1995 Toyota Paseo: Regular Car Reviews

mom can we get a prelude we have a prelude at home no media is if the toyota supra was the poor man's ferrari 456 gt then a celica is a poor man supra which makes a paseo the poor man celica is a paseo a sports car hmm it's a two plus two coupe with the engine from a tercel which was toyota's cheapest budget car only the tercells in 95 had wastebark ignition and this paseo still has a distributor 100 horsepower 98 93 this isn't the turbo starlets 5e engine it's not even the sarah's high compression 5e fhe no this is just the 87 octane 5e fe engine double cams but no variable valves it's too early for that timing timing belt not timing chain and no plastic engine cover which i kind of like i mean it has this beautiful cast aluminum valve cover and it doesn't help performance obviously but i have nostalgic feelings for an aluminum valve cover made to be pleasant in appearance look at how the spark plug boots are made to fit flush with the valve cover surface and the spark plug wires are trimmed to fit neatly in a line all the way back to the distributor nowadays manufacturers just slap on a plastic engine cover to hide the mess of sensors and wires down there which i get engine covers do help with noise harshness and vibration but nvh was part of the experience with four cylinders in the 90s i love feeling that playstation 1 dual shock or next tell wireless vibrations coming through the body and floor and hearing them as well 213 000 miles and she still wants to run no dead spots in the rev range [Music] but the one to two shift is marathonic it's about 1 500 or 1 600 rpm between those two gears that's commuter not sport gearing the rest of the changes are more usable but one to two will make you fall behind any stoplight showdown i'm sure paseo forums exist somewhere forums exist for every car but i'd be surprised if they weren't all lumped in with the starlet tercel and sarah under the same forum heading it's not even the mark wahlberg in this four brothers argument the paseo is a car that feels like it should fit while simultaneously being the black sheep of the family but to what extent is this actually meant to stand out is this a sports car i mean it's wearing sports car coupe clothes but this isn't a mario brothers situation where putting on special clothes gives you powers if anything it draws more attention to all the things you can't do the frog suit is cool if you're in a water level but on lan you're just hopping around all slow like some kind of you ever see the warriors well the paseo is that one member of the gang who gets run over by a subway train and is never mentioned again it's forgotten because this car is forgettable toyota started selling these in the states in 1991 only to be discontinued just six years later and while you get an extra two years internationally lasting until 1999 we don't know that it adds anything to this car's unremarkable legacy the nomenclature suggests something more exotic than you actually get paseo is spanish for a walk a a stroll or a ride depending on what kind of spanish you're using roman says ride but roman also says his spanish is rustier than this paseo's rear left wheel well so true numbers for the 1.5 liter 5e fe inline 4 is 100 horsepower at 6400 rpm and 91 pound-feet of torque at 3200 rpm gas mileage somewhere in the 30s mid 30s which is interesting because my sarah gets 40 miles a gallon but the engine itself makes like eight more eight more horsepower for high compression that needs 91 so the 5e fe the 5ef he engine and the sarah is like yes it's a little bit more powerful but not oh and it revs a little bit higher but gosh this this is the whole lineage this is the end of the 5e engines after when this was done they went to uh oh gosh they they brought out the vvti that debuted in the echo and then that was just the end of the i think the beginning end of the high revenue oh right what am i talking about you still have the the 1zzz and the two zz engines anyway i'm getting off track the 5efe is reliable enough and good on fuel peter was this car's second owner but he sold it to his girlfriend's son until the sun decided he wanted a truck instead at which point peter bought it back and over the course of this car's life it's received extensive maintenance there were some hiccups along the way a mechanic removed the dash to flush out the heater core but forgot to put the radio back in so peter just got an aftermarket radio and he's tried to treat the rust in various ways which doesn't seem to be working the 5efe is leaking oil uh around the camshaft bearings in some ways you can call this a sports car in the same way a guy in a if you're dutch you ain't much shirt is the height of pennsylvania fashion yes this is a recognizable look you put together a rural pennsylvania fashion show and i guarantee at least one person is making a tuxedo out of eviction notices a paseo is where the body is discovered in every true crime podcast they were cheap cheap cars they're found burnt to ashes with the remains of a missing dental hygienist accused of tax fraud but after the ads for security systems and weight loss apps you'll find out he faked it all and the body was a chevy bro he lured into the paseo with promises of free