And The Winner is.... [Part 1]

The Toyota MR2 Mark 2 (Normally Aspirated)!

My brother owned a Mark 1 MR2 and to this day, he still raves about it. He got his up to 192k miles with almost no major repairs until a lady driving a Suburban had an epileptic seizure and ran over the passenger side of the car, killing the car and thankfully, not my bro. He took me driving in it whenever I visited him and the things it could do. He'd take sharp 90 degree turns at 50, through it into second, whip the tail into a controlled spin, and shoot out the other side without even wincing.

Not that I'll be doing any of that. I've just loved the Mark 2 MR2 ever since it came out, the only thing I had to overcome was buying a used car again (They stopped selling MR2s here in the U.S. in 1995.5). The "used" car thing was itching me for a while, but given my position in life (grad school or no grad school), I didn't want to deal with a long term loan as well as lose an assload of it in depreciation the minute I drove it off the lot. Given Toyota's reputation for durability I can somewhat stomach no warranty.

I guess that, and I would be completely eliminating the option of having a back seat. And storage capacity. But at this point in the game, I'm not ready for a "pratical" solution to my lack-of-car problem. I'll call it my quarter-life crisis purchase. That's the buzz term right?

Anyway, the MR2 has got some quality history behind it too. A lot of car enthusiests view it as one of the classic cars to come out of the past 2 decades. MR2 officially stands for "Mid-Engine Runabout 2-wheel drive." A lot of people don't like "runabout;" I guess the word is too Star Trekkian, so they replace it with "Rear wheel drive." It isn't called MR2 every where it's sold, in particular France (which immediately came to mind). If you say the letters in French it is "Em-Air-deux" which is entirely too close to the languages word "merdieu" meaning "shitty." The MR2 graced the United States from 1984-1995, with the Mk2 coming out in '91. Since it came off the U.S. shelf, it was beefed the hell out of in British and Japanese markets (god I'm jealous). But the origins of the MR2 are what really strikes me as interesting. It was long rumored that the MK1 MR2 was an old design by the English SuperCar designer/manufacturer, Lotus, under the project name of the x100. When GM (I vomitted when I found this fact out) bought Lotus, relationships that were in place between Toyota and Lotus were severed, and the x100 project scrapped. Toyota eventually picked up the design, did its process optimization thing (Damn Kanban), and WHAMMY, the MR2 arrived. But this was not entirely true. Lotus, the engineering powerhouse, did not give the x100 project to Toyota, but lotus engineers designed-wait for it- the MR2s insane suspension (as well as oversaw the MR2s overall design).

Even if the entire car wasn't designed by Lotus engineers, the resemblence between the MR2 Mk1 and the X100 are striking, as well as, and I know Ryan will disagree with me, the MK2 resembling the Elise.