January 23, 2014 • 26 mins
Join Scott and Ben as they continue the story of the Toyota MR2 in the second part of this series.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from house stuff works dot com previously on
car Stuff. Sorry, I just wanted to do that as
an introduction. Oh you had to. It's kind of like
the Lost Intro sor thanks. Yeah, that's what I was
(00:22):
going for. High work. Oh, thank you. My name is
Ben and I'm Scott and this is car Stuff. This
is the second part of our m R two episode
and probably the first thing that we should do here
is kick it off with a quick recap. Yeah, I
guess we talked about, well just started to get into
the first generation, but we talked about the concept vehicle,
(00:44):
how there was some um development going on in Japan
here in the United States as well in California and
some some X Formula one racers that were involved in
the development of this car. We had Dan Gurney driving
the thing at Willow Springs. Um. You know, it was
not really an tended to be a two seed sports
car to begin with. No, it was just intended to
be a fun drive that had affordable fuel economy. And
(01:08):
as they were thinking outside of the box, they sort
of stumbled into what would become the m R two
and this mid engine layout, and there was a little
bit of rumor about Lotus and Lotus Motor Cars and
very involvement in this whole thing. And you know, whether
it was not a whether or not it was a
throwaway design from Lotus Toyota picked up and that's another rumor.
Um man. There's just there was a lot going on
(01:30):
in that first episode. I think people should go back
and listen if you haven't yet, you know, don't listen
to them out of order, go back and check out
part one. I think we did a good job with
Part one. Yeah, I feel pretty good about it. There's
that one little design flaw in that episode, which is
we got twenty six minutes into the show and then
got to Generation one. That's true. Um So there's probably
(01:50):
there are probably a couple of things we could still
say about Jen one, right, definitely, Yeah, there's more about
Jen one, and let's uh, let's let's concentrate in this
episode and going through Gen one, two and three and
maybe some racing variants and uh, we'll talk a little
bit about kick cars, but there's all kinds of stuff.
So let's let's dig back into Gen one. And even
if this is repeating just a couple of things and
maybe maybe we're okay there, Okay. So we know that
(02:12):
the uh, the Gen one comes out in nineteen eighty
four in Japan, we know that it goes in eight five,
it's in UK, and it's in the US in February
of eighty five, and we know that the the first
gen goes all the way to U nineteen eighty nine.
(02:35):
That's that's right. Nine. They've got a supercharge version. Yeah,
there's a huge demenions a super charge engine that comes
about towards the end of the of the production of
of Gen one. UM. And this thing doesn't have any
kind of lap between our laps, rather between first Gen,
second Gen, third Gen. So it's gonna continuously run all
the way through two thousand seven. That we're gonna wrap
up with here today. Um. But you know, I want
(02:57):
to say that in four we mentioned a bunch of
awards in the line program. UM. I want to say
that in at its introduction, this car right out of
the box, it won the Car of the Year Japan award, UM,
which is a huge award over there. I mean that's
a that's the same thing as like you know, our
our motor trend car the Year award here in the
United States. UM, and I sure that you know, other
(03:17):
continents have their own versions of this so um it
was a big award, and it won other countless awards
you know along the way, and it was just a popular,
popular design, you know, between the press and the public
and everybody's opinion of this whole thing. Even uh, you know,
other automotive manufacturers were saying, what, you know, this is
a good design. There are competitor you know, because we
have you know, companies that are putting out things like
(03:38):
the CRX and the Fiarro and um with some of
the other ones, the Fiat X one nine, UM, I
can't remember the Ford XP. There were a lot of
different versions of Sharaco from Volks. Yeah. But when we
have a we have a good point here because what
we're building towards is the idea that this car was
almost universally lauded. Um. And one note that I think
(03:59):
we should put in there about Jen one is that,
uh Jen one had some early racing success to Toyota
Team Europe. This is probably one of my favorite stories
about it. They built customized why Body m R two
and they nicknamed it to To two D or two
two d um and they had it ready and set
(04:21):
to compete in the Group S category of the w
r C, so be going up against stuff like the
Audi Quatro and uh the Joe two of five. But
you know what happened. How you know what? They were
also thinking not only groups, they were also thinking Group
B with this thing, because you gotta remember Group B
was still around when they were developing this car, So
(04:44):
they were thinking, initially we're gonna get it into that
you know, in that one thousand horsepower range, that eight
hundred horsepower range. Every now imagine that in that type
and that sized vehicle, which such a light vehicle, all
wheel drive or whatever they do to those things. Remember
we tell we had they had whole Group B podcast,
which is really I think that was an entertaining podcast. Yeah.
I really really enjoyed doing the research for that one.
