JDM Cars
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50 free JDM Cars trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Japan builds cars for the whole world, but for decades it kept some of its best for itself. Home-market models were often lighter, sharper and stranger than the versions sent abroad, and a generation that met them in video games, comics and street-racing films has been hunting them down ever since. This quiz covers the cars and the culture around them. Expect the turbocharged coupés and rally-bred saloons that fans know by chassis code, the tiny city cars with their own tax class, and the nicknames, engines and badges that mark out a real enthusiast. Other questions turn to mountain-road racing and drifting, the tuning houses and race circuits, the import rules that decide when a car can leave Japan, and the people who made the scene famous. It is written for anyone who likes Japanese cars, from casual fans of the films to owners who can tell one Skyline generation from another. The first questions are the gentlest, the later ones dig deeper, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the manga Initial D, Takumi Fujiwara hones his mountain-road skills delivering which food in his father's Toyota?
Tofu
Tofu goes out early each morning in his father Bunta's ageing Sprinter Trueno, and years of those runs make Takumi a natural racer. The manga has more than 55 million copies in circulation.
Q 02Which movie monster's name did the Australian magazine Wheels give the Nissan Skyline GT-R R32 in 1989?
Godzilla
Godzilla suited a car from Japan that flattened its rivals: the R32 GT-R won all 29 races it entered in the country's touring car series. Wheels kept the nickname for every later generation.
Q 03Which film franchise, launched in 2001, turned an orange Mk4 Toyota Supra into a worldwide star?
Fast & Furious
Fast & Furious began with undercover policeman Brian O'Conner rebuilding a wrecked Supra into a ten-second car. He ends the first film by handing its keys to the street racer he was sent to catch.
Q 04Which Formula One champion, then racing Honda-powered McLarens, urged Honda to stiffen the chassis of the original NSX?
Ayrton Senna
Ayrton Senna tried a prototype in Japan and persuaded Honda to make the chassis stiffer before launch. He was not the development driver, though: that job belonged to Motoharu Kurosawa.
Q 05Subaru's six-star badge depicts which star cluster, whose Japanese name the company took as its own?
Pleiades
Pleiades is also known as the Seven Sisters, yet the badge shows six stars because tradition holds that one sister is invisible. The stars also nod to the companies that merged to form Subaru's parent.
Q 06Toyota's Corolla, Corona and Camry all follow a 1955 flagship in taking their names from words for which object?
A crown
A crown is the theme because the 1955 flagship was the Toyota Crown: corona is Latin for crown, corolla for a small crown, and Camry comes from kanmuri, the Japanese word for one.
Q 07The United States waives federal safety rules on imported cars, such as Nissan Skylines, once they reach what age?
25 years
25 years is the cut-off regulators have applied since 1989, on the presumption that a car that old is a collector's item. It is why the R32 Skyline GT-R of 1989 only became eligible for American roads in 2014.
Q 08Which PlayStation racing series from Kazunori Yamauchi put a Nissan Skyline GT-R on its Japanese cover in 1997?
Gran Turismo
Gran Turismo launched with cars from many Japanese makers, among them Nissan, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda and Mazda. Sony had at first rejected Yamauchi's pitch for a realistic driving simulator.
Q 09Toyota built a special open-top 2000GT for which James Bond film of 1967, shot largely in Japan?
You Only Live Twice
You Only Live Twice needed a roofless car because Sean Connery, at 1.88 metres, reportedly sat too tall for the low coupé. Toyota never sold a convertible 2000GT to the public.
Q 10Which Honda valve system, first sold in the 1989 Integra, swaps to a second cam profile at high revs?
VTEC
VTEC was invented by Honda engineer Ikuo Kajitani. It pairs a mild cam profile for economy at low revs with a high-lift one for power, and oil pressure locks the rocker arms together to make the switch.
Q 11Which Scottish driver won the 1995 World Rally title in a Subaru Impreza and gave his name to a video game series?
Colin McRae
Colin McRae was 27 when he took the title, the youngest champion the series had seen, and the record stood until 2022. The first game bearing his name followed in 1998.
Q 12Mazda's rotary-powered 787B became the first Japanese car to win which endurance race in 1991?
24 Hours of Le Mans
24 Hours of Le Mans went to a Japanese maker for the first time that day, and not again until Toyota won in 2018. The 787B used a four-rotor engine with no pistons at all.
Q 13Which Mazda sports car, built from 1978 to 2002 in SA, FC and FD generations, is powered by a twin-rotor Wankel engine?
RX-7
Q 21Which engine layout, shared with the Porsche 911, gives the Subaru Impreza WRX its low centre of gravity?
Boxer
Boxer engines lay their cylinders flat, and each opposing pair of pistons moves in and out together, like fighters touching gloves before a bout. The low, wide shape helps the handling.
