Remembering Japanese cars from the past

Tag: lasre

What are these Toyota LASRE engines doing in the Sahara desert? – Carina Sightings

What is this 1982 Toyota Carina ad supposed to mean? Are the Toyota LASRE engines supposed to fuel the infamous Sirocco winds? Sirocco winds are “a hot wind, often dusty or rainy, blowing from North Africa across the Mediterranean to southern Europe.”

Toyota LASRE engines in the Paris-Dakar rally
Toyota LASRE engines in the Paris-Dakar rally

Alternatively, are these engines supposed to give the Carina competing in the second Paris-Dakar rally a small push? Or perhaps, are these Toyota LASRE engines supposed to be giant windmills that work the reverse: wind makes them turn and in effect they suck up hydrocarbons via the exhaust and poop out fuel on the intake side?

We’ll probably never know what went through the minds of the marketing people at Toyota in 1982.

Toyota LASRE engine

Of course you may have spotted the LASRE acronym among several Toyota catalogues (especially the Carina catalogues) like this:
Lasre & Carina acronym in Carina catalogue

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.
Nissan PLASMA FJ20ET
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!!

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