That was cool. So but they're they're talking, I'm sorry,
(05:06):
go ahead. It was just as a spoiler alert. Uh,
they never got to do the Group best category. Yeah,
they never got through to groups or Group B because
Group B was canceled in ninety six, which was right
about when they were kind of developing this. Because they
were developing it with this Twyota team Europe. UM in
six came around and there's no more series to racing,
so what are they gonna do? And the car was
(05:26):
kind of hidden away for a while and it was
brought out kind of as as a surprise really at
the two thousand six Goodwood Festival of Speed, where they
displayed this this black two D vehicle that they had
supposedly created for a Group B rally or Group S rally,
I guess because the Group B had gone away. UM
but the car weighed something like seven hundred pounds, so
(05:47):
it was lighter than a typical um Gen one m
R two, which was right around I think it was
in Japan it was two thousand, ninety five pounds and
in the United States was fifty UM a little heavier
in the U S. So UM in the they had
significantly lightened this vehicle, which again that's another lotus thing
that they would do, but race cars, so they're going
(06:07):
to do that. Anyways. UM had the transverse amounted four
cylinder turbocharge race engine, which you would expect, but get
this bend they thought. It was reported to produce as
much as seven hundred and fifty horsepower that to twenty
two D that they that they showed UM and they
were talking about a V six powered prototype. It was
also rumored to exist that has never ever seen the
(06:28):
light of day. No one in public has ever seen
this thing, but it's supposedly it's out there somewhere. It's
one of those automotive myths. Yeah, well, I don't know
if we can call it a myth, will be a legend,
maybe admit the legend, urban legend, legend. Friend of a
friend of a friend thinks they saw it one time.
Who knows someone who met a cousin at a party? Yeah, hey, um,
(06:49):
do you want to talk about uh, Jim one? Do
you want to move Jim too? Let's talk about this.
Let's wrap it up with with jen one here just quickly,
because I think there's there's still so much about this.
I mean, we've talked about, like you know, the the
angular lions and the design concept that comes from the
late seventies early eighties. Um, some of the other competitors
that we talked about Fiat, but we didn't talk about
the Lancia Stratos, which was another Group B competitor from
(07:12):
the day, which is another fantastic car. To compare it
to really, Lancia, they had a car, a car called
the Beta Monte Carlo, which I've never heard of, but
I'd love to see it now that I know that
it's compared to the m R two. UM. Man, just
there's so much ben I've got. I've got a lot
of stuff on on Gen one, and I wonder if
maybe maybe, I guess we should talk about going into
(07:33):
U Gen two at this Yeah, and let's let's go
ahead and let the cat out of the bag here. UM.
Gen one itself is an evolving, an evolving vehicle, because
it's not as though they just made the same car
for this many years and then moved to to the
mark two. Um. They introduced stuff over the course of
(07:55):
Gen one, and that includes things like reworking the transmission, UM,
putting in the T bar, which I knew it was
going to trip a lot of people out, but it
wasn't there in the beginning. UM. But they introduced it,
you know, literally to very early on. And then they've
got you know, we said they've got a supercharge. Uh.
They added some slight changes to the exterior, new lights
(08:18):
in the US and stuff like that. UM. One of
the big moves in eight seven they relocated the air
filter to the trunk and so they have continual improvements
leading into Mark two, which UM I just want to
say one thing about the supercharge engine because that was
such a cool thing to develop, because you know at
this at the time that they had done this and
(08:39):
they were using this uh, this this fift eighty seven
C C in line four engine. It was like well
six C C engine basically UM horsepower somewhere between anywhere
from like a hundred and twelve horse power in the
United States up to UM I think it was about
a hundred horse power in the UK, which was maybe
the highest. I think they had some kind of other
kind of UM. I don't know ratings that went up
(09:01):
to Japan, but I think they dropped that down to
one eighteen after uh, someone you know, really investigated. I
think they did probably one of those net to gross
rating types and that dropped it. So the one in
Japan was dropped down to one eighteen eventually for the
home market, which is not unusual that happens sometimes, UM,
but there was also this is strange in the home
(09:22):
market in Japan. They also offered one version that had
as low as eighty two horsepower, which is really strange,
and of course it was not very popular, didn't attract
a whole lot of buyers, so that quickly went away
as well. I guess though, I mean, that still makes
it economical. It's still a fun car to drive around
in Japan, you know, I guess it's I mean over state,
I mean, maybe oversimplifying this, but I always think of
(09:42):
it as being very tight driving situation. You know, it's
a small car, probably good in the city to drive around,
you know, commuting, small engine, probably a lot of a
lot less fuel used. I would think that'd be a benefit.
