Welcome to The Drift where Jalopnik East rounds up the highlights from all around the Pacific Rim. In recent highlights, Toyota’s new Sienta minivan is weird, but its commercials are weirder, Mitsuoka is releasing a new take on the Nissan March for women, and we want to know what you want in your Drift.
Understeer
Toyota’s new minivan isn’t sure what the hell it’s supposed to be. It looks like it took design cues from a significantly smaller hatchback, but is still a “load the kids up and take ‘em all to soccer practice” sort of vehicle. Is it yet another attempt to make the minivan cool? Is that even possible? Is it even a minivan at all? Or maybe its an uberhatch? Do we have a word for that yet?
Well, with the inside as it is, it would definitely appear to have the necessary seating requirements and storage space of a minivan, but maybe this isn’t a minivan. We’re still trying to figure that out, right?
The commercials even helpfully point out, in Sienta-clad packaging no less, precisely all the places you store your crap. Here, there, over there, behind there, under there, around there, and... wait... is that glove compartment actually molded to accommodate a Japanese boxed lunch (bento)? Apparently so!
...Wait, did this commercial just compare a not-sure-if-its-a-minivan-but-its-probably-still-a-minivan to a wet dream?
This is a family vehicle, Toyota! Shame on you!
Oversteer
Mitsuoka Motors, a company known for making new cars appear like older cars, has announced that it has created a “woman’s” version of its popular Nissan March based retromobile, the Viewt. The new five-door hatchback is called the “Viewt Nadeshiko.”
Oh boy.
For those of you who follow Japanese women’s soccer (which should be EVERYONE, because they played and lost to MURICA in some of the best soccer ever played EVER), you might know that Nadeshiko is also what the team is called. The car name has nothing to do with the team, but they share a name for a reason:
Nadeshiko is the name for ideal Japanese womanhood.
Aoki Takanori told Response that the reason for the hatchback design was because women have too much stuff to fit into the back of the Viewt Sedan. Oh, and old people find sedan trunks too difficult to get into, apparently. But mostly because we ladies always have too much shit for a normal sedan trunk.
Countersteer
Today’s counteersteer isn’t a report, it’s a question. What highlights would you like to see covered in The Drift specifically, and what kind of stories from Asia would you like to see in Jalopnik East more generally? This is your Jalopnik East, you decide, and we can report. It’s like the opposite of Fox News!
Images via AP, Mitsuoka and Toyota, modifications by Kat Callahan/Jalopnik.
Jalopnik East is your daily dose of the latest automotive news out of Asia, covering domestic developments and car culture in Japan, Korea, China, Southeast Asia, and beyond. Just because you can’t drive it, doesn’t mean we can’t share it with you. You can usually catch us every day between 5am and 7am ET.