Hi we are from south africa and have two bellets in the family.We need some info as both of the cars we have we think are 63 models but all the pics have double headlights while ours have single lights.Also does anyone know the meaning of the japanese writing in the bellett badge.If anyone races these can you tell me the best grind for a race cam. Pics of our cars will follow

Hi Buck,

I moved your post from GTtoo's intro to your own intro. Looking forward to pics! When you put them up put them under My Bellett if you want, or under this post; I don't really think it matters too much.

I assume you've got sedans, rather than the 1966-68 Bellett GT which also had the single headlights. I've seen some early model Bellett seans (1964-1966 model) with single headlights in some of the sales literature (see Isuzu Times in the brochure section, although I may not have put that one up yet). I'm pretty sure that some of those were Diesels and I thought that some may be the 1300cc version rather than the more common 1500cc version, however of course just to confuse things I'm sure I've seen Bellett 1300s and Diesels with all 4 lights as well.... argh.

I may be wrong, but I think the Isuzu badge reads:

I
SU
TZU

The Japanese hirogana alphabet has 5 vowels and all of the consonants also end in a vowel (eg 'SU' not just 'S' - also there's an exception for 'n' as in 'san' but that's just complicating things). There are also consonants that can be built onto (eg TZU) with a little thing that looks like this - " which you can see off to one side there.

So that's it (i think). Someone who actually KNOWS Japanese may be able to clarify. We've got people from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Russia, the UK and even the USA, plus now someone from South Africa, but still don't have any Japanese people on here!

Welcome though the more the merrier!

Cheers,

Dave

Welcome on board. The forum is really getting an international flavour. Looking forward to the questions and piccies
Peter

I emailed a company in South Africa looking to see if they had any Isuzu Bellett GT windscreens on behalf of a forum member, however the guy hadn't even heard of the cars! So I guess they're as rare in South Africa as they are here!

Damn!

Cheers,

Dave

The last character (the arrow pointing to the right [Hirigana version]) is not actually a letter, it is an old shorthand type symbol. It means "This letter is the same as the one before it". They seem to call it an "iteration mark", to take the place of duplicate letters or symbols.

But, by adding the ten-ten symbol (looks like an end quote), it shifts the letter from basic to modified or secondary pronunciation. In this case from SU to ZU.

SU shifts to ZU when the ten-ten symbol is added, and another letter, TSU shifts to ZU, when a ten-ten is added to it also. But that second letter is almost never used. I don't know of a "TZU", unless it is an alternate for plain ZU.

The language is a good illustration of the society, seemingly designed specifically to confuse anyone but the locals.

Buck has put some pics of his cars up here:

http://www.bellett.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=440&p=2664

They are way cool!

Completely co-incidentally, my wife met someone from Zimbabwe today and he told her he owned a Bellett about 20 years ago when he lived in South Africa.

For some reason he was forced to buy a 20 year old car and he was all upset about it, but he fell in love with it! Unfortunately the love was fleeting and his fond memories are enough, rather than the hassle of owning a now-40 year old car!

He reckons there were quite a few going around back then (unsure if he meant sedans, GTs or both), but given the brush-off I got from the windscreen place in South Africa, I wonder how many are left??

Cheers,

Dave

This might not help much, but I read of the english translation of Suzuki that suzu = bell and ki = tree, so "bell-tree". So how does the "I" translate?
Matt.

in total we have five belletts in our circle four gt and one 4 door sedan will will send pic and chassis no through soon.in regards to the windcreens we have someone here who will cut and make any windscreen to size. Will post the details soon.mine is the only bellet here that races in marque cars was invited to compete at Goodwood in 2007 but it was just to expensive.

The outline around the blue oval symbol is a line that takes its shape as waves, and is supposed to represent the ripples on the Isuzu River.


It's below freezing. I'm wasting time transcribing Nostalgic Hero and J's Tipo magazine articles into the Japanese word processing program. Look up each character in the dictionary (count the number of lines, pick the sub-symbol the character is organized under from the group of 214 sub-symbols, page through the list of 5446 kanji), find the phonetic name, type it in, match the symbol in the computer with the symbol in the book and on the magazine page, hit enter, go to next character.

So far, I know:
The writer is working from a vocabulary of at least 6000 kanji.
There should be a law limiting the number of lines in a character to no more than 8.
There should be a law requiring a minimum font size based on the number of lines within the symbol, because 20+ lines in a 6 point font character is just a solid black square.
I need a magnifying glass or some reading glasses.
This guy spent three paragraphs on the life story and schooling of the person he is interviewing, and the company history and name. Somewhere in here should be something about cars, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

This is not much help but pretty sure the Bellett Club in Victoria (BCCV) bought GT screens out of Sth Africa many years ago.

............................................I just looked this up, it seems it was in 1989.


Glenn

welcome along for the ride

brave man racing a gt.. you must have alot of spares or a good panel beater...

wonder how we can fit a visit to your house on our dots and dashes trip to the nationals...



lizzie