ToW #11 - Article from BBC "Autos": "For Japan’s hot-rodders, the eyes have it"

        This randomly-selected article from BBC's online magazine, written by Brendan McAleer, an "independent automotive writer" and thus member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada, compellingly portrays the history of Japan's Mooneyes hot-rod shop. Mooneyes, an extension of Dean Moon's 1950s-revolutionary custom parts company, soups-up cars from all over the world with Japanese style. This automobile culture, which is normally uninteresting to me, is artfully and expertly described by McAleer, making it not only interesting, but engaging. This raises a question: is he only writing for automobile enthusiasts? Its seems not; his prose is entertaining enough to appeal to a much broader audience than that. It is a combination of McAleer's unexpectedly descriptive writing and his tasteful choice of subject that allowed him to successfully educate me about the half-ordinary and half-wondrous Mooneyes Japan shop.

        At the very outset of his article, McAleer goes into a frankly startling level of detail. Perhaps I'm just used to the rather sterile world of functional cars and not the realm of artful hot-rods, but doesn't this paint a gorgeous mental image?

"Welcome to Mooneyes Japan, a slice of Californian automotive history basking in the glow of the Rising Sun. Holding pride of place out front, a glinting yellow dune buggy looks as if it just alighted from the cover of a vintage hot-rodding magazine. Millions of metallic golden flecks in the citrus-yellow paint catch the dancing light, making the car twinkle like a mirage."

        You can almost feel the brush strokes. The beauty of the prose parallels the beauty of the cars perfectly. I can only assume that this move towards creative writing was a result of McAleer's perception of the creative side of custom car design. This makes McAleer the most literary "automotive writer" that I expect to find any time soon.

        Even without the more engaging of the descriptive tricks employed, this article may have still appealed to me. Through the sheer luck of myself being a student of the Japanese language, I find learning anything about the culture engaging. From working through the proper pronunciations of names like "Sugamuma" and "Ishii" to exploring the relationship between the Japanese Mooneyes and the Californian Dean Moon, I have to say that I found the experience spontaneously enjoyable. But I do not think that I am the only one who could enjoy a piece involving Japan; in modern times, when Japan seems to balance both extreme technological innovation and a richly historied culture, almost every forward-thinking or sentimental person has an eye for the Japanese. This recalls the question of audience; perhaps it was not fully wise for this particular article to be situated only in the "Autos" section. In my opinion at least, it's front page material.