1990 Toyota Sera: Regular Car Reviews

I want on our toes am whatõs Lana Lana Zam no you don't but the doors not unique yeah they are no they're not only the DeLoreans have there are other cars that have wacky doors Oh what I need oh there are cheaper more practical in some respects faster and big enough for American inseams small Japanese cars out there but the AZ one is the best form and be honest if you're a JDM weeb once you finally get a right hand drive Japanese domestic sports car your bulge is gonna be big enough to necessitate more legroom anyway mister regulars back from vacation and I'm glad he's here just doing this a little bit abusing me my death feel here look what is your emotional need I have this conversation with people who ask thee what kind of car should I get question and to answer it I ask them three specific questions number one what must the car carry because if it's not much the answer to the car you need maybe a motorcycle number two where must the car go in other words what sort of environment must this car Traverse you may need snow you may need all-wheel drive if it's just the city well then a sedan might be the appropriate thing and number three what emotional needs must the car fulfill maybe you have a heightened sense of patriotic nationalism in which case then you do need the Cummins diesel and it sounds like this straw man that I'm building here needs a car that will impress that multi hair colored Manic Pixie dream girl he's hovering around fine that's a reason it's not a healthy reason for importing a car but at least it's an honest reason but we're gearheads giving car advice not therapists go see one of them to correct yourself sabotaging a view we're here to put you in the right car and if being cool to non car people is your goal the Toyota Sarah is your car 1990 Toyota Sarah for the man who looks like he isn't taking college seriously enough 1990 Sarah but a guy who still thinks he's gonna get rich making web comics this is a front-engine two-door coupe with a four cylinder layout of an engine and four valves per cylinder it makes a hundred and eight brake horsepower and it makes 97 foot-pounds of torque as far as modifications go Joe added thicker rods that typically went into the starlet turbo he also added more understated speakers because the previous owner in Japan added these tacky rear speakers and they looked terrible there the radiator has been recently replaced in addition Joe repainted the car originally it was silver but he went for the aesthetic 90s teal I like it that's about it in a general sense the Toyota sarah has a thicker head gasket in higher compression than the Toyota Tercel but it's really the same engine I'm gonna come back to this a lot the engine is the 1.5 liter 5 e fh e the same as the tercel it has all the best parts of the Toyota e series motors even though they get a bad rap for being more economy than performance but for being the same as the tercel they all have that Tercel reliability although appearance wise this car basically looks like Inspector Gadget Skagit mobile entering fast mode on the other hand the auto Sam is powered by a micro turbo whose spare parts are only available with a cheat code that only Kate sha knows but she won't tell you what it is because you gave her a rainbow during sustained silent reading and now her shoes won't lace properly you can't go into auto zone and get parts for an az1 but you can for a Toyota Sarah because most of this is Tercel stuff it's also Toyota Paseo stuff and it's also Toyota Starlet stuff but we didn't get the starlet in the US but you still got to base cars to go off of acceleration of the Sarah is Tercel esque swift for the 90s or as Tercel ad copy said zippy how zippy well top speed is 121 miles an hour and you're gonna be tacking out at 6400 rpm there but let's reiterate something real quick this thing is small kerb weight is 1984 pounds and it's just under 13 feet long not as small as a kei car but it does beep when you backup it's it's a Japan thing some cars in New Zealand do this those imports you put them into reverse and it tells you you're in Reverse inside the car beeping up like a cement truck or something like that despite being smaller than a guy trying to pick a fight after a rocky movie if anything the sides feeds into the mistaken notion that the Toyota sarah is a kei car but this is not a ke car because the engine is too large and the car is too large the Toyota sarah will maintain 70 miles an hour without stressing that engine while the AZ one that's not really meant for that Joe the owner uses this Sarah as a commuter and it does the job perfectly because that's what Toyota designed the Sarah to do this was built during Japan's hyperbole and stacks on stacks period where any pitched idea was greenlit commuter car with butterfly doors with twin gas struts each sure make it look racy but surprise it's really soft really soft well brilliant its aesthetically pleasing in that replica car at an anime convention kind of way with the rear opening window and the tantalizing red button for a shift lock as if Ren and Stimpy didn't teach us enough about the dangers of red buttons and on the subject of aesthetics Jose Serra is the same car that's represented in Beam ng so if you're playing that video game and you have the Toyota Sarah in it this is the one that was scanned mm-hmm they took measurements and did the physical files and sent them to a Argentinian programmer who made the model and then uploaded it online for people to use in the game so give it a whirl if you're in the mood I don't think I've ever been in a car more badly in need of a larger heater core and more defroster vents simply because body heat fogs up the ceiling because this is all glass just while sitting in the park Sarah you run the risk of having an officer tap on the window under the expectation that you're doing the old z-axis thrusts in a car that's hardly big enough to rise steel for us at donee Park Joe is 6 foot 2 and he still gets about two inches of head clearance which is nice but you don't get much room for your knees unless you were to swap out for a smaller steering wheel for whatever it's worth to know the doors for the McLaren f1 were apparently based off the Toyota Sarah because Gordon Murray saw his neighbors Sarah and decided the car he was designing needed to have doors like this and that's not the end of its connection to racing either this car was a formula D chase car behind an LS swap BMW as far as handling itself nope this car floats it rides like a car much larger than itself and it rides better than a Tercel everything is nicely dampened there's a lot of suspension travel you won't do crazy highway pulls in this but it does accelerate with some eagerness it accelerates like a local finding out there's been a leak at troves brewery and suddenly old Roger goes from giving the wife the old couples colon cleanse and grabs the nearest soup pot to gather as much trogon ater as he can hold and that brings me back to that straw man weave I was smacking around earlier you want a car to bamboozle Ramona flowers into believing you jet set to Kyoto biannually if you use an autos and a z1 to do this here's what's gonna happen she's gonna go it's loud in here it's cramped what's that buzzing sound oh don't drive so fast I don't feel safe and then she'll fake a phone call to get out of there but in a Sarah the inside is open and airy you know all this glass on the on the windows and glass on the roof glass on the front glass on the back you're not boxed in in this and the doors are easy to open and close them one on an autos am and butterflies are nicer than seagulls the visibility panoramic and you can see the sky over the stars and the ride is smooth car doesn't feel dangerous therefore you don't feel dangerous at therefore third date and a car like this gets looky-loos the happy kind while we were filming this a man came up and while we were filming and and asked what we were up to but not in an accusatory way he wasn't one of those warriors doing guys he was he was just utterly confused but completely desire delighted to see this strange happy curvy car with this door is like little wings and some small talk and a handshake later he departed and we became one of his stories that day this car is timeless in the way that it makes it feel instantly dated but instantly recognizable I mean the Toyota badge helps you know like anything denim and it starts happy conversations because we live in an age where people don't have conversations like they used to you see a couple out on a date and the only words that pass between them come once an hour after each desperate selfie attempt that's terrible don't post that is that a hyperbolic example yep but look a car like the Toyota Sarah is a conversation piece a very inexpensive to import conversation piece and a reliable conversation piece and one that gets good mileage and you're happy to drive every day and anything capable of starting an actual genuine conversation between two people is more than the sum of its triumphs or shortcomings [Music] I would like to think I'm not the man who drove last Christmas Eve but if I were would it be easy to believe because now you're gone and I know I'll feel so alone and in my heart I'll grieve but potentially is just wasted energy and that's what you are to me [Music]

