Top Gear‘s Chris Harris recently revealed that he’s no fan of the C8 Corvette’s design, and I’m with him on that. But here’s a Mitsuoka Orochi to give us a timely reminder that no matter how dated and fussy the C8 looks, it could have been much worse.
Mitsuoka is that quirky Japanese company that makes a Toyota Yaris look like a Mk2 Jag, turns MX-5s into C2 Sting Rays and can transform a Toyota RAV4 into a 1970s American SUV. Their cars are ridiculous, but in a really fun way, so while you might not be loony enough to buy one yourself, you can totally see why someone else might think they’re great.
And then there’s the Orochi. A mid-engined sports car that looks creepily like the underneath of a stingray (the fish, not the car), the Orochi was first shown as a concept at the turn of the century, before entering limited production in 2006 with the aim of finding 400 buyers with unconventional taste.
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Related: Cars Don’t Get More Bizarre Than A Mitsuoka Orochi With A Liberty Walk Widebody Kit
The Orochi was conceived in Japan for a Japanese audience so you could charitably say that those of us born and raised elsewhere could never be expected to appreciate the design, even if we have bothered to learn that it’s named after a mythical eight-headed, eight-tailed dragon, which helps make some sense of the styling.
Whatever your view on the design, though – and not just that face, but the messy side detailing, too – it’s certainly not dull. Neither is it simply a bodykitted version of someone else’s sports car, like all those fake Ferraris that were produced from front-wheel drive Ford and Peugeot coupes around the same time. It’s an entirely unique car built around Mitsuoka’s own spaceframe chassis and equipped with Lamborghini-style doors and an interior that looks better than the ones fitted to some European sports cars of the time.
Things were less exciting behind that cabin, because base cars only got a 3.3-liter V6 from Toyota’s Camry making around 230 hp (233 PS), and Autocar described the handling as ‘soft’ and the brakes ‘mushy’ in a 2007 test. This car here for sale on Collecting Cars has the more powerful supercharged engine that came later, though even that was only good for 300 hp (304 PS), the ad says, and still drives the rear wheels through a five-speed automatic gearbox.
But those horses have never even had the chance to stretch their legs because this Orichi has covered just 50 miles (81 km) since new. It was purchased by its first owner in Japan in 2010 and shipped to Singapore where it was stored in an underground garage and never driven. Three years ago it made the trip to the UK and has only covered 2.5 miles (4 km) since. There are apparently a few micro blisters on the paint, a small mark on the bumper from transit and the leather seats look surprisingly grubby given the tiny mileage, but let’s be honest, with a face like that, no one is going to notice.
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