The Mitsuoka Himiko is a luxury roadster designed and built by

Mitsuoka is a small Japanese automobile company. It is noted for building cars with unconventional styling, some of which are modern while most others are retro-styled to imitate the look of American, European and particularly British cars of the 1950s ...

. It is named after

Himiko , also known as the , was a shamaness-queen of Yamatai-koku in . Early Chinese dynastic histories chronicle tributary relations between Queen Himiko and the Cao Wei Kingdom (220–265) and record that the Yayoi period people chose her as ruler ...

, an obscure

shaman Shamanism is a spiritual practice that involves a practitioner (shaman) interacting with the spirit world through altered states of consciousness, such as trance. The goal of this is usually to direct spirits or spiritual energies into ...

queen of

Yamataikoku Yamatai or Yamatai-koku is the Sino-Japanese vocabulary, Sino-Japanese name of an ancient country in Wa (Japan) during the late Yayoi period The Chinese language, Chinese text ''Records of the Three Kingdoms'' first recorded the name as ()Sc ...

in ancient Wa. In the UK it is known as the Mitsuoka Roadster.

First generation (2008-2018)

Based on the Mazda MX-5 NC, Mitsuoka replaces most of the body panels, fits

fibre-reinforced plastic Fibre-reinforced plastic (FRP; also called fibre-reinforced polymer, or in American English ''fiber'') is a composite material made of a polymer matrix reinforced with fibres. The fibres are usually glass (in fibreglass), carbon (in carbon-fibre ...

paneling, leather seats and extends the wheelbase front of the A-pillar to generate the long bonnet line reminiscent of English roadsters such as the

Jaguar XK120 The Jaguar XK120 is a sports car manufactured by Jaguar between 1948 and 1954. It was Jaguar's first sports car since SS 100 production ended in 1939. The XK120 was launched in open two-seater or (US) roadster form at the 1948 London Motor Sho ...

and

Morgan Aero 8 The Morgan Aero 8 is a Sports car, sports automobile, car built by Morgan Motor Company at its factory in Malvern Link, England from 2000 until 2018. The Aero 8 shape evolved in the traditional Morgan way of form following function and the main ...

. Designed by Takanori Aoki, the exterior theme of the Himiko is said to mimic a 'ship riding the high seas cruising majestically as one with the waves'. Transmission and roof options are similar to the MX-5 with the option of either a 6 speed automatic transmission with manual shifting or a 6 speed manual transmission. Each Mitsuoka vehicle is handmade by 45 craftsmen at the Japanese Mitsuoka factory in Toyama City,

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Second generation (2018-present)

The second-generation Himiko was released in 2018. Now based on the Mazda MX-5 ND, the styling remains nearly identical to the previous generation. The retractable hard top previously available was dropped and was replaced with a folding soft top.

External links

UK website

Japanese website

References

Retro-style automobiles {{Modern-auto-stub Cars introduced in 2008 2010s cars Grand tourers