Just found this great Carina AA63 drawing by MX41:
Immediately changed my avatar/icon on the AEU86 forum. :)
You can find more of his drawings here:
Carina, Celica and Corona or all drawings
Page 312 of 318
Toyota LASRE engine
Of course you may have spotted the LASRE acronym among several Toyota catalogues (especially the Carina catalogues) like this:
I was wondering what it actually meant and I found this description for the acronym:
LASRE: lightweight advanced super response engine
I can’t imagine the 3A being a lightweight, nor a super advance response engine… But apparently it should be a lot more lightweight than the 2T featuring my car. ;)
Anyway, Lasre sounds really cool! Almost the same as Laser, which is a real 80s buzzword. Could it be that some Toyota mechanic misspelled the word “laser”??
I did some more digging and quite naturally found that Nissan used a similar acronym: PLASMA. It actually was intended as the counterpart of the LASRE lineup.
Look at that engine! Plasma was just like laser and turbo another buzzword of the early 80s! I’d expect big explosions inside that engine!!
Since I finished Densha Otoko (train man) I had to start with a new book. My girlfriend already packed most of our books because we’re moving so my choice was limited.
Lucky enough she didn’t pack After Dark by Haruki Murakami so I started with that book last night.
I must say that the book starts the usual Murakami style and the same goes for the atmosphere: a lot of references to his personal favorites. Makes me more curious to some reference to the background music of the part I read last night… I had the same with The Elepehant Vanishes: I even looked for secondhand Duke Ellington on Queensday and immeditately bought every single one I found.
Benoist!!!!
Just finished reading Densha Otoko. Amazing! Much better than the J-Drama: Train isn’t such a wimp in the book as in the Drama. He’s more direct to the point and the story drags less on. In the end it turns out that he’s worse than an otaku (translated into anorak): he’s really into Hentai D?jinshi (translated into fan-porn) as well! If that isn’t enough: his favorite is Sailor Moon and Keroro! ?????ยด)
For all you out there doubting whether you should buy the book or not: do buy it, it’s definitely worth it!! Otherwise you can read it all here: Densha Otaku original (Japanese) or project DENSHA:The ‘Densha Otoko’ Translation Project. IMO the online version is better than the book, but reading the book is much easier. ?????????????????
Shameless ascii-art rip:
Benwa!
I’m going to add another section: Carina Sightings.
This section will contain sightings in films, magazines and other references and will be updated regularly.
Today I have Gwok chaan Ling Ling Chat (From Bejing with love) which is a Chinese action movie with Steven Chow. I really like the description of the plot by IMDB: An incompetent 007-wannabe is sent to locate a stolen dinosaur skull
One of the agents tries to escape with a Carina (I suspect SG by looking at he trim so type would be SA60 or AA60) and the man she just assassinated steps in (bulletproof vest) and joins her. Some Jaws lookalike cyborg guy stops the car by lifting it while they try to overrun him full throttle and doing a burnout. After they shoot him he lets go and they manage to finally overrun him.
The trunk of the carina features at 1:01 in this trailer:
I don’t really have the idea that the Carina is the highlight of the movie… Lucky enough I really like the wannabe 007 and his enternal cigarette so that makes up for it. ;)
The movie itself is very enjoyable. It’s a slapstick Hong Kong action movie from the late 1980s. Steven Chow is at the height of his career. So what more do you want? Go watch it!
Source: IMCDb.org
As you can see in the catalogue of S57-6 (June 1982) the Carina A6 featured in the Paris-Dakar rally. According to the Carina page on the Japanese Wikipedia it featured in 1981 and 1982. However I could not find any reference that they actually did attend in 1981, especially not on this list. I did find a Toyota Starlet attending Paris-Dakar.
I did find that Masaru Kubota and Masahiro Uchida joined Paris-Dakar in 1982 and 1983 with a Carina, and Kubota was driving the Starlet in 1981. They became 34th in 1982 but did not finish 1983.
They entered as a private team (no factory backup) in the normal unmodified class, so their Carina was almost bone stock!!
Perhaps the Japanese Wikipedia page is mistaken about the years, maybe the conversion from Japanese years was done wrongly or maybe they traveled to Paris before 1st of January and of course counted it as 1981. We’ll never know.