Evangelion took me down yet another rabbit hole with an earlier entry from the fine folks at Tomica. The ‘NERV Official Business Coupe’ was basically a vintage Mazda Cosmo Sport from 1967. It was one of Mazda’s first rotary engined cars and was marketed as a halo product to showcase the company’s engineering and design prowess. I believe there was an episode of Jay Leno’s Garage that featured this gorgeous vehicle.
Now, it’s one thing for the creatives at GAINAX to insert a cool vintage car in a futuristic anime, but what if there was more to it? Well, the highly distinctive paint scheme with a bold red stripe offset to the left and running straight across the top of the body wasn’t the first time it had been done!
You see, there was a famous manga called ‘Circuit Wolf’ that featured several cool racing cars. Amongst these was a white Lotus Europa Special adorned with a similarly placed red line. Was it a conscious homage? I think it is.
To pair them off, I picked my Caran D’Ache 849 in 2018’s Japan Color edition. That red clip just stands out so well, you can’t miss it from across the room
OK, back to your regularly scheduled Knockology topics!!