That's probably one of the primary one. And that's getting
back to what they wanted to do initially with this thing. Remember,
they were trying to make it very economical, but people
saw it as really a sports car because of that
mid engine layout. Performance times again you mentioned, were in
(10:04):
the eight second range quarter miles something like sixteen seconds,
so not that fast. But then they came out with
this supercharge version in and for the US market, and
the supercharger boosted up almost immediately to one hundred and
forty five horsepower men and zero to sixty times come
down to six point five maybe seven seconds at the most.
That's really moving along pretty quick. That's a that's a
(10:27):
pretty quick car. And it uh the way that was
designed means that it would still have some fuel economy
because it didn't It wasn't continual. It kicked in when
you needed it. Yeah, that's right. It had some kind
of strange belt driven design that was actuate magnetic clutch. Yeah,
which is kind of odd, I mean, but I mean,
now you can understand how it works if you if
(10:47):
you look up the diagrams away, this thing works, right. Um,
it's just that it's it's not used when you don't
need it, and the result is that you get increased
fuel economy from that from that design. So um, you know,
thinking about fuel economy all along the way. But still
one horsepower from that supercharge version. And I thought we
should at least give that a mention. And now let's
move on to w uh W twenty which they call
(11:08):
which they call it, um, we call it generation two. Yes,
and uh they knew that they would stick to that
mid engine layout for the second gen. Wildly popular, wildly popular,
one of the big selling points of the vehicle. So
the chief engineer in charge of this at the time
as a guy named Kasutoshi Arima, uh, second in command
(11:29):
of the original design, and they include they expanded their goal.
Remember originally they wanted fuel economy and a fun drive.
So they expanded this to say, let's have some more
refined style, which is gonna be important on man, did
they ever do that? Yeah? Uh, they They did have
some heavy influence on the look Scott, how would you
(11:51):
describe the change earlier? He said Gen one was kind
of origami. Yeah, this one is more I guess, streamline,
more less angular, it's more rounded, softer, it's softer in design,
I guess, and my softer I mean it's just smoothed
out because they did have a very angular lines before
it was very uh well, I don't know, brutish looking.
I don't know how to say it. And in the
(12:13):
second version it had more of a like a sports
car that you would typically like you would think of
like the Lotus Salon or something like that, you know,
very rounded, smooth, aerodynamic shape. And they also have a
bit more ambition as far as the price points for
this vehicle. To sure they upgraded the interior and they're
offering more engine options because this car was really well received.
(12:36):
People loved it and and the sales were up there,
and they knew that, you know, if they come out
with a faster, better version of this vehicle, that people
are going to buy it, and of course they did.
People loved it. You know, it gained a little weight.
It was like gained something like three hundred to four
inner pounds, uh three or fifty I think through four
inner pounds something like that. Um body styling is a
lot different, as you mentioned, but it was it was
being compared to cars like the Ferrari three eight and
(12:59):
if already three fifty five of the day, and that
says a lot because you know, I mean, here it is.
It's a Toyota that's supposed to be an economy car.
It's pretty pretty small, but it doesn't this mid engine
layout which is like a sports car. But the looks,
the appearance, it's like a much smaller Ferrari and people,
in fact, we're calling it the poor man's Ferrari, which
sure Ferrari hated that, and I think a lot of
people maybe thought, you know, that's kind of a strange
(13:21):
way to put it, but um, I don't it's kind
of it's kind of a cool thing to be to
be listed in the same same sentence as Ferrari. Right, Yeah,
I think it's a big win. I think so. And uh,
speaking of big winds, it's probably time to talk a
little bit about our sponsor. Let's tell you what. Let's
get back into our topic, which is we're we're in
(13:41):
the second gen and we're kind of in the middle
here we're talking about, um, some of the some of
the stuff that they offered on the second gen that
they didn't on the first. But there's so much Ben
and I do want to mention that, you know, in
the second gen, it underwent five revisions during the ten
years of production that this thing happened, you know, was
was being produced, so that everybody ten years from there
(14:03):
were five revisions and they call them and you can
kind of break these apart within that generation into type one, two, three, four, five, UM,
really kind of straight. And there's a lot of stuff
about these cars that you'll you'll find as you're reading
about them that you just never really knew unless you
own one. Maybe, UM stuff that I found out, like
I found out that all of the second generation m
R two's came with a staggered wheel set up where
(14:25):
the wheels and tires in the back were wider than
the ones in the front. I had no idea that
they were doing that. I know a lot of sports
cars do that. I mean big time sports cars, like
you know, some of the UM Corvettes and things like that.
