Remembering Japanese cars from the past
As far as I understood hukkapätkä means “a piece of waste” in the Finnish language. Perhaps Isokorpi Customs was thinking about that when they created this monstrous Carina, but I have to disagree on that!
They probably used a Carina TA60 as the base of this monster and put something more powerful in it.
Judging from the gigantic intercooler it is probably something turbo-ed: Continue reading
Not only hard tuned cars were present on the Wangan Warriors meeting, but also a lot of oldskool cars from the 80s and early 90s.
I already posted the decals of this original Suzuki Swift GTi before, but here it is in full glory:
Also this original Skyline GT-R R32 can nowadays almost be considered as a classic: Continue reading
I was blown away when I watched this clip: this Finnish Carina TA60 with 4A-GE turbo swap has so much power left to spare during its long corner drifts! It is almost child’s play to put it sideways!
I was going through the collection of Carina brochure pictures and one small detail stroke me on this brochure:
Belgian Carina GL
The Carina in the bottom picture is a Belgian Carina TA60 GL. Now that isn’t that weird, but the brochure is Japanese and dated as S56-9 (September 1981). The Carina A60 lineup was released in September 1981 so the Carina on the brochure must have been a pre-production model.
This was done by Toyota before, just like the Levin and Trueno AE86 European tour in 1983 but we’re talking about a left hand drive Carina here.
Also in this picture you can see the front of the car is actually featuring quad headlights:
Belgian Carina GL
Now it gets even more confusing and more and more questions arise!
Why did they feature a LHD pre-production car in Belgium in a JDM brochure? And why does it have quad headlights while all European models did only have the normal headlights? And where is that car now?
Just by that: a Carina TA60 in my own hometown! :)
Toyota Carina GL TA60
When cycling to work I spotted the rear end of a Carina on a (closed) parking lot of an office building on the other side of the parking lot of the local fire department. I stopped and a fireman opened up the window asking if I was able to find whatever I was looking for.
So I explained I spotted exactly the same car as mine in the parking lot behind the fire department. He told me how to get there and I made a few snaps with the ancient phone I’m currently using (my own got stolen last week during a break-in). I also made one with my old analogue camera, but I’m still waiting for the black and white film developer chemicals so I can’t show it to you yet…
The Carina was registered in 1983 as a beige car. It looked quite solid to me, didn’t have too much rust (except on the steel rims) and believe it or not: it is, just like mine, an automatic as well. Only big difference is that this car is a GL, so it features a more comfortable interior. ;)
Last Sunday I saw an ad appear on Marktplaats offering a rare metallic green Carina GL TA60 for sale:
Metalic green Carina GL TA60
In the Netherlands the GL is a rare package where the rear seats have the headrests, more comfortable seats, storage compartments at the back of the front seats in the front doors and in the luggage compartment separate compartments for jack and tools, It doesn’t sound like much, but if you take one peek into my trunk you will know why you need seperate compartments for your tools. ;)
The interior still looks great considering it is already 30 years old:
Metalic green Carina GL TA60
However there appears to be a small repair patch on the passenger seat…
The car has 127k on the odometer:
Metalic green Carina GL TA60
And apparently they love the odd numbers on it as well.
Unfortunately when I checked the ad for the second time it had gone already. So either someone got really lucky or they decided not to sell the car after all. Thanks to Google cache I was still able to share it. :)
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