The Canadian Supercar Behind a Vintage Coca-Cola Crown Cap

Bricklin SV-1 Coca-Cola Crown Cap — Japan Promotional Collectible

A Bottle Cap Designed to Be Kept

This item is a metal crown cap — the same kind of stopper used to seal glass Coca-Cola bottles — but conceived from the start as something to collect rather than discard. Coca-Cola’s Japanese bottling operations produced several series of illustrated crown caps from the late 1960s through the 1970s, printing colorful artwork and Japanese katakana text on the cap surface to encourage consumers to build complete sets. These are sometimes called “premium caps” to distinguish them from ordinary closures.

The cap shown here carries a color illustration of an automobile alongside the designation “Canada,” indicating it belongs to what appears to be a series organized by country and car model — likely a world-cars theme covering notable vehicles from different nations. The official series name cannot be confirmed from available evidence, but the format was characteristic of Coca-Cola Japan’s promotional campaigns of that era. The car depicted is the Bricklin SV-1.

The Bricklin SV-1: Canada’s Short-Lived Gull-Wing Car

The Bricklin SV-1 — where SV stands for Safety Vehicle — was a sports car manufactured in New Brunswick, Canada, from 1974 to 1976. Its creator was American entrepreneur Malcolm Bricklin, who later became known for bringing Subaru and Yugo automobiles to the North American market.

The SV-1’s defining feature was its gull-wing doors, which open upward rather than swinging outward. Beyond that visual drama, the design reflected a genuine engineering philosophy: the Safety Vehicle name was literal, with an acrylic and fiberglass body, oversized bumpers, and construction decisions shaped by the era’s evolving crash-safety standards. Production lasted only two years before financial difficulties forced the factory to close, with somewhere between 2,800 and 2,900 cars completed in total. Available exterior colors included yellow, red, white, and orange — the yellow illustrated on this cap corresponds to an actual factory color. The SV-1 holds cult status among North American car enthusiasts today, though its brief run and modest numbers keep it firmly in the category of obscure vehicles.

Japan’s Supercar Boom and the Crown Cap Tradition

The mid-1970s in Japan saw a cultural moment known as the Supercar Boom, peaking roughly between 1975 and 1977. Foreign high-performance automobiles — Lamborghini Countach, Ferrari BB, and others — filled boys’ magazines, television programs, and die-cast toy lines. The appetite for anything connected to exotic foreign cars was broad and enthusiastic, and the Bricklin SV-1’s gull-wing doors gave it the kind of visual impact that fit naturally into that conversation.

Coca-Cola’s illustrated crown caps were already an established part of Japanese collecting culture by that point. Bottle-cap collecting among children had been growing since the 1950s and 60s, and Coca-Cola — with its wide distribution and frequently changing designs — became central to the hobby. Series built around collecting themes were designed to be completed, making each individual cap a puzzle piece rather than a throwaway. This format is an early expression of the same completionist collecting culture that would later define food toys and trading cards in Japan.

Today these caps are sought by two overlapping communities: Coca-Cola collectibles enthusiasts worldwide, who take particular interest in Japan-market pieces that rarely circulated outside the country, and Bricklin SV-1 admirers in North America and Canada, for whom this cap represents an unexpected piece of evidence that their car made an impression far from home.