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!!
And big explosions it had indeed! The Nissan engine you have pictured above is the all-powerful FJ20ET, the turbo version of which became known as the “Plasma.” This was the engine powering the mighty DR30 Skyline and later S12 Silvias.
Also, I think Toyota at one point labeled the 7M-GTE as a “Lasre” engine as well. I swear I’ve seen an ad for it as such.
Nice post!