Mitsuoka Himiko Roadster (2014) 1Y7A6210

The Mitsuoka Himiko is a

luxury Luxury may refer to: *Luxury goods, an economic good or service for which demand increases more than proportionally as income rises *Luxury tax, tax on products not considered essential, such as expensive cars **Luxury tax (sports), surcharge put ...

roadster designed and built by

Mitsuoka is a small Japanese automobile company. It is noted for building unique cars with unconventional styling, some of which are modern while others imitate the look of American, European and particularly British retro cars of the 1950s and 1960s. Mit ...

. It is named after

Himiko , also known as , was a shamaness-queen of Yamatai-koku in . Early Chinese dynastic histories chronicle tributary relations between Queen Himiko and the Cao Wei Kingdom (220–265) and record that the Yayoi period people chose her as ruler fo ...

, an obscure

shaman Shamanism is a religious practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with what they believe to be a spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritu ...

queen of

Yamataikoku Yamatai or Yamatai-koku is the Sino-Japanese name of an ancient country in Wa (Japan) during the late Yayoi period The Chinese text ''Records of the Three Kingdoms'' first recorded the name as () or (; using reconstructed Middle Chinese p ...

in ancient Wa. In the UK it is known as the Mitsuoka Roadster.

First generation (2008-2018)

Based on the Mazda MX-5 NC, Mitsuoka replaces most of the body panels, fits

Fibre-reinforced plastic Fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP; also called fibre-reinforced polymer, or in American English ''fiber'') is a composite material made of a polymer matrix reinforced with fibres. The fibres are usually glass (in fibreglass), carbon (in carbon-fib ...

paneling, leather seats and extends the wheelbase front of the A-pillar to generate the long bonnet line reminiscent of English roadsters such as the

Jaguar XK120 The Jaguar XK120 is a sports car manufactured by Jaguar between 1948 and 1954. It was Jaguar's first sports car since SS 100 production ended in 1939. The XK120 is a highly desirable model. In 2016, Bonhams sold a matching numbers left-hand-d ...

and particularly the

Morgan Aero 8 The Morgan Aero 8 is a Sports car, sports automobile, car built by Morgan Motor Company at its factory in Malvern Link, England (an area of Malvern, Worcestershire, Malvern in Worcestershire). The Aero 8 shape evolved in the traditional Morgan w ...

. Designed by Takanori Aoki, the exterior theme of the Himiko is said to mimic a 'ship riding the high seas cruising majestically as one with the waves'. Transmission and roof options are similar to the MX-5 with the option of either a 6 speed automatic transmission with manual shifting or a 6 speed manual transmission. Each Mitsuoka vehicle is handmade by 45 craftsmen at the Japanese Mitsuoka factory in Toyama City,

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

Second generation (2018-present)

The second-generation Himiko was released in 2018. Now based on the Mazda MX-5 ND, the styling remains nearly identical to the previous generation. The retractable hard top previously available was dropped and was replaced with a folding soft top.

External links

UK website

Japanese website

Retro-style automobiles {{Modern-auto-stub Cars introduced in 2008 2010s cars