Touge California a Vintage Japanese Car Only Rally

This weekend is the Touge California a vintage Japanese car only rally. Mazda is collaborating with a Japanese Nostalgic Car to be the title sponsor of Touge California a vintage Japanese car only rally. The rally will take place on April 2, 2016, participants will travel up the California coast to Mazda’s Irvine based R&D facility.

They are expecting have to have 28 rare and original Japanese vehicles from the 1960’s through to the early 1980’s, and 11 of the vehicles are Mazda’s, participating is a 1975 Rotary engine pickup (REPU), a 1978 GLC compact hatchback and of course what would a rally be without a 1985 RX-7 GSL from Mazda’s own heritage collection? “Our heritage cars aren't just museum pieces; they're meant to be driven,” said Robert Davis, MNAO's Senior VP, U.S. Operations.

The California Touge rally was founded by Ben Hsu, editor in chief of Japanese Nostalgic Car and rally master Patrick Strong in 2015, after seeing many famous rallies for European cars and not seeing anything just for Japanese cars. 

The reason why the route was chosen to go from San Diego to Irvine is that according to Ben Hsu “70 percent of Japan's terrain is mountainous, our goal with Touge California is to give owners of Japanese cars the experience of driving on roads similar to those on which their cars were born.” 

The idea for the Touge rally came from the infamous and daring underground Touge races in Japan. The word Touge means “mountain pass.”