stick-on hood vents for his cobalt ss did the paseo really get a fair shake it's a sporty looking car at the bottom of the barrel at the bottom of a cast iron pan you're just scraping up the little burnt pieces of bacon if every car were judged on its merits car culture would be much different and a less contentious scene because subjectivity would melt away quicker than the patience of a i'll just do it myself dan with his project cars he expects everyone to help him build for no compensation objectivity would put its boot on the neck of opinions like fuel additives help throttle response or that fuel line magnets make cargo better neither of them do anything stop listening to companies with miracle products that trick you out of doing routine maintenance don't buy blended synthetic oil you know you know what the criteria is for blending synthetic oil i learned this from nush you can have like six quarts of conventional oil and just put a little giz load of synthetic in it and then you can put blended synthetic on it technically it's true look we don't live in a world of objectivity we never have and car culture is entirely subjective and subordinate to whatever catches on whether good or bad in the game of automotive tribalism fitting in is more important than being right and that's why these paseos were modded like crazy in the early 2000s everybody saw the movie and then everybody ran for their short ram intake and they're altezza tail lights only to realize this is not a prelude it was never meant to be one so they just made this car loud enough so we get a gosh darn it these things are actually not that bad but people made them terrible when rowan and i sat down to write this review we barely got anything done because i ended up talking to this other guy in the coffee shop for the better part of an hour about him auto crossing with mg midgets in the 1970s and i had a great conversation we talked about sinking carburetors and we talked about you know small engines being faster than the mustangs of the period in the early 70s i hope i run into that guy again because i know i'm going to be that guy in 20 or 30 years talking about 90s stuff how everybody with these paseos fart piped them or straight piped them in the hopes that it would make them alpha but there's nothing alpha about a toyota paseo a car a base prius can gap any bolt-on performance modifications on a paseo make you look like a rube a sucker who spends their poverty wages on trinkets packaged in reflective packaging from autozone performance parts on a paseo the official accessories for a man who walks up to the gas station clerk and asks yo how much for the strong dick pills i'm trying to put her in the hospital i want to make fun of the paseo because it's slow and the 5e fe double cams aren't helping because honda's one slammer d series made similar power with a simpler design and i want to make fun of toyota for making an appeasement car for people who can't afford a real sports car all this car is is bargains bin inventory arranged in a sleek container if toyota tercel is diner food eggs bacon and toast served on a round plate with steel utensils and a plastic coffee mug with advertisements for kent's funeral home and keystone credit union and an eisenhower refrigeration on it then a toyota paseo is an artisanal coffee shop that serves eggs bacon and toast arranged vertically on a square wooden plate with aluminum flatware and a hand-hammered coffee mug but it looks fancy so it'll taste fancy and a paseo looks fast and if i make it sound fast everybody will think it is fast ah i'm going to take the air box off and pipe clamp an air filter to the throttle body and claimed that my new idle problems are because i up the power to the high end i'm gonna lean way down but the seat doesn't go down so i'm gonna lean way back [Music] i'm gonna hold it on an uphill traffic light by slipping the clutch and making the car rock bot rack back and forth oh here's green yeah slip it halfway through the beginner section i'm the king of rita's italian ice until a real prelude shows up and then i'm gonna sag my dickies more and call the prelude driver a rich kid when he's out of earshot i'm gonna get back in my paseo here i go it's fast it's fast it's fast it's fast because i drive it fast i'm faster than preludes because my rifle didn't have the balls to do 90 through a double blind intersection therefore my paseo is faster but a paseo is not fast a paseo is not fast and that's okay because a toyota paseo achieves what the current toyota corolla hatch can't be fun at 50 miles an hour and for that the toyota paseo earns the right to be called a real sports car yes despite everything despite its slow engine its antiquated technology and its bargain bin makeup when you're driving one of these you're driving a real sports car damn man wider tires than you think this is the only really sharp corner it's fine [Music] no drama i never took a corner that hard in this car really never really i just commute to work and i drive home that's why i bought it this old paseo is wearing sports coupe clothes the black sheep of the family toyota it has a 5mt doesn't matter not really cause the road to hell is paid with good intentions but here's a song though for this paseo