Of course, yeah, very high end vehicles will do this,
and and I just had no idea that the second
gen m R two was doing that. And a lot
of a lot of the second gen changes revisions occur
(14:47):
in market specific ways. What we mean by that is,
for instance, UM the automatic transmission gets discontinued in the
United Kingdom in or they stopped making the vehicle entirely
in the United States. They do this, so these changes
(15:09):
are not necessarily global changes, although the generations of the
Mark two are are global. Yeah, that's right. And they
did things like they would make a spider version for
one particular market and they didn't for another market, like
a lot of the cars that went to the UK,
and I think it's we're markets m m R two spiders.
But the odd thing about this one is the toyot
(15:30):
didn't even put their name on the on those vehicles
because they knew that those roofs leaked on those vehicles,
right that that particular year, that particular make and model.
Whoever is doing it, they knew that the roofs leak,
and they don't want their names associated with it. So
there's these odd oddities to go along with it. And
one of the oddities I think in the last one
I'll mentioned on on um the second gen is uh
UM UH twyter Racing Development or TRD offered a special
(15:54):
body kit conversion that could for turning turning m R
two's into what they called a wide body TRD two
thousand GT replica. And this is so cool, ben if
you if you haven't seen one, you should take a
look at a photo one. Just do a keyword search online.
There are only thirty five of these things that were
completed by a company called Toyota Technocraft Limited. They're about
(16:15):
four inches wider with the body kit uh they had,
and and they all had additional engine, suspension, wheel, and
interior upgrades that were available, but they didn't have to
be selected. It wasn't like every one of them got
the same treatment. So they're all completely different. Every one
of them is different. Some some went for the full deal,
like everything to be changed. Others just selected one maybe
maybe just the body maybe yeah, or a combination the two.
(16:39):
They had power options that went up to five hundred
horsepower on these things, so if you did get the
engine upgrades, you can go up to five horsepower. And
had that really cool looking wide body kit. And I've
mentioned how I love wide body kits, so this is
right at my alley. I love these things. And there's
a register that you can kind of track some of
these things. But a lot of them, it finds out,
are kind of lost to time. I mean, some of
them are unknown. There were ten that came to the
(16:59):
United States. They just don't know where they went to.
Might be some barn finds. They're probably I would say
the Bulker in private collection, I would think so, or
maybe the who knows, Maybe the body kits ended up
on a shelf and someone's graduation. It's sitting there. But
you know what, that's also good because someone could apply
them later, so who knows. Yeah, that's nice. Okay wait wait, okay,
So well, let's also mentioned the mr J concept, right,
(17:22):
So when the MRJ concept comes out in nineteen five, Now,
remember we said that the Mark two goes to right,
so we know that they are already some cues that
they're going to change the game. And this third generation
when the MRJ concept comes out in again at the
Tokyo Motor Show, we've they've got a lot of commentators saying,
(17:46):
you know, uh nod in the wink, here we come here,
we're seeing the third generation uh MR two. They even
went so far as to predict when it would go
on sale and how much it would cost. But it
turns out that that was just the variant because they
also released in MR S in the MRS kind of
(18:07):
cracks me up. I always thinking I just see it
as as misses. So they released toy to release the
misses in Japan, but MRS is the is the code
dame for it, and and everywhere else in um well
actually not everywhere else but in in the United States
was called the m R two Spider, and then it
was called the m R two Roadster in Europe and
that kind of makes sense. And yeah, and m R
S stands for Midship Runabout Sports. So anyhow, the this concept,
(18:31):
this roadster, and I'm glad we brought that up, is
something that the chief engineer at the time, Tadashi Nakagawa
said that, uh, he was building to break the cycle
of growth, he called it, and uh one of his
issues was that there's this tendency which we've seen in everything,
even the Mini, for successive vehicle generations to get bigger
(18:53):
and bigger and bigger. Yeah, and that's definitely what was
gonna get gonna happen, I think with the with the
third generation, if they didn't make a dramatic change, and
that's what did. Um. When you look at the third generation,
which was again two thousand seven when we ended production,
when Japan end of production, that we ben um, you
and I, well, that the competition for this type of vehicle,
(19:13):
if you want to think about it this way, the
Honda S two thousand, the mas M X five, Miata,
and the Porsche Boxer, which, by the way, I gotta
say that the the m R two third generation, to me,
this looks like a Porsche Boxer. I mean it looks
like a smaller Boxer really, so you can kind of
think of it that way. But um, the idea was
it was a different approach. I mean you mentioned this already,
(19:33):
the cut the cycle of growth, you know, to keep
them getting bigger, and the idea was something that they
called the Toyota Project Genesis, and the plan was to
attract buyers from a younger age bracket that um maybe
hopefully increased sales numbers in the United States because I
guess they had dropped off in the US quite a bit.
