Isuzu Aska Irmscher
Car of the Day #152: 1985 Isuzu Aska Irmscher – Brilliant bastard
Talk about a bastard child, the Isuzu Aska. I’m using the word without derision or judgement for its character…instead applying the earlier meaning of having been conceived out of wedlock. The third generation Aska was fathered by the Honda Accord. The second generation Aska’s daddy was a Subaru Legacy. The first?
The General Motors J-Body car.
As in: Aska shared genes with the Chevrolet Cavalier. If it makes you feel better, we can put some sauce on it and reference other members of the family tree: the Oldsmobile Firenza and Cadillac Cimarron.
In truth, the Isuzu Aska variant was closer to the international J-Bodies: Opel Ascona C, and Holden Camira. (On paper, the Daewoo Espero falls into this J-Body group but it was in reality extensively reengineered into its own thing…anyway…Moving on…)
Isuzu Aska Irmscher • via wheelsage
For customers in 1980s Japan, how better to convey performance than to ask the hard-to-pronounce German tuner Irmscher to make your compact car a little faster and a lot more bad-ass in the looks department?
With decades spent tuning Opel models in Germany — with a heavy focus on sports car racing and rally — Irmscher was a great choice to breath some credibility onto the Aska. I mean Opel Ascona C. I mean…
Believe it or not, Isuzu was trying on the credibility front.
Two years before the Irmscher was introduced, it entered an Aska Turbo into the 1983 RAC Rally, held in the United Kingdom. It finished 39th overall, winning its (sub) class within Group A. And you don’t even have to ask: ya boy has found crusty promotional footage of the event:
