The Black Car

Even though it's only briefly on screen, the black car is one of the very first things you see in the game and it plays an important role in the early phase of Ryo's investigation.

But what make and model could it be? What would a ruthless criminal from a very powerful orginization from China be driven around in while in Japan?

Shenmue was groundbreaking by using officially licensed real life brands for everyday objects like Ryo's watch, bag and of course the Japanese only Coca-Cola vending machines.
But even they couldn't license a specific car for just such a short scene like that. However, we can still search for something that resembles the car in the game, something that clearly influenced it's design.

If you look at the car and beyond its shiny pitch black coat of paint you'll notice that it's a four-door sedan/saloon luxury car. The front hat a pretty distinct look to it with its massive chrome grille, round headlights encased in a square frame and seperate turn signals underneath them.

The first car that might come to mind of many people would be a certain British super luxury brand, simply because their cars are famous for featuring such a massive grille in their design.

Take a look at this Rolls-Royce Camargue from 1982

The aforementioned features of the black car in Shenmue can all be found in a pretty similar fashion on the front of this vehicle. But front is the key word, because only that matches.
The two-door body style definately isn't a match at all and the four-door Rolls-Royce's never have this turn indicator arrangement we're after.

There is another brand that was famous for big chrome grilles and also known for it's luxury cars.

A Mercedes-Benz W123 from the late 1970's in the perfect color

This Mercedes, which can now be considered an E-Class, only had round headlights for its earliest years and for smaller engines later, until all of them eventually got the more well known rectangular ones (expect for the US cars with their sealed-beam regulations).

Because the rectangular ones are so much more common this one almost went over my head.
It is undeniably pretty similar in appearance to the car in the game. Not as much as the Rolls-Royce but on the other hand it was available as a four-door and mainly produced in that style.
They were made for right hand drive markets with this look and some may have found their way to Japan somehow, but to my admittedly vague knowledge of their market situation and preferences the brand only became really popular with "them" in later years. 

I think that these are not the kinds of models the Chiyoumen would pick, even with all the wealth and influence they undoubtedly have. Those cars are just that bit too outlandish to drive around in Japan. I think they'd want something a little bit more low-key. And since I very much assume they didn't take anything with them they would just pick up something on-site.

So lets get to something from the Japanese domestic market and far more likely now.

An H250 series Nissan President from the 1970s

This stately limousine has a lot of ingredients to make a very good match to the car in the game. The headlights are round, the turn signals are situated in seperate housings directly below them and it has a nice and large chrome grille and equally shiny bumper. One thing that isn't quite like in the game are the mirrors. Like many Japanese cars from this era it has them mounted to the fenders.

Speaking of era, the second generation Nissan President only had this headlight look until 1982, when they were replaced by square ones. That would make the car at least 4 years old at the point that the story takes place. That is a reasonable age for a car among high ranking criminals but these Presidents went into production in 1973 so there is potential for it to be quite old by the time it pulled up in Yamanose.

 
Lets look at one more possible candidate as a more modern alternative.

Introducing the Mitsubishi Debonair V, freshly released from the factory just "this year"

This car first rolled off the assembly line in 1986, making it a brand new vehicle around the events of Shenmue. While it has a much more modern lighting setup and lost the chrome on the bumper, it still has a rather fitting chrome grille. Moreso the overall shape matches the car in the game a bit closer with the more angular design and especially the a-pillar mounted mirrors. Even the wheel design looks quite a lot like the one seen on the car in the game.

Of course the 3D model is not the most detailed thing so part of the boxy shape could be attributed to a limited polygon count but it is still noteworthy that they opted for a-pillar mirrors, when other cars around Dobuita do feature fender mirrors.

It is really a toss up wich of these two cars is more likely to be the best match. When the black car was designed it probably drew inspiration from multiple cars anyway, at the very least to have something that doesn't look close enough to possibly look too distinct for some legal department.

This was definaltey a fun little research project for me. I'm pretty good when it comes to recognition of car brands and models but of course that didn't expand to Japanese luxury cars from the mid eighties, so I had to dig quite a bit to come up with something.