It hasn’t always been that way. In the 1970s, many of Japan’s biggest car companies settled for manufacturing lookalikes of American and European cars. They individually began paving their own styling avenue during the 1980s and most had forged a strong design identity by the turn of the 1990s.

Join us for a look at some of the wildest and most unusual designs from the country that gave the world bento boxes, Pokemon and bonsai trees: