Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Month: July 2014

Trivia: Why the Toyota Carina A60 failed in Europe

There are a lot of speculations why the third generation Carina (the Toyota Carina A60) failed to sell in large numbers in Europe. One of them is that Datsun (aka Nissan) launched their new Bluebird 910 around the same time and offered a better pricing. This is partly true and this posting is about the other part which can be captured in the scan below:
Toyota Carina TA60 vs Toyota Carina II AT150
I made this scan of a Dutch book about Honda and Toyota from the mid 80s. During this period the Carina II T150 was selling quite well while the Carina A60 already had been phased out.

The photos above are press photos distributed in the 80s by Toyota Netherlands (aka Louwman & Parqui) and you clearly see a difference in marketing: the old is marketed with a conservative mustached salesman-guy and the new with the streamlined (French) glider in the background. I don’t think the annotation of the photos need to be translated as they are similar. 😉
Notice the glider: I will come back to that later…

This is obviously not the only marketing they did, another example is this 1982 ad targeted at Ford Taunus drivers: Continue reading

Family Album Treasures: Toyota Carina ED ST-X

One of the nice things about the merger between the Corona and Carina lineups was that Toyota made it possible to create a better follow up on the Toyota Celica Camry: the Toyota Carina ED. So basically Toyota now offered a Corona sized car with the performance image of the Celica!
Family Album Treasures - Toyota Carina ED ST-X ST162
Today’s Family Album Treasure is one of the first generation Toyota Carina ED models: the AT160 in this case. Even better: the car pictured here is a Carina ED 1600 ST-X which means it features the 4A-GELU and makes it the model just below the Toyota Carina ED GT-R model that featured the 3S-GELU engine.
Now that’s something I would add to my Family Album any day. 😉

Edit: As you can read in the comments below it is not the Carina ED AT160 but actually the Carina AT151

Found at: Minkara

Picture of the Week: Toyota Supra MA70 cutaway drawing

Today I got reminded that the Toyota Supra MA70 is a proper classic now: the first ones were built in 1986 already which means they are already 28 years old by now. These Supras advanced cars back in the mid 80s, especially the JDM GA70 and later JZA70s were awesome cars!
Toyota Supra MA70 Cutaway drawing
The reason why I got reminded of the Supra was because of this comment on Jalopnik by CaCressida on the topic What car could have been great but wasn’t made me laugh out loud:

Toyota’s MK3 Supra sucked ass. The 7M is a total boat anchor that pops head gaskets and chews rod bearings like popcorn. The Mk2 Supra and MK4 Supra are both lighter than the Mk3 Supra and both offered better engines even though the MK2’s engine was .2 liters and 12 valves short of the 7M. The MK3 was a confused car. It didn’t know if it was a GT car or a luxury car. The turbo 7M wasn’t exactly an engine worth salivating for either. We actually call MK3 Supras Rolling box of Cressida parts in the Cressida forums. We steal the differentials, transmissions and pedals off these things and chuck the bodies in the trash.

Bring on the MK3 Supra humpers…

BTW: I don’t necessarily share this view, so if you feel attacked by the above, please leave your comments at Jalopnik and not here. 😉

Via Jalopnik
Cutaway drawing found at: MA71SupraTurbo

Japanese Rustoseums: Overgrown Levin AE86

Sometimes you get lucky and bump into the original source of an earlier rustoseums post and find additional photos, just like this Toyota Corolla Levin AE86:
Japanese Rustoseums - Overgrown Toyota Corolla Levin AE86
The first images are an overgrown Toyota Corolla Levin AE86 but below that I found the photos I posted earlier (found at a different source) of an overgrown Toyota Carina AA63. As you can see the Levin is just as badly overgrown as the Carina and even worse in terms of its rustyness. It still has one good thing: the gigantic ducktail spoiler.

As you can see even the supercharged 4A-GZE has been overgrown: Continue reading

Down on the Street: Toyota MR2 SW20

I have no idea how many times I passed this Toyota MR2 SW20 in the past years. Every time I wash my car I pass it and think I should take a couple of quick snapshots but every time I ended up driving past it on my way back. That is until two weeks ago:

I had to wash the Carina for an upcoming car meet and had to wait for the soap to soak in, so I hiked back to the MR2 and took a few snapshots.

I tried to find the bodykit of this Toyota MR2 SW20, but only the front bumper/airdam seems to be a popular Duraflex Type B item: Continue reading

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