For a very obvious reason the Carina Jeune attracted my attention when I first read the 1984 Carina brochure.
Displayed on this picture it may look a bit dull to you and you are right: it is a dull car!
The car itself is in immaculate condition:
But even from this angle it doesn’t get any better. It remains an immaculately dull looking car…
So why am I so overly excited over a dull car? My excitement is about this device called a back sonar:
Back sonar? Is it a parking sensor?
Yes indeed and it gets its signal from here:
Four sensors measure the distance between the rear bumper and the objects behind it. The display will show in green, orange and red you when you need to stop. In case you want to see this operation utilized, watch the second video of the Carina ads.
In contrary of the modern comfort status of having parking sensors in Japan back in the early 80s it was clearly not done to have these on your car. None of the higher up models (Carina, Mark II, Chaser, Cresta or Crown) featured this device except the Carina SG Jeune. The Jeune (French for young) was targeted at young (female) drivers who were believed not to be too skillful in driving. Basically Toyota took the basic Carina SG AA60 and added some helpers to it like power steering, aircon and this parking sensor (aka back sonar).
It also featured some tasty hub caps:
Ugh!??? ???
Tweed interior with Jeune spelled on it
Even worse! ??? ???
Three speed automatic or four speed manual:
The higher up managers of Toyota must have thought a five speed only confuse young female drivers! :D
The very (in)expensive car radio is the exact same model as the one my dads Carina van featured in the 80s.
So what about this car?
It is for sale at Antiques for less than 500000 yen.
It features the standard 3A-U:
With the aircon seen on the right of the engine.
And most importantly: this Jeune is still 20677 kilometers young!
Let’s go back once more to the back sonar and look what’s behind it:
Now Antiques has some really nice other cars as well. I see the following cars:
Toyota Chaser GT Twin Turbo GX81
Nissan Silvia S14a
Toyota 86 GT (aka Toyota GT86, aka Scion FR-S)
and something resembling a hakosuka Skyline…
The price of 498000 yen (6400 dollar) may be steep, but given the uniqueness of this car and its low mileage it should actually be a steal!
In case you want to buy the car, you can find it here or if you are more interested in Antiques you can find their stock here.
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