Posts Tagged ‘Toyota’

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Toyota Tercel

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Now, there’s something decidedly unglam­ourous about it, but we have developed a little bit of love for the North American deriv­ative of the Corolla, espcially the 4WD wagon version of it. In fact, we doubt we have or will ever feature a motor with less obvious panache.

But, being connois­seurs of affordable and accessible automotive style we think that the North American denom­in­ation of this utilit­arian stalwart is a desirable ride. These ones are often seen littering the junk yards of Wisconsin lumber­jacks in various nameless and mysterious TV films of the eighties. And on a number of North American blogs we have happened upon recently.

We’re not even sure if the Tercel was ever actually distributed in Europe or the UK. We seem to remember having seen their bulbous everyman loveliness around but we can’t be sure. Any ideas?

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Defenders of the faith

Monday, September 5th, 2011

When the first real pics of Land Rover DC100 concept were released last week, there were instant catcalls of its betrayal of Land Rover’s core beliefs.

The truth is that sales of the most down-​​home Landy on the market and a mainstay of utility stalwarts like military and agricul­tural clients the world over have been spiralling downward.

With the premium SUV and family wagons market cornered in the Range and the Disco, as well as the Freelander entry level SUV having sold well, the (hugely profitable) Jaguar Land Rover company are looking to update the core.

Sure, it might look like Skoda’s Yeti from the side, and there’s a predictable rounding off, Freelander-​​ish aspect to the general sketch of the concept.

This release is of course just the first stage of a devel­opment that is destined to produce a production replacement for the Defender in 2015, but you can image the sort of thing that will result.

For our money, though, our favourite re-​​imagined offroader of the last few years has been Toyota’s retro hacker the FJ Cruiser (above). The FJ takes a very appealling reference to the original FJ Landcruisers, and updates the aesthetic for today perfectly.

Not sure if the FJ Cruiser has sold as well as the new Defender would need to, but hey. We’re just offering our humble design-​​centred opinion.

What do you think?

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Toyota Publica...

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

This appealing little runabout from Toyota was the product of ‘The National Car Concept’ that was created in 1955 by the very powerful Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry.

The idea was to nudge Japanese captains of industry into focussing their efforts on creating vehicles that met a number of specific requirements.

Top speed had to exceed 100 km/​h; the cars kerb weight had to be below 400 kg – and fuel consumption should not exceed 1 litre/​30 km at an average speed of 60 km/​h on a level road.

The other signi­ficant element was full service intervals should exceed 100,000 kilometres.

You can see by the slightly Stalinist prerequisite that the ministry meant business — but it must at least in part account for the legendary reliab­ility of most Japanese production cars.

And in the Publica’s wagon manifest­ation (above) the result looked kind of cute — and in the ’62 Sports concept guise (below), was downright dashing.

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Japanarama

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

We’re a little bit obsessed with concept cars from the latter end of the sixties, as close readers will realise. There was something beauti­fully outlandish in the imagin­eering of car designers between 1965 and 1975 — and when you throw the Japanese aesthetic into the mix it goes bonkers.

Sure, the cultural threads of the decade when psyche­delia took hold of the creative indus­tries were just as prevalant in the far east — but what you had also in Japan was a flowering of the economic miracle that saw industry imitate, then better the vast excesses of Americana.

In many of the concepts from the seventies you can see the European influence too — with wedge-​​like profiles, sleekly raked pillars and sporty composure even more visible than the gravit­a­tional pull of Detroit.

Inspiration from Japanese Car Blog.

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Toyota Corolla AE86 Backsliders

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Stumbled across this inter­esting little video recently. It seems that the bog standard, straight out of the factory version of the AE86 was always well-​​disposed to kicking out the tail.

Subsequent gener­a­tions of the obsessed have of course created a drift legend by welding up the diffs and weighing out the back of these mid-​​eighties period beauties.

In this video a Toyota team take a couple of the cars around the classic circuits of Europe with top drivers at the helm, you can see that they didn’t need any drivetrain jiggery pokery to slide nice and twistedly-​​like.

Reminds us that you don’t need a full after­market, race-​​specced track day monster to have fun on a racing circuit.

via JNC

YouTube Preview Image

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The Greenwash Chronicles

Thursday, April 15th, 2010

Most of us realise that there is nothing remotely ‘sustainable’ or ‘envir­on­mentally friendly’ about the mass-​​market auto industry. Still, these global businesses are they’re doing their utmost to convince consumers that they are doing there bit to save the planet. Some are brazenly faux pious, but others have a sense of humour (of sorts) Here are a few of our faves.

This Honda Civic hybrid ad from 2006 is a classic of the happy, hipster illus­trated flowers genre

For a full forty seconds, this looks like an ad for God’s creation…

Former Japanese F1 pilot Takuma Sato sends mixed messages in his Hybrid.

Ands this early Prius ad helps us recall that if you take the ‘r’ out of Prius you get something that sounds like ‘pious’

Here the new Prius falls back on the car’s design, less on the exploit­ation of the beauty of mountains and rivers. But the breathy female voice is still annoy­ingly remin­iscent of a mother Mary from Midlothian…

But this contro­versial ‘harmony’ ad for Toyota is a little insulting to the intel­li­gence. And to hippies.

One for the Tea Party Neocons here, shown during the Superbowl this year. Quite amusing, though.

But this Australian Smart ad takes the piety to another level. And uses children in the process.

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See the Toyota FT-86 at Geneva

Monday, February 15th, 2010

It’s comfornting to know that there’s a new hot launch on the way that’s not either strato­spheric and ridiculous (think Aston 177, or Lexus LFA) or pious and overly eco-​​righteous (think almost everything else).

Next month’s Geneva salon may contain more of the polarised world of new car launches, but at Least the FT-​​86 is a dynamic little speedster that will be (sort of) accessible to mere mortals.

The five-​​seat FT-​​86 (Hachi Roku according to Jap car fetishists) goes back to the funda­mental qualities of the classic sports car with its rear-​​wheel drive config­ur­ation, compact dimen­sions, low centre of gravity and light­weight construction. Under the bonnet there is a 2.0-litre boxer engine that is strong on both performance as well as efficiency.

The show car’s bodywork is finished in Flash Red, an eye-​​catching shade that contains a hint of blue. Inside, the cabin design further expresses the car’s classic sporting qualities with many of the struc­tural elements left uncovered.

It’s still only a concept, of course, but it’s continual unveiling gives a hint that we could expect to see the car available, and probably not for too kingly a ransom, before we’re too old to enjoy such a thing.

Here’s hoping.

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