It has always been a mystery to me that many of the Isuzu car club car shows have an honored guest, a Batman looking car from the Ultraman television show. I may have finally figured out this relationship in the course of researching the Isuzu Sports Car Club.
Strangely enough, searching for "Isuzu Sports Car Club" brings up a lot of pages about the Ultraman television show. We only got one of the many series of this show translated into English and on the US broadcast. The best I understand is the Earth Defense Force, wearing bright orange uniforms and white open face helmets with big clear visors, encounters alien invaders, and one of the team members turns into a 40 foot tall silver man who makes and L shape with his hands and shoots rays to kill the huge monsters he is fighting.
The ISCC link to Ultraman goes specifically to the Ultra Seven series, Episode 28, entitled "Drive Swiftly Along 700 Kilometers". This is dated 1967-1968. It seems the Earth Defense Force members are under cover as part of the Isuzu Sports Car Club, and are entered in an African Rally Race across the Sahara Desert. Something about investigating a shipment of weapons.
The aliens seem to be using some kind of dinosaur tank, it's a lizard on top with tracks instead of legs, you can't make stuff like this up.
It looks like there are two Belletts, a Sedan, car number 3 with four headlight grille.
And a GT, car number 7, with two headlight grille.
The GT seems to be the "hero car" equipped with a levitation or flight device (not really a balloon, just looks like a small balloon) and lasers.
Someone tracked down the locations, this one outside a museum.
Car 3 outside the same museum.
Looking like race car drivers at the track.
Race footage.
This might also explain why Tomica makes a "Isuzu Sports Car Club Truck" that looks like a little delivery truck...
If nothing else, this ranks as one of the most ingenious product placement advertisements ever, to get Isuzu cars into what would become an insanely cult classic television show. So much so that the references to the television show dwarfs the references to the actual ISCC racing history, even forty years later.
