Car Videos to Brighten Your Weekend: The Mostly Japanese Edition

The North American International Auto Show begins on Monday, January 8, and because of that, automotive news is pretty light today. So we decided to revive an old favorite feature at Autoviva: Friday car videos to brighten our readers' weekend. This edition happens to be mostly Japanese cars because that is just how things happened. Let us know what you think and what your favorites are in the comments below. 

The first video shows Aryton Senna driving an Acura NSX around the Suzuka Circuit in Japan. The video starts a little slow with him inspecting the car, but then shows him doing an full lap of the track with two cameras: one over his shoulder showing his driving and the other pointed at the pedals showing his footwork. Coolest of all is seeing this legend in a pair of loafers tossing an iconic car around the track. 

Our second video is also Honda related, though tangentially. It shows former Formula 1 Driver Ricardo Patrese around Jerez in a Honda Civic Type-R. The car is not really important. This video is all about Patrese's wife's reactions. Again, it starts a little slow at first, but once they get on track, this becomes one of the funniest car-related videos ever. 

In this video Petter and Henning Solberg in a Subaru and Citroen rally car respectively play around with the Norwegian military. There are some fun bits to this video, especially when they drift in unison around a tank's spinning turret. 

Here is our first video that does not have a Japanese car. In this one a driver at the Australian Bathurst circuit drives from 16th to 1st in the first lap of a one-make Lotus Elise race. It just shows some fantastic driving. 

From a video that shows some fantastic driving to a video that shows some pretty hairy driving. This one shows a hillclimb from Switzerland in 2010. It seems like every interesting car from the last 20 years is in this one like Lancer Evos, E30-chassis M3s, Volkswagens and Opels. The video starts good just because of the great audio from the cars, but at about 1 minute 20 seconds into the video the editor must have gotten bored because he begins showing examples of all of the cars having lots of oversteer and going off course. 

I think every little boy wishes that he had done this at some point. The film maker here takes Japanese Tomica toy cars, adds bosozuku-style modifications and films a stop motion film with them. 

This video is something that you often see a clip of, but rarely is it shown in context. It comes from the 1997 Rally Portugal. Colin McRae is driving a Ford Escort, and the spectators form a wall to either side of the track and occasionally a wall in front of them. 

For our last video, we have to give credit to the car blog Automobiliac that just posted this video today. It shows Stirling Moss driving a 1959 Cooper around a circuit. Not only does the car sound fantastic, but Moss is wearing a microphone and provides commentary about the car and about racing in the era. 

We hope that you enjoyed these videos and that they make your weekend a little better. Please, tell us what you think in the comments.