Who knew the venerable Japanese car company could be so cool and transgender friendly as to make androgynous model Stav Strashko the face of its new car, The Auris?  We suspect this ad was only intended for the Japanese or European market; we can just picture the furor and backlash if it were released in the U.S., the placards at road-accident funerals blaming it on God hating cross-dressers.

It has certainly had an effect: The spot has only been onYouTube for a day and it has already had 1.3 million views—we’re assuming it was posted on August 24th Tokyo time.  Oh, those kinky, kinky Japs.

The slug line apparently reads, “Not for everyone.”  So that means it’s a hatchback that’s as exclusive as… a tranny?  With that sort of thinking, oh, how we yearn to create content for Japan!

The most ironic thing about Stav Strashko is his name: He sounds like a hit man in a James Bond film.  If we were driving in our black Toyota Cruiser to our favorite dive bar after wrapping for the day and you said, “We just need to pick up my friend Stav Strashko.  He’s joining us for drinks,” we would envision an enormous, bald steroided former Marine who will fight for our right not only to bear arms, but to collect as many of them as possible.  Stav would either be a stunt double for Tom Hardy or the chief bouncer at Lure in Hollywood.

The real, un-imaginary Stav is a 20-year-old pixie who was born in the Ukraine and grew up in Tel Aviv, where he was discovered by a stylist a few years ago.  In his own words for Candy Magazine, Terry Richardson’s favorite tranny rag:

I realized that I was androgynous when I began to model… All the stylists put women’s clothes on me, and then it struck me that I can really look like a woman… Usually when people talk to me they soon realize I’m a boy, but sometimes people just keep treating me as a girl not realizing who I really am. I believe that the mind sees what it wants.

Stav has a boyfriend and worships Angelina Jolie, which makes sense if you’re a tranny with a Russian mobster’s name.  We don’t know how tall he is, but you might look for Stav on the runways in Paris and maybe Milan this coming season engaged in a walk-off duel to the death with fellow Eastern Block androgynous blond male model Andrej Pejic.  We can just see Andrej throwing down the gauntlet backstage at Gaultier and quoting Derek Zoolander, “What say we settle this on the runway… Han-Solo?”

Enjoy: