I just got back from three weeks vacation where I packed a couple of unfinished books to read and never expected to find this level of awesomeness in a book! Basically while nearing the end of Haruki Murakami’s Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World I suddenly had a big surprise: he describes a Toyota Carina 1800 GT Twin-Cam Turbo!
The book is first published in 1985, but one of the dates mentioned is Sunday the 2nd of October. The only viable year that features this date is 1983, so the storyline must have taken place in 1983 (S57). The story is what they called cyberpunk back then and encloses a futuristic view on the new technology that gets available in the early 1980s.
Near the end of the book the main character in the story needs to rent a car, preferably an European:
I checked the yellow pages and jotted down the numbers of four car-rental dealerships in the Shinjuku area. None had any European cars. Sundays were high-demand days and they never had foreign cars to begin with. The last dealership had a Toyota Carina 1800 GT Twin-Cam Turbo and a Toyota Mark II. Both new, both with car stereos. I said I’d take the Carina. I didn’t have a crease of an idea what either car looked like.
He made an excellent choice and of course I do have a good idea what either car looks like. ;)
While the story continues and he picks up the car it turns out to be in the white shade. I’ve searched the Google images for a long time to find a suitable face-lifted white Carina TA63 from 1983 that looked (almost) bone stock. The only one I was able to find was this one that got sold by Flyrat a few years ago with ill matching wheels, but other than that in almost original condition: Continue reading
