The British truck that inspired Isuzu

TO PROVE Japanese craftsmanship and the company’s engineering prowess, Hosoi said this 89-year-old truck could still run.

The Tokyo Motor Show has a reputation for enthralling the audience with futuristic concept cars as well as strange-looking vehicles. However, in the recently concluded 43rd edition of the biennial event, what really caught the people’s attention was an 89-year-old British truck model completely built in Japan.

The Wolseley CP, a 1.5 payload truck, has the distinction of being Japan’s first domestically produced truck. It was also Isuzu’s first truck model, the grandfather of all the faithful workhorses that ply our roads today.

ONE OF the most interesting vehicles on display at the Tokyo Motor Show was an 89-year-old Japan-made British truck.

It should be interesting to note that Isuzu—or at least its predecessor company, the Tokyo Ishikawajima Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd.— diversified into car-making in 1916. This gave birth to the Ishikawa Automotive Works Co. Ltd., which, in 1922, formed a partnership with British Automaker Wolseley Motors Ltd. to legally build the Wolseley A9, Japan’s first passenger car.

Before this collaboration, Tokyo Ishikawajima Shipbuilding & Engineering considered a number of potential foreign partners. But it was the British automaker’s hands-on vehicle production method that they found more suitable for their Japanese workers.

After learning to manufacture every tool necessary for producing a vehicle, the company eventually built the Wolseley CP in 1924. The British truck model was significant as Japan needed a reliable transport vehicle that would help the country recover from the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, at the time considered the worst natural disaster ever to strike the cities of Yokohama and Tokyo (a tsunami and firestorms left  about 140,000 dead).

26 horsepower

At 5.14 meters long, 1.83 m wide and 2.25 m high, the Wolseley CP could only deliver 26 horsepower from its 3.1-liter, 4-cylinder gasoline engine (for comparison, the 0.8-liter, 3-cylinder Suzuki Alto subcompact car delivers 47 HP).

“The management then had a strong commitment that trucks were absolutely necessary for Japan’s modernization,” related Susumu Hosoi, president of Isuzu Motors Ltd., during that truck’s unveiling at the motor show.

Indeed, the wood, bronze and steel Wolseley CP was more than sufficient for Japan that required transport trucks to address the rapid industrialization and urbanization it was experiencing from the mid-’20s up to the ’30s.

“On display in our booth is the first Wolseley CP that rolled off the assembly line. In fact, this 89-year-old truck still runs and retains the original design,” informed Hosoi, proving Japanese craftsmanship and the company’s engineering prowess.

Proud

Moreover, being able to mass-produce the truck in Japanese  soil also gave its citizens reason to be proud. In just three years, in 1927, Tokyo Ishikawajima Shipbuilding & Engineering felt it was knowledgeable enough that it ended its tieup with Wolseley. From then on, it began manufacturing 100-percent localized vehicles of its own design, including the 1929 Sumida M Bus that played a key role in the modernization of Japan’s public transportation network.

The name “Isuzu” only came six years later when Ishikawa Automotive Works, in response to a Japanese-government initiative to promote the domestic automobile industry, launched the “Isuzu,” a government standard model car named after the Isuzu River that flows past Japan’s oldest shrine, the Ise Shrine of Mie prefecture (the company’s present name was later taken from this car model).

By the time “Isuzu” finally became a vehicle brand in 1934, the company had the TX35 truck and the BX40 bus as its most notable models. Two years later, in 1936, the TA92 5-ton tractor became the first Isuzu vehicle to be equipped with its first diesel engine: a 5.3-liter, 6-cylinder DA6. The rest, as they say, is history.