Japanese cars of the 1970’s are an era where Japanese made cars began selling in America and the production increase rapidly after the 1970’s. During early 1960s, the world was suffering with oil crisis and demand for fuel efficient small car is high. At that time automobile industry in Japan began to build small cars which known as Kei car or K-car (軽自動車) that has very small engines and mostly under 600cc. This amazing era began when the first K-car Subaru 360 launched in 1958.

In 1960s, Japan introduced few more famous K-cars in Japanese market and this has attracted world’s attention to it. Some of the K-cars in the 1960s and 1970s were the Mitsubishi 500, Suzuki Fronte, Mazda Carol, and Honda N360.

Automobile industry had a big changed in the 1970s as the 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973 until March 1974. During that time, most of American cars were big and featured with V8 especially muscle cars. This has given a good chance for Japanese cars to enter the market because smaller car tends to keep lower taxes if compared to larger car.

Production of Japanese cars of the 1970’s increased rapidly when the demand for Japanese cars increased. More and more Japanese car brands went into U.S market during 1970s and some automobile factory were built in U.S during that time. In 1982, Honda Accord becomes the first Japanese cars built in the U.S. From there onwards, Japanese cars had become more famous.

Japanese cars from 1970’s had led Japanese automobile industry growth quickly and became one of the major industries in the world. Japan was the largest automobile manufacturer in the world in year 2008. Take the 2006 Honda Civic as example; it is one of the leading compact cars worldwide today as well as one of the top 10 most fuel-efficient and reliable cars in 2009. Other than that, there is also some other very famous Japanese car brands like Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Isuzu, Suzuki, Kawasaki, Yamaha, and Mitsuoka.

Other than compact cars, some great and fun Japanese sports cars were built after the 1970’s. In 1980s, it is another era where Japanese started to build some real nice sports cars with 4-stroke engine, rotary engine. The Mazda RX-7, Nissan 180sx, Nissan Silvia, Datsun 240Z, and Toyota AE86 are some of the greatest Japanese cars in the ’70s and ’80s.