Um surprisingly so though, I mean that the second gen
was such a great car, um, But the biggest change
(19:54):
I think was maybe the switchover from the hard top
to the open open rooftop option, you know, like like
a true convertible top. Yes, yeah, yeah, I mean it
made it a true spider car, right, and when we
when we look at this, this is leading up to
our our big question here, which I'm trying not to
ask yet, so okay, spoiler though at the end, you
(20:16):
know a question we're gonna ask, all right. So, um,
the m R two Spider that's a great point. It's
distinguished from a lot of its competition because, of course,
you know, there's the m X five, there's the Honda
S two thousand and the box Ster. Um. It came
with a heated rear glass window standard and so at
the time that this came out, most convertible is actually
(20:37):
had a plastic rear one. Yeah, and those plastic windows
would turn yellow and they would there was a disaster.
I'm gonna be honest. Those plastic windows suck. They were terrible.
You couldn't see through me even when they were supposedly clear. Um.
I had an MG midget which should turn immediately yellow,
and it was just useless after that point. I mean,
I couldn't see through it. It was strictly counted on mirrors,
(20:58):
you know. If you had to top up so um
put in a glass window back. There was a big deal.
And you know, I know there are other convertibles that
did that, but maybe not convertibles this size in that class,
you know, for that price. Right as we know, this
stuff can be this stuff can be qualified. But I
will see. You know, I've got some pictures of the
third Gin in front of me. I you know, I
was playing you a little bit dismissively when I said,
(21:20):
you know, let's go some cubes from the box there.
But you're right, man, it's clearly I see where it's
coming from. It does. And tell you what, I just
want to say maybe one more quick thing about the
third Gin and then and then talk about a little
bit about racing, and then that's it, and you've got
that question you want to ask me. Um, all right,
I just want to say that, you know, they did
offer the sequential manual, which is kind of an interesting thing,
(21:40):
which um they had. They had, of course, the clutch
operated manual, and then they also had this sequential manual
which was you know, as you imagine, you just bumped
the shifts are up, you know, forward to up shift,
backward to downshift. UM. Interesting thing. And the thing is
it was unable to launch quite as quickly as the
clutch operated manual. So you'll find that, you know, zero
to sixty times, which were somewhere in the neighbor of
six point eight to eight point seven seconds. Man, that's
(22:02):
a big difference. That's a huge difference. Um, that's that
great fluctuation there in time is based on which manual
transmission you selected. And I don't even know if there
was an automatic transmission. I didn't even think to look
that up. I've just got the information about the manual
and then the sequential manual. One interesting thing about the
two thousand three uh sequential manual is the is the
(22:25):
steering wheel mounted buttons. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yes, you
could You could shift with with your thumbs really, which
is kind of cool too, so you didn't have to
use the stick in the middle. You could use your
thumbs to shift, which is UM. I don't know, I
guess maybe a progression towards the paddle shifters that we
see now. All kind of stuff is always and just
last two last quick things that I want to mention
(22:45):
and that's really it. And um there were some special editions.
There were like a thousand limited production V edition cars
that were sent to Japan. UM and the UK is
kind of a farewell to the m R two and
in the two thousand seven mill a year and uh,
they've got you know, just different appearance packages. I guess,
different color wheels and accents and things like that. Minor
body change. Yeah. The t F three hundred series was
(23:07):
something different they had. They had one hundred and eighty
two horsepower engine in that one, which is probably something
worth looking for. UM. And that's again a UK car,
so there were only three hundred of those produced. UM
and it was also available as a dealer installed package,
so you can install the package that would make a
t TE turbo. I guess yeah, yeah, you could make.
You could make one of these vehicles. I guess if
you were a customer that already had an m R
(23:29):
two and wanted to upgrade your m R two, so
the dealer could do that for you. And the last one,
and I think, you know it's a stepping back because
I forgot to mention this in the second gender part.
If you if you'll just give me this one little
grace period here, I'm sorry about that, but I think
we need to mention it. In motorsport, they competed in
LAMA and in m R two, and we need to
mention that. I'm that there was a vehicle that was
(23:52):
created by a team STARRED, which stands for Sigma Advanced
Research Development, and it was the Starred MC eight R
and it was seven was a modified lengthened version of
the UH the second generation m R two which was
built for GT racing by the Toyota Works team, which
is that SARD company I mentioned, and it was a
twin turbo version of the four leader Toyota V eight
(24:14):
engine then six hundred horsepower or fours for are Aussie friends,
and it was eligible for GT one category competition in
the LAMA series and only one m C eight road
car was ever built to meet the hamligation requirements for
But no one knows where that one m C eight
(24:34):
R is right now, there's so many mystery cars. Yeah,
no one knows where that that one vehicle is. And
and it also competed in the Japanese Grand Touring Championship
which is now the Super GT Series. But um, I
love that. I like to end on something like that.
