If you passed this next car on the street you would assume it was another front-wheel-drive slushbox equipped econobox from the guys at Toyota. And you would be half correct, because while it does have an automatic, it has a longitudinal mounted 7M-GE inline-6 that pushes 190 horsepower from its DOHC architecture into the rear […]
The first time I noticed a JDM bumper pole on a car in the wild was in a covered parking lot at a Japanese grocery store near the Torrance, California — which was coincidentally a few miles from the HQ for Toyota, Honda, and Nissan (all three have fled California for other places in the […]
The take rate on the manual gearbox for a Toyota Cressida in 1983 was probably higher than you would expect given the fact that most survivors seem to be slushbox equipped. But the cars that haven’t been wrapped around a telephone pole or eaten by salt from winter drifting competitions are going to be the […]
This next car epitomizes the expression “punching above one’s weight class.” It has no business being being fast as it is…but don’t let the shabby paint fool you. This wagon is running a 1UZFE V8 from a Lexus LS400, Mercedes-Benz bumpers and a funky multi-link rear suspension that looks tight. If you’ve got the time and know-how to swap in the included W58 5-speed, this thing will be perfect. Find this 1985 Toyota Cressida Wagon offered for $9000 in Simi Valley, CA via craigslist. Tip from MikeD.
Cressida was a common character in Renaissance era stories about the Trojan war — specifically she was the daughter of a Greek seer who falls in love with Trollius (a Trojan prince) and is later in love with the Greek soldier Diomedes…but the various stories have one common theme — that Cressida is the paradigm […]
Depending on how you feel about 80s Japanese sedans this next car is either the spider’s ankles or a festering pile of gorilla dung just one head gasket failure away from the scrap heap…and I’d like to think that the truth is somewhere in the middle. Find this 1984 Toyota Cressida offered for $3,500 in […]
DT’s logo guru and resident craigslistologist Kaibeezy has frequently made that assertion that the SF Bay area craigslist is the best place to get a used car (classic or otherwise). I had originally written this nonsense off as some kind of localist tendencies (mine is better than yours) but when the Beez moved from his […]
The second generation Toyota Cressida (MX63) was produced from 1980 through 1984 as an executive pre-Lexus flagship sedan. It was notable for being a well constructed car, and one of the first cars equipped with those detestable neck-chopping automatic seat belts. If you don’t mind the occasional death by accidental strangulation, you just might find […]
The third generation Toyota Cressida (1976-1980) was part of Toyota’s Mark II family of sedans, and featured a Jaguar/Mercedes style front end unabashedly plastered onto a plain vanilla Japanese econobox body. It looked like the 70s equivalent of what comes out of the Chinese automakers these days, and the woody version looks like a 7/8ths […]
The MX83 generation Cressida was released in 1989 and ended up being the last rear-drive sedan offering with a Toyota badge ever sold in North America. It might not be on most performance oriented bargain hunter’s top ten list, but it actually offers a surprising amount of go for the buck and powered by a […]