This is Yauhiko Shimusaki’s beautiful 1962 Series IIIC Gazelle Convertible, which he bought through friends in England and then had exported to Japan to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary on November 5th 2006.
Yasuhiko says: “Looking back over the fifty years, one of my many memories was the blue & white Singer Gazelle convertible we owned half a century ago. This was not particularly a luxury car, but it was definitely a vast luxury for us at the time. This was, after all, little over a decade after Japan had been resoundingly devastated and defeated in the war.
The nation was still getting back on its feet, the rapid-growth 60s were still just a gleam in peoples eyes, and not many families had cars. So we caught a lot of envious flack for owning it, but we enjoyed it immensely. We would put the top down and drive around, two youngsters out for a lark. The country roads were mostly gravel and bumpy, but we still had many hours of happy motoring.
Approaching the big five-oh, I wanted to do something special to commemorate the occasion. And what could be better than to get another Singer Gazelle like the one we used to have? So since this is a British car, I turned next to some friends in the Astin Martin Owners Club, and they found for me this red and white 1962 Singer Gazelle Series 111 convertible. We were elated. After extensive email correspondence getting first, second & third opinions, getting answers to seemingly endless questions, and even getting a friend to test drive the car and report back, we finally decided it had sufficient sentimental value to be worth buying, and wired the money. We had the soft top repaired in England and while that was going on made the arrangements to ship the car to Japan. Once it got here, we unwrapped it and played excitedly with our new toy, and I am currently having a ball working on restoring it”.
Yasuhiko has now completed the restoration from the red car to the beautiful pale blue replica of his first Gazelle. Below is a picture of the car as imported, plus some pictures of progress through the restoration process.