Hope Motor Company, Hopestar ON360

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juncopartner
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Hope Motor Company, Hopestar ON360

Post by juncopartner » Fri Feb 08, 2013 12:31 pm

I was looking at pictures of the original Hopestar ON360 on google and it set me thinking, how many are actually left, theres obviously at least one as it pops up on google. Anyone know if there are any others? Thought it best to put the question on the LJ section as the type of person who might know would be an LJ owner!!!

For all you SJ and Vitara owners the Hopestar ON360 was the forerunner to th LJ.

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Edweird
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Re: Hope Motor Company, Hopestar ON360

Post by Edweird » Fri Feb 08, 2013 1:38 pm

"The tiny Hope company sold very few ON360s, possibly as few as fifteen" from Wikipedia.
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Re: Hope Motor Company, Hopestar ON360

Post by ScottieJ » Fri Feb 08, 2013 1:53 pm

I bet there's only a couple left, either that or the very few that were made are all in dry storage somewhere.
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Re: Hope Motor Company, Hopestar ON360

Post by Edweird » Fri Feb 08, 2013 2:04 pm

I'm pretty sure the few that there are will be in a museum. I'm pretty certain the Suzuki company has one, because they made a marketing video for the SJ that involved the history of the SJ so the Willy's, the ON360, various LJs and then the range of SJs (LWB/SWB, body styles, engines etc.)
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And my way, which is like the wrong way but faster.

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Re: Hope Motor Company, Hopestar ON360

Post by Offroadrunner » Fri Feb 08, 2013 3:37 pm

There are only made 15 Hope Stars, and i know the Suzuki museum in Japan has one!
The rest?... I don't know... but you have one, it will be worth a lot of money, i think! :shock:

My uncle wrote some articles for a big Japanese 4x4 magazine in the late 80's. He gave me some of these magazines (every month a magazine with over 300 pages!) and in one of these magazines was a article about the Hope Star. I scanned it, and put it on my website. You can read it here --> http://www.offroadrunner.nl/Folders/Art ... affiti.pdf

If anyone knows someone who can translate the Japanese text, that would be great! :roll:
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juncopartner
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Re: Hope Motor Company, Hopestar ON360

Post by juncopartner » Fri Feb 08, 2013 7:53 pm

I've looked on google images and there seems to be two ON360's in museums.

I remember been told 25 years ago by someone in the LJ80 Register that there were 28 of them built, but there was no documentry evidence to back it up. There was some information published in the magazine that Suzuki used to publish for members of the Rhino club translated from a Japanese magazine when I got my first LJ so must have been about 25 years ago as well, I still have it somwhere I will try to find it and scan it in.

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