The Mitsuoka Orochi is considered by many to be among the ugliest cars ever made. However, a newly customized example has cropped up courtesy of Liberty Walk, the tuning house that specializes in extreme widebody kits. And dare we say it, it doesn’t look half bad.
If you’re not familiar with Mitsuoka, they’re kind of like the Mansory of Japan. They usually take an existing model from, say, Nissan, and add sheetmetal and customization of Mitsuoka’s own design. Their flagship model, the Orochi, is a parts-bin car with bits from Honda, Mazda and Suzuki, powered by a 3.3-liter Toyota V6 and five-speed combo — the same one from a Solara — mid-mounted and driving the real wheels.
That’s all fine and good, but the Orochi, named after a dragon from Japanese mythology, has always been about how it looks. To be honest, we’re not seeing a lot of dragon in there. A Lovecraftian deep sea creature that’s been stepped on by Godzilla, maybe.
In any case, this Liberty Walk-modified Orochi, posted on the social media accounts of founder Wataru Kato, is the first decent one we’ve seen. That’s in part due to the fact that the shop’s signature look — whether applied to a Supra, Land Cruiser or Ferrari — is all about extremes, and there are few cars that look as extreme as the Orochi in stock form (shown in the gallery below).
Liberty Walk’s trademark fender flares actually adhere to the wheel haunches of the Orochi quite well. The front lip and side skirts, not to mention its slammed ride height, help fill out some of the weirder organic contours in the original’s design. Also, given the giant race car wing on it, the bizarre vents and hood scoops on the Orochi look more at home.
On top of all that, Liberty Walk has finished it in the livery of their current drift car, a Mazda rotary-powered S15 Nissan Silvia. That Silvia was itself an homage to an older Silvia (sold as the Nissan 200SX stateside) Group 5 race car from the 1980s. But I digress. The point is, though this might not be a race car, the race accoutrements help offset the Orochi’s, ah, unique bodywork. We never thought adding more to an already busy design would help, but in this case more is more.
The Liberty Walk Orochi is scheduled to make its live debut at the Tokyo Auto Salon this weekend.