself to carry on the torch.”
In case of ironic coincidence, AMI, who began building Toyotas from knock-down kits in the 1960s, became a wholly owned subsidiary of the Japanese concern. In addition to supplying local demand, Toyota’s Australian facilities now manufacture and export vehicles as CKD kits to other countries for final assembly.
US automakers have yet to make serious inroads into the Japanese home market, and Koo’s “secret wish of influencing Toyota designers by having the unique-but-elegant Javelin on their doorstep” has not materialized, at least insofar as we know. But his singular Javelin, a highly efficient pony car, prowls the streets of Tokyo as a synthesis of two cultures and their respective automotive philosophies: an American beauty with a Japanese heart.
The post This Lexus-Powered 1972 Javelin Is The Result Of A Trans-Pacific Love Affair appeared first on The Online Automotive Marketplace.
2025-02-10T15:38:02Z