You must probably think “WTF? Jäärata?”. Well as I understand it Jäärata is almost the national sports in Finland. Jäärata can probably best be translated to “Ice road racing”, but might as well be translated to “Ice-lake racing”.
This nicely beaten up Carina TA60 is being used to practice the jäärata on:
IMO these drivers are very very brave. With drifting you try to find the limit to lose the grip on the surface. With ice road racing you have about no grip at all, so it requires a lot of skill to find grip hidden in the snow…
Here you can see the Carina fighting off a Mercedes W123 200D:
These videos really makes me jealous on those Fins: they are having all the fun in the world! Oh well, maybe just wait for that once in a 100 years the IJsselmeer is frozen and have that same fun here in Holland as well. ;)
I found this site of someone collecting VIN numbers (also called serialnumbers) of cars. He/she collects the plates and makes photos of them. Incidentally there are also photos of the body of the car. Lucky enough there are a lot for the Carina A6:
Toyota Carina AA60 (3A-U) Wreck
As you can see: all of them are wrecks on a junkyard. To be more precise: I suspect a Russian junkyard. ;)
A lot of the VIN plates in his/her collection are either JDM (E in front of of the modelnumber). For instance the two AA60s are both JDM cars, while the CA67 van is European (N in front of the modelnumber).
As you can see the Tsukuba Carina is a much more low budget drifter than the Fuji Speedway Carina: less bodyparts, no airdam, bend hood, single wiper, missing headlight and the Fuji Speedway Carina has way less stickers. Personally I like the Tsukuba Carina more eventhough it looks less pretty: it is more beaten up which makes it more charming IMO. On the other hand the Fuji Speedway Carina drifts a much smoother line…
Since the majority of the Carina sedans were all 2T engined I presume this is also a TA60 sedan. Since it’s got no headrests in the rear bench it is the same grade as mine: DX. Unfortunately there is no licenseplate so we can’t even guess where the car is from… A lot of guesswork here…
Anyway, the car has been wrecked: it got a good bump on the front and left fender and the right rear got a small dent as well. The interior looks like the car has been driven by the Swamp Thing himself. It probably wasn’t saved after these three pictures…
Would it have been in an accident or did a wannabe drifter loose control of the car when loosing traction (open diff!) on a muddy road?
I was always wondering about the modern bumpers featuring several Carina’s I saw in the past, just like this one posted by bippu4life:
The TS-Factory Toyota Carina TA63
I know it must be a Levin bumper because the license plate fits on the grille itself an the Trueno bumper has its emblem over there. And the shape tells me it is a Zenki Levin bumper. It’s a pity both the Levin and Trueno AE92 were never delivered in Europe. The width of the Carina A6 is 1650mm (all models) while the Corolla E9 is 1655mm (all models). That means every E9 bumper will fit, so I’m not limited to the Levin and Trueno bumpers. :)
I thought about how the guy has changed during those 19 years from a tough 70s homie to a 90s salaryman dweeb. So I thought it would be fun to put all Carina drivers before that commercial into a chronological order and see how he evolves. ;)
Early 70s: Sonny Chiba escaping from motorcycle gang in a Carina coupe TA17
conclusion:
So what happened?? What can we make of this?
Well, first of all if you look at it from the Carina perspective they get more dull on each new generation of the car, but that also accounts for the driver as well.
On the other hand if you look at this chronologically you will notice you start out as a superstud in your late 20s, be a cool guy in your early 30s, get adventurous in your mid 30s, get suntanned in your late 30s, get cheated on in your early 40s and become a loser in your late 40s. I think that sums up the life of a Carina driver pretty much! ;)
I’m pretty glad I’m still in my early thirties (almost mid thirties) and drive the 3rd generation of Carina. So I’m quite safe at the moment. But my next car won’t be a Carina anymore, I can promise you that!! ;)
For the guy in the commercial: lucky for him the girl still remembers him as the cool guy in his late 20s and smiles, so he should be one lucky guy!
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