You know, where's that m C eight R that we're
missing though, the one hamligation special like the one road
car that you can use. I don't know if they
probably know where the race car is, right, but they
(24:56):
don't know where the street car. So that's I'm doing
in air quotes, which is Japan barn find just waiting
to happen. Yes, let us know if you find it now, Scott,
I hate to say it, but we do have to go. Yeah,
we do have to go. How about this real quick
without any explanation? Okay, alright, so find a question. Okay,
if you could pick one generation? Which one first gen?
(25:18):
First gen only because of my personal experience with it
and I explained it, so sorry, but what's your first
your favorite? Rather? Um, you know man. Honestly, I would
have to say I'm still whirling with it, but I
think I think they're gen. They're gen see, so you
know what, we both picked cars that we had personal experience.
I wonder if we had ever been in a second
(25:38):
gen if we would have picked a second gen because
those seem to be a pretty awesome car. We're gonna
have people right into it, So you guys are crazy.
Second gens are clearly superior. We'd love to know what
you think about, especially if you have some experience with
a Mr too. Let us know. You can find Scott
and I on our website car stuff show dot com,
drop us line on Facebook and Twitter, give us ratings
on iTunes, and of course we want to hear your
(26:02):
car stories or ideas for a topic and an upcoming podcast.
Send your suggestions, comments, feedback, limrits of one line or
bar jokes to car stuff at discovery dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is how
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(26:28):
M
Go behind the wheel, under the hood and beyond with
car Stuff from house stuff works dot com previously on
car Stuff. Sorry, I just wanted to do that as
an introduction. Oh you had to. It's kind of like
the Lost Intro sor thanks. Yeah, that's what I was
(00:22):
going for. High work. Oh, thank you. My name is
Ben and I'm Scott and this is car Stuff. This
is the second part of our m R two episode
and probably the first thing that we should do here
is kick it off with a quick recap. Yeah, I
guess we talked about, well just started to get into
the first generation, but we talked about the concept vehicle,
(00:44):
how there was some um development going on in Japan
here in the United States as well in California and
some some X Formula one racers that were involved in
the development of this car. We had Dan Gurney driving
the thing at Willow Springs. Um. You know, it was
not really an tended to be a two seed sports
car to begin with. No, it was just intended to
be a fun drive that had affordable fuel economy. And
(01:08):
as they were thinking outside of the box, they sort
of stumbled into what would become the m R two
and this mid engine layout, and there was a little
bit of rumor about Lotus and Lotus Motor Cars and
very involvement in this whole thing. And you know, whether
it was not a whether or not it was a
throwaway design from Lotus Toyota picked up and that's another rumor.
Um man. There's just there was a lot going on
(01:30):
in that first episode. I think people should go back
and listen if you haven't yet, you know, don't listen
to them out of order, go back and check out
part one. I think we did a good job with
Part one. Yeah, I feel pretty good about it. There's
that one little design flaw in that episode, which is
we got twenty six minutes into the show and then
got to Generation one. That's true. Um So there's probably
(01:50):
there are probably a couple of things we could still
say about Jen one, right, definitely, Yeah, there's more about
Jen one, and let's uh, let's let's concentrate in this
episode and going through Gen one, two and three and
maybe some racing variants and uh, we'll talk a little
bit about kick cars, but there's all kinds of stuff.
So let's let's dig back into Gen one. And even
if this is repeating just a couple of things and
maybe maybe we're okay there, Okay. So we know that
(02:12):
the uh, the Gen one comes out in nineteen eighty
four in Japan, we know that it goes in eight five,
it's in UK, and it's in the US in February
of eighty five, and we know that the the first
gen goes all the way to U nineteen eighty nine.
