“Success isn’t built on success. It’s built on failure. It’s built on frustration. Sometimes it’s built on catastrophe.” I forget who said that, but I believe it’s true. And nowhere is it more true than with this 1965 Prince R380. The first Japanese purpose-built race car, it’s success was built on ruination: the ruination of her factories, which were carpet bombed during the war; and the ruination of all hope, having borne witness to the atomic annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But somehow, beyond all imagining, this tiny car company, came through the end of the world to sculpt something joyous and life-affirming - and very, very fast.
How did they survive the unsurvivable? And go on after all the skies had fallen? And somehow resurrect a future after it was coffined under radioactive rubble? I have no idea. But, like flowers through cracks in concrete, this rising up feels like a miracle to me. And it gives me fierce hope that we, too, can find the cracks, and rise up for this precious planet of ours.