Channel: RegularCars

Views: 185,751

Rating: 4.9552312 out of 5

Keywords: Regular, Car, Reviews, Regular Car Reveiws, Car Review, Car Satire, Mr Regular, RCR, Paseo, Paseo review, toyota Paseo review, Toyora coupe, 5E-FE

Id: qnC4qp6r4xE

Length: 14min 46sec (886 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ArcturusFlyer]

I'm pretty sure the Toyota Paseo exists for two reasons:

1. The late-80s bubble economy meant that both consumers and manufacturers in Japan had loads of cash to throw around. So, this car was meant for newly-minted salarymen fresh out of college and just starting their careers who wanted something more interesting than a Tercel/Corolla II. (See also: date cars.) Unfortunately, the bubble economy popped in 1992, so the Paseo didn't survive the 90s.

2. The sixth-gen Celica that launched in 1993 was too large to be taxed as a compact car under Japanese law, so the Paseo/Cynos was introduced to fill that market space for compact sport coupes. In Japan, compact cars (小型自動車/kogatajidosha) are an intermediate tax class between kei cars and regular passenger cars; taxes on compact cars are lower than regular cars, and the size and engine displacement limits are more lenient than those for kei cars.

[u/420bIaze]

A 1995 Paseo when new cost $31k Australian dollars. A fwd Celica was a lot more.

Adjusted for inflation, in 2021 dollars that's $56k today.

When I was a new driver in the mid 2000s cars like the Celica and Paseo were those I dreamed of as my attainable sports cars. They were well under $10k by then for a rough example - but even that was well beyond my price range.

Today in 2021 a Toyota 86 costs $35k AUD new.

For all the flaws an 86/BRZ has, this puts it into perspective for me.

If you look at it as a successor to these cars (which it is), it's unbelievably better. And then consider that the 86 costs half as much as they did...

[u/Sean_Ornery]

First, I think this is one of the best Regular Car Reviews I have seen in a long time. I feel like the snarkiness was dialed down and we got an honest impression of the car.

Even when new these were not hot rods. They were a 2 door coupe that had more style than substance. It was a nice looking little car that a person could daily drive without any real issues. Think of it as the Dodge Dart/Chevy Nova of its day without a performance variant.

[u/wes_andersoup]

Having been in high school in the 90s and having friends that owned Paseos this is was the target audience: Parents made upper middle-class wages at jobs that were analytical or in education. They smeared their logical, analytical thinking throughout their lives including how they spent their money, raised their kids and bought cars. They were Toyota families. The driveway had a Camery for dad, a Toyota Van for mom, the daughter got a Tercel, and teenage boy, who isn't necessarily into cars but has a friends who are, got the Paseo. He was always on the fringes of car culture because his friends were but didn't really know enough to mod it, besides, his dad wouldn't allow it. Maybe he installed some wheels, probably 15" Enkeis. After graduation he drove off in the Paseo to state school where he got a degree in accounting or engineering and kept the Paseo for all 4 years, eventually trading it for a Tacoma post graduation.

[u/gsasquatch]

Here's a subjective opinion:

Premium is 17% more per gallon in my neck of the woods.

For the Sera he compares it to that gets 40mpg on premium with the higher compression version of the engine, the "mid thirties" of the Paseo would be cheaper anywhere above 34mpg.

[u/e2hawkeye]

"It's fast because you drive it fast..."

Flashback to the 1973 Dodge Charger I had with a 318 and shitty stock two barrel RotChester carb. I was 19 and it was fast only because I drove it fast.

[u/RainbowEggplanter]

I got t boned in one of these

[u/coastal_potato]

They nailed it. My first car (that I bought with my own money) was a used 92 Paseo. I was young & naive, it was cheap and looked enough like a celica.

That car was a textbook momentum car. Decent grip after upgrading wheels & tires, as one does. Biggest surprise was how good it was in snow with winter tires. Due to the weight it scampered to ski resorts without breaking a sweat. Cargo capacity was a joke, and if you fit two adults in the rear (you shouldn’t) get a run at hills & prepare to downshift at least twice.

Turd of a car that took years of punishment, never complained, and cost peanuts to own.

[u/Velociraptor451]

"I got a 97 Toyota Paseo in the parking lot. Let's get outta here..."