(02:35):
That's that's right. Nine. They've got a supercharge version. Yeah,
there's a huge demenions a super charge engine that comes
about towards the end of the of the production of
of Gen one. UM. And this thing doesn't have any
kind of lap between our laps, rather between first Gen,
second Gen, third Gen. So it's gonna continuously run all
the way through two thousand seven. That we're gonna wrap
up with here today. Um. But you know, I want
(02:57):
to say that in four we mentioned a bunch of
awards in the line program. UM. I want to say
that in at its introduction, this car right out of
the box, it won the Car of the Year Japan award, UM,
which is a huge award over there. I mean that's
a that's the same thing as like you know, our
our motor trend car the Year award here in the
United States. UM, and I sure that you know, other
(03:17):
continents have their own versions of this so um it
was a big award, and it won other countless awards
you know along the way, and it was just a popular,
popular design, you know, between the press and the public
and everybody's opinion of this whole thing. Even uh, you know,
other automotive manufacturers were saying, what, you know, this is
a good design. There are competitor you know, because we
have you know, companies that are putting out things like
(03:38):
the CRX and the Fiarro and um with some of
the other ones, the Fiat X one nine, UM, I
can't remember the Ford XP. There were a lot of
different versions of Sharaco from Volks. Yeah. But when we
have a we have a good point here because what
we're building towards is the idea that this car was
almost universally lauded. Um. And one note that I think
(03:59):
we should put in there about Jen one is that,
uh Jen one had some early racing success to Toyota
Team Europe. This is probably one of my favorite stories
about it. They built customized why Body m R two
and they nicknamed it to To two D or two
two d um and they had it ready and set
(04:21):
to compete in the Group S category of the w
r C, so be going up against stuff like the
Audi Quatro and uh the Joe two of five. But
you know what happened. How you know what? They were
also thinking not only groups, they were also thinking Group
B with this thing, because you gotta remember Group B
was still around when they were developing this car, So
(04:44):
they were thinking, initially we're gonna get it into that
you know, in that one thousand horsepower range, that eight
hundred horsepower range. Every now imagine that in that type
and that sized vehicle, which such a light vehicle, all
wheel drive or whatever they do to those things. Remember
we tell we had they had whole Group B podcast,
which is really I think that was an entertaining podcast. Yeah.
I really really enjoyed doing the research for that one.
That was cool. So but they're they're talking, I'm sorry,
(05:06):
go ahead. It was just as a spoiler alert. Uh,
they never got to do the Group best category. Yeah,
they never got through to groups or Group B because
Group B was canceled in ninety six, which was right
about when they were kind of developing this. Because they
were developing it with this Twyota team Europe. UM in
six came around and there's no more series to racing,
so what are they gonna do? And the car was
(05:26):
kind of hidden away for a while and it was
brought out kind of as as a surprise really at
the two thousand six Goodwood Festival of Speed, where they
displayed this this black two D vehicle that they had
supposedly created for a Group B rally or Group S rally,
I guess because the Group B had gone away. UM
but the car weighed something like seven hundred pounds, so
(05:47):
it was lighter than a typical um Gen one m
R two, which was right around I think it was
in Japan it was two thousand, ninety five pounds and
in the United States was fifty UM a little heavier
in the U S. So UM in the they had
significantly lightened this vehicle, which again that's another lotus thing
that they would do, but race cars, so they're going
(06:07):
to do that. Anyways. UM had the transverse amounted four
cylinder turbocharge race engine, which you would expect, but get
this bend they thought. It was reported to produce as
much as seven hundred and fifty horsepower that to twenty
two D that they that they showed UM and they
were talking about a V six powered prototype. It was
also rumored to exist that has never ever seen the
(06:28):
light of day. No one in public has ever seen
this thing, but it's supposedly it's out there somewhere. It's
one of those automotive myths. Yeah, well, I don't know
if we can call it a myth, will be a legend,
maybe admit the legend, urban legend, legend. Friend of a
friend of a friend thinks they saw it one time.
Who knows someone who met a cousin at a party? Yeah, hey, um,
(06:49):
do you want to talk about uh, Jim one? Do
you want to move Jim too? Let's talk about this.
Let's wrap it up with with jen one here just quickly,
because I think there's there's still so much about this.
I mean, we've talked about, like you know, the the
angular lions and the design concept that comes from the
late seventies early eighties. Um, some of the other competitors
that we talked about Fiat, but we didn't talk about
the Lancia Stratos, which was another Group B competitor from
(07:12):
the day, which is another fantastic car. To compare it
to really, Lancia, they had a car, a car called
the Beta Monte Carlo, which I've never heard of, but
I'd love to see it now that I know that
it's compared to the m R two. UM. Man, just
there's so much ben I've got. I've got a lot
of stuff on on Gen one, and I wonder if
maybe maybe, I guess we should talk about going into
(07:33):
U Gen two at this Yeah, and let's let's go
ahead and let the cat out of the bag here. UM.
Gen one itself is an evolving, an evolving vehicle, because
it's not as though they just made the same car
for this many years and then moved to to the
mark two. Um. They introduced stuff over the course of
(07:55):
Gen one, and that includes things like reworking the transmission, UM,
putting in the T bar, which I knew it was
going to trip a lot of people out, but it
wasn't there in the beginning. UM. But they introduced it,
you know, literally to very early on. And then they've
got you know, we said they've got a supercharge. Uh.
