Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Category: Carina Trivia

Carina Trivia: Carina A60 weight distribution

A few weeks ago someone requested some specific data of the Toyota Carina GT RA63 and of course I did manage to find the data. One of the interesting things I found was that I was able to find the total weight, front weight and rear weights of all Carina A60 models in my data and hence could calculate the weight distribution. So after digging, copy/pasting I made a big overview of all the JDM body types, grades and model codes with their respective weight distribution.
Toyota Carina GT-R AA63 Coupe - Carina A60

Of course it is not that interesting to dig through each and everyone of them, but there are some nice giveaways. The most interesting is the averages I calculated: Continue reading

Carina Trivia: the Toyota Carina A60 transmission overview

Some time ago I bought a CD-ROM from Japan with the Japanese Toyota handbooks hoping it would contain the wiring diagrams of the Japanese Carina A60 or at least the body repair manual for this to help me out with the wiring of the JDM gauge cluster. Unfortunately I haven’t found any pin out for the gauge cluster, except the one used for the digital cluster. What I did found was an awful lot of trivia like the Toyota Carina A60 transmission overview. The ones listed here are taken from the updated handbook of May 1985 (so released during the facelift) and the two tables reveals quite some surprises. There is an additional one covering the transmissions for the vans, but that reveals hardly anything surprising.

First of all here is the transmission per capacity per body type listed:
Toyota Carina A60 Transmissions per capacity
I tried to copy the kanji and decypher the meaning of them, so don’t pin me down on any translations here:
○ means these were the choices/options
◎ means it was an extra option/special case (e.g. overdrive)
☓ means it was abolished (not available anymore)
Top section is the four door, middle section the three door coupe and the bottom section the five door wagon (Surf).

This table reveals to me:
1. The Toyota Carina GT (and GT-R) only came with a manual transmission (T50).
2. Only the Toyota Carina GT-T (and GT-TR) came with either the W55 manual or the A43D automatic transmission
3. The 1C diesel engine featured the W51 and A42D automatic

The other table contains the transmission per model code per body type:
Toyota Carina A60 Transmissions per model code
Legend is basically almost the same as the table above.

This table reveals to me:
There was something like the SG-JUNE (misspelled Jeune?), SE-EXTRA, GT-R and GT-TR. All of them were options. I can’t tell what exactly in this list is the option over the existing transmission.

I did find additional information regarding the differences from the GT/GT-T and GT-R/GT-TR models and most of it is trim based. Will definitely post this in a later posting.

For completeness, here is the A67 wagon overview:
Toyota Carina A67 transmission per engine
Nothing surprising here: T40, T50, A41 and W51 all present like in the previous overviews.

Some trivia regarding the bellhousings:
The 1C diesel engine has the same bellhousing as the Toyota S engine and a popular fit for the 3S-G(T)E with the W series transmission. Also the 1S engine features a bellhousing that fits the T50 transmission, so for cars with a T50 transmission this is a popular bellhousing to mount a 3S-G(T)E to the existing box.

I have created a template to put this overview in a nicely formatted html table here: Toyota Carina A60 transmissions and I will fill the blanks in the upcoming day(s).

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

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