Hi Guys, heard a lot of good things about this forum lately, pretty keen to get into it all and learn more about my car seeing as my previous car was a Celica and I know very little about MR2's but we all have to start somewhere.
So here is my 1990 JDM Toyota MR2 Turbo. It was imported into Australia in 1999 and owned by an enthusiast in rural NSW till about 2010. During this time he installed Rev 3 lights and repainted the car in Super Red I'm pretty sure it was the 90's Crimson Red, I'll check the plate one day. In 2006 he crashed the car through a barbed wire fence doing damage to the front bar and bonnet. Shortly after this he cooked the gen1 motor and then it sat in a garage for 6 years untouched. Then my mates father buys it for next to nothing as his wife wanted a red sports car to take to work. He got it as a project and with my mate sourced a Gen 2 3SGTE then rebuilt it from the ground up, new bearings, rods, pistons, beams everything. They did not rebuilt the turbo or the gearbox. His wife drove it from work and back for 2 years and in this time only put 10,000k’s on the motor. The body has 220,000k’s with the engine replaced at 210,000k’s. Recently over dinner my mate heard they were thinking of selling so he persuaded them to give it to me for half its retail value as it only cost them 4K all together. They were extremely happy for me to have it but sad to see it go and its to date the best car purchase experience I’ve ever had.
The car in terms of mods doesn’t have much but it does have a full stainless steel exhaust system with a high flow cat worth more than a grand alone and just general maintenance mods. It also has a GPS head unit which is like an old 90’s computer but it’ll do till I get more money to put apple car play in there. The car does have some odd gold rims but they only purchased them because they were wrapped in Potenza RE001’s. They’re kind of growing on me but I definitely want wider rims on the rear with wider tyres. Allegedly these cars have a tendency to ‘snap oversteer’ but I’ve found it only misbehaves if you really provoke it or have ****ty tyres, I have a bad habit of snapping the throttle shut when the end steps out I need to learn to ease off. Will be taking it to a drift day for ****s and giggles on the wet skid pan but all of this plus mods requires so much money.
The bad points about the car, sunroof doesn’t work so it’s a sun-window, previous owner hacksawed the gear shifter so now nothing screws onto it, paint chips all over front bar, dash looks like its being lit by a candle and bonnet and tiny oil leak from tappet cover. Other than that the car is factory fresh all the JDM goodies work like the folding mirrors and AUTOMATIC climate control. This car is already more high tech than my 2000 celica despite the 10 year age gap. I do around 12.7/100km in terms of fuel consumption but I’ve been boosting everywhere lately because its that damn addictive. The car in the wet is dangerous and fun. You can’t exceed 3000rpm without the wheels slipping and the hips wriggling like it’s a latino dancer. But my god do I love this car, I liked the celica but didn’t realise what love was till the turbo spooled and made me laugh uncontrollably. 10/10 would recommend.
Photos edited, I took these shortly after buying the car but forgot to upload them.