Q 22Which Japanese circuit, designed in 1962 as a Honda test track, crosses over itself in a figure-of-eight?
Suzuka
Suzuka was drawn by Dutch designer John Hugenholtz, who sent the back straight over the front section on a bridge. Soichiro Honda had wanted a permanent circuit since the late 1950s.
Q 23Honda shaped the boot of its 1981 City to carry which optional extra, called the Motocompo?
A folding scooter
RX-7 production reached 811,634 cars over 24 years. The final FD generation paired its rotary engine with sequential twin turbochargers, a complex system developed with the help of Hitachi.
Q 14Under which luxury brand, launched in 1986, did Honda sell the NSX and the Integra in North America?
Acura
Acura was the first Japanese luxury brand, opening in March 1986 with 60 dealerships. The NSX it sold from 1990 takes its name from the phrase New Sports eXperimental.
Q 15Under which brand name, dropped in 1986, did Nissan export cars such as the 510 saloon and the 240Z?
Datsun
Datsun was the name most of Nissan's export cars wore from 1958 until the company phased it out in March 1986. A revival for low-cost cars in emerging markets began in 2013 and ended in 2022.
Q 16Japan's kei cars, limited to 660 cc engines, wear licence plates of which background colour when privately owned?
Yellow
Yellow plates with black numbers mark a private kei car, and the colours swap round for commercial ones. The class also caps length at 3.4 metres and width at 1.48 metres.
Q 17In the abbreviation JDM, the J stands for Japanese and the M for market; which word does the D represent?
Domestic
Domestic completes the phrase, which refers to Japan's home market for vehicles and parts. Cars built for it can differ greatly from the versions the same makers send abroad.
Q 18The name Mitsubishi, adopted by a shipping firm in 1873, is often translated as which phrase echoed in its badge?
Three diamonds
Three diamonds comes from mitsu, meaning three, and hishi, a water caltrop whose outline gave Japanese its word for a rhombus. The mitsu also recalls three oak leaves on a clan crest.
Q 19Mazda began life in Hiroshima in 1920 as a factory producing which natural material, long before it built vehicles?
Cork
Cork was the trade of Toyo Cork Kogyo, founded by Jujiro Matsuda. The firm cut the word from its name in 1927 and turned to vehicles in 1931 with the Mazda-Go auto rickshaw.
Q 20The 1990 Honda NSX was the first production car with a body structure made entirely from which metal?
Aluminium
Aluminium saved nearly 200 kg compared with a steel body, and the suspension arms were made from it too. The engine brought another production first: titanium connecting rods.
A folding scooter whose handlebars, seat and foot-pegs tucked into a rectangular body, the Motocompo was sold only in Japan until 1983. Its inspiration was the Welbike, a British wartime motorcycle.
Q 24Which performance division, formed in 1984 from two factory racing departments, runs motorsport and tuning for Nissan?
Nismo
Nismo is short for Nissan Motorsports International. It joined the Oppama works, which looked after privateer teams, to the Omori works that ran the factory's own racing cars.
Q 25The sports car exported from 1969 as the 240Z was sold in Japan under which name, shared with earlier Nissan roadsters?
Fairlady
Fairlady came from the Broadway musical My Fair Lady, a name Nissan first gave its roadsters around 1960. The export coupés wore plain numbers instead: 240Z, 260Z and 280Z.
Q 26Which Hollywood actor and racing driver appeared in Nissan's adverts for the R30 Skyline in the early 1980s?
Paul Newman
Paul Newman also raced for Nissan, so in 1983 the company marked the partnership with a special R30 that carried his name, finished with signature embroidery and decals.
Q 27Which Toyota chassis code, shared by the Corolla Levin and Sprinter Trueno of 1983 to 1987, do fans call the Hachi-Roku?
AE86
AE86 explains the nickname, since hachi-roku is Japanese for eight-six. It was the last Corolla with rear-wheel drive, built when most of the range had already switched to front-wheel drive.
Q 28The Toyota Sprinter Trueno, twin of the Corolla Levin, takes its name from the Spanish word for what?
Thunder
Thunder has a partner, because Levin comes from a Middle English word for lightning. The two cars differed at the nose: the Trueno had retractable headlights and the Levin fixed ones.
Q 29Which twin-turbo straight-six, first fitted to the 1991 Toyota Aristo, became the flagship engine of the Mk4 Supra?
2JZ-GTE
2JZ-GTE engines are built on a cast-iron block and stayed in production in Japan until 2005. Home-market cars were rated at 280 PS, the ceiling of the carmakers' voluntary power limit.
Q 30Which Japanese racing driver, known as the Drift King, was a consultant on the manga and anime Initial D?
Keiichi Tsuchiya
Keiichi Tsuchiya earned the title by sliding through corners in ordinary circuit races. He had sharpened his car control as a street racer on mountain passes before he ever entered one.