Channel: RegularCars

Views: 519,177

Rating: 4.939939 out of 5

Keywords: Regular, Car, Reviews, Toyota Sera, Toyota Sera review, toyota Sera JDM, JDM Sera, Toyota Sera import, Driving a Toyota Sera, Regular Car Reviews, Sera

Id: 8Fqu6VgtJ04

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 08 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/alby800]

I nearly bought one of these. Paid a mechanic to look at it because it was 2500km away and I needed to drive it home, and it was not as perfect as it was in my head, if it was local I still would have went for it, but it just wasn't to be :(

I still want to own one and have a gumtree notification out, maybe if I find one within 1000km 🤔

[u/NoodlesRomanoff]

In the USA, Duncan Imports www.duncanimports.com has three of these for sale.

[u/[deleted]]

Good on the owner for the color choice. Think it looks perfect.

[u/alejandropolis]

I prefer his calmer soul-waxing versions of his videos more than his screaming about body fluids ones. Hard to tell which one it'll be though.

[u/OrionGrant]

Picking up one next weekend, can't wait!

[u/V8-Turbo-Hybrid]

I didn’t know Toyota has this car before

[u/Philo_T_Farnsworth]

Is it me or does that car look like a baby third-gen Integra?

[u/khanak]

These were the shit back in the day in India.

[u/honorface76]

This puckered up my MEAT DONUT