Tag Archives: starlet

In its 26th year, Toyotafest is still going strong — a brief history of TORC, the Toyota Owners and Restorers Club

We’ve been attending Toyotafest every year since JNC started in 2006, and it’s consistently one of our favorite events. Last year was the 25th Toyotafest, which means the show itself is now old enough to wear historic plates, buy collector … Continue reading

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Japanese Classic Car Show 2021, Part 01

To close out 2021, a year where things were finally opening up again, we’re going back to the Japanese Classic Car Show. After a hiatus in 2020 due to the pandemic, JCCS was back in full form. Perhaps trying to … Continue reading

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MINICARS: Here’s the cars from the upcoming Hot Wheels Toyota series

We got an extraordinarily positive response about the Hot Wheels FJ60 Toyota Land Cruiser yesterday. As you can see from the packaging, it’s part of an all-Toyota premium series. We promised there would be some new castings in it, and … Continue reading

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2021 All-Toyotafest, Part 01 — Starlet, Corolla, Celica, MR2

After a year and a half of no major car shows, it was good to be back. The 2021 Toyotafest picked back up right where 2019 left off, although a few changes had to be made due to the pandemic. … Continue reading

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This tale of Toyota Starlet restoration is just the kind of story we need right now

When he was just eight years old, Josh Brooks’ father told him he’d be driving a Toyota Starlet someday. His family had always owned Toyotas, and Josh’s dad drove an AE86 Corolla and had campaigned Starlets in National Autograss, a … Continue reading

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Japanese Classic Car Show 2019: Upping the Game and Best in Show

We are 60 percent of the way to the point where the JCCS itself, if it were a car, would be eligible for classic status. In its 15 years in existence, the Japanese Classic Car Show has grown from a … Continue reading

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SEMA 2019, Part 01 — Japanese Hot Rods

When there are 2,400 companies and 2.2 million square feet of exhibits, limits are constantly pushed in order to garner attention. It can result in show cars that are insanely expensive but absent of taste. Still, there can be gems … Continue reading

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2019 Japanese Classic Car Show, Part 06 — Awesome 80s

The 80s were a pivotal time in Japan’s automotive history, and the JCCS did not disappoint with a of turbocharged, retractable-headlight, angular-bodied machines.

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2019 Japanese Classic Car Show, Part 01 — USDM Rare

Even in the 15th year of the wonderful and ever-growing Japanese Classic Car Show in Long Beach, California, after so many iterations, there are still new things for the casual Japanese car enthusiast to discover. The phyla of Japanese cars … Continue reading

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KIDNEY, ANYONE?: Eric Bizek’s KP61 Toyota Starlet

Typically, we don’t name drop the Kidney Car’s seller, but if you are even remotely familiar with our site, or the American JNC community, the shop JDM Legends is a household name. The Utah-based restomod shop has been around as … Continue reading

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Toyotafest Spotlight: This mint Starlet was once part of the Toyota USA Museum

We’ve already covered the Starlets from this year’s Toyotafest, but there was one particular example we had to point out. It’s not that it was bone stock, or flawless, or a rare 3C5 Coral Metallic color, though it was all … Continue reading

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EVENTS: All-Toyotafest, Part 04 — Starlets & Tercels

Over the years even traditional, Camry-hating mainstream car enthusiasts have come to appreciate some Toyotas, your Celicas, MR2s, and FR Corollas. However, when it comes to the marque’s most diminutive compacts, the love still tends to emanate only from the … Continue reading

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VIDEO: Starlet, Sunny, and AE86 on Maou Touge

In a recent Hot Version video, the gang takes a pack of highly tuned cars to the Maou Touge. However, rather than the standard Honda S2000 and WRX STI models, this time they are modified versions of old school RWD … Continue reading

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EVENTS: 2018 Japanese Classic Car Show, Part 02 — Toyotas

For the first time since the show’s beginning, Toyota didn’t have a booth or any of its museum cars at the Japanese Classic Car Show. Mazda, Nissan, and Honda all had an official presence, but not the Big T. That’s … Continue reading

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EVENTS: All-Toyotafest 2018, Part 05 — A whole lot of RWD

Toyota still makes large sedans, economical cars with transversely mounted engines, and powerful sports cars (at least in V8 form), but the once plentiful species of lightweight, rear-wheel-drive compact has dwindled to just one model. Toyotafest might be the last place in the … Continue reading

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VIDEO: Look at all the great driver’s cars you could get in 1991

At the height of the Bubble Era, every Japanese carmaker had a driver’s car. We’re not talking about high dollar sports cars like the NSX or Supra, either. In this Best Motoring video from 1991, a lineup of enthusiasts’ machines, sometimes … Continue reading

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Tokyo Auto Salon: The awesome stuff we didn’t get to

In the past, the Tokyo Auto Salon has been pretty easy for us to cover. The show is still geared towards cars on the cutting edge of performance tech and style, so true chrome-bumpered classics were fairly thin on the ground. However, as time … Continue reading

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EVENTS: 2018 New Year Meeting, Part 03 — Seventies and Eighties

Our first two installments of the 2018 New Year Meeting featured cars from 1960s Japan. Those beautifully crafted machines from the early days of country’s motorization served a specific purpose, but the 1970s is when the modification culture became truly widespread. 

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Tokyo Auto Salon: The championship-winning TOM’s KP47 Starlet was rebuilt around its original engine

Toyotaku know the name TOM’s well. Tachi Oiwa Motorsport is the has been Japan’s premier tuner of Toyota and Lexus cars for decades, serving as something of an unofficial performance arm for the Big T. For the Tokyo Auto Salon this year, they brought out … Continue reading

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VIDEO: B110 Nissan Sunny vs KP61 Toyota Starlet touge battle

“Why no moar horsepower?” is probably the most oft repeated and annoying gripe  leveled at Japanese cars. If you’d like to see a video that answers why, here it is. Japan’s roads are mountainous, tight and a ton of fun in small, … Continue reading

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