They added some slight changes to the exterior, new lights
(08:18):
in the US and stuff like that. UM. One of
the big moves in eight seven they relocated the air
filter to the trunk and so they have continual improvements
leading into Mark two, which UM I just want to
say one thing about the supercharge engine because that was
such a cool thing to develop, because you know at
this at the time that they had done this and
(08:39):
they were using this uh, this this fift eighty seven
C C in line four engine. It was like well
six C C engine basically UM horsepower somewhere between anywhere
from like a hundred and twelve horse power in the
United States up to UM I think it was about
a hundred horse power in the UK, which was maybe
the highest. I think they had some kind of other
kind of UM. I don't know ratings that went up
(09:01):
to Japan, but I think they dropped that down to
one eighteen after uh, someone you know, really investigated. I
think they did probably one of those net to gross
rating types and that dropped it. So the one in
Japan was dropped down to one eighteen eventually for the
home market, which is not unusual that happens sometimes, UM,
but there was also this is strange in the home
(09:22):
market in Japan. They also offered one version that had
as low as eighty two horsepower, which is really strange,
and of course it was not very popular, didn't attract
a whole lot of buyers, so that quickly went away
as well. I guess though, I mean, that still makes
it economical. It's still a fun car to drive around
in Japan, you know, I guess it's I mean over state,
I mean, maybe oversimplifying this, but I always think of
(09:42):
it as being very tight driving situation. You know, it's
a small car, probably good in the city to drive around,
you know, commuting, small engine, probably a lot of a
lot less fuel used. I would think that'd be a benefit.
That's probably one of the primary one. And that's getting
back to what they wanted to do initially with this thing. Remember,
they were trying to make it very economical, but people
saw it as really a sports car because of that
mid engine layout. Performance times again you mentioned, were in
(10:04):
the eight second range quarter miles something like sixteen seconds,
so not that fast. But then they came out with
this supercharge version in and for the US market, and
the supercharger boosted up almost immediately to one hundred and
forty five horsepower men and zero to sixty times come
down to six point five maybe seven seconds at the most.
That's really moving along pretty quick. That's a that's a
(10:27):
pretty quick car. And it uh the way that was
designed means that it would still have some fuel economy
because it didn't It wasn't continual. It kicked in when
you needed it. Yeah, that's right. It had some kind
of strange belt driven design that was actuate magnetic clutch. Yeah,
which is kind of odd, I mean, but I mean,
now you can understand how it works if you if
(10:47):
you look up the diagrams away, this thing works, right. Um,
it's just that it's it's not used when you don't
need it, and the result is that you get increased
fuel economy from that from that design. So um, you know,
thinking about fuel economy all along the way. But still
one horsepower from that supercharge version. And I thought we
should at least give that a mention. And now let's
move on to w uh W twenty which they call
(11:08):
which they call it, um, we call it generation two. Yes,
and uh they knew that they would stick to that
mid engine layout for the second gen. Wildly popular, wildly popular,
one of the big selling points of the vehicle. So
the chief engineer in charge of this at the time
as a guy named Kasutoshi Arima, uh, second in command
(11:29):
of the original design, and they include they expanded their goal.
Remember originally they wanted fuel economy and a fun drive.
So they expanded this to say, let's have some more
refined style, which is gonna be important on man, did
they ever do that? Yeah? Uh, they They did have
some heavy influence on the look Scott, how would you
(11:51):
describe the change earlier? He said Gen one was kind
of origami. Yeah, this one is more I guess, streamline,
more less angular, it's more rounded, softer, it's softer in design,
I guess, and my softer I mean it's just smoothed
out because they did have a very angular lines before
it was very uh well, I don't know, brutish looking.
I don't know how to say it. And in the
(12:13):
second version it had more of a like a sports
car that you would typically like you would think of
like the Lotus Salon or something like that, you know,
very rounded, smooth, aerodynamic shape. And they also have a
bit more ambition as far as the price points for
this vehicle. To sure they upgraded the interior and they're
offering more engine options because this car was really well received.
(12:36):
People loved it and and the sales were up there,
and they knew that, you know, if they come out
with a faster, better version of this vehicle, that people
are going to buy it, and of course they did.
People loved it. You know, it gained a little weight.
It was like gained something like three hundred to four
inner pounds, uh three or fifty I think through four
inner pounds something like that. Um body styling is a
lot different, as you mentioned, but it was it was
being compared to cars like the Ferrari three eight and
(12:59):
if already three fifty five of the day, and that
says a lot because you know, I mean, here it is.
It's a Toyota that's supposed to be an economy car.
It's pretty pretty small, but it doesn't this mid engine
layout which is like a sports car. But the looks,
the appearance, it's like a much smaller Ferrari and people,
in fact, we're calling it the poor man's Ferrari, which
sure Ferrari hated that, and I think a lot of
people maybe thought, you know, that's kind of a strange
(13:21):
way to put it, but um, I don't it's kind
of it's kind of a cool thing to be to
be listed in the same same sentence as Ferrari. Right, Yeah,
I think it's a big win. I think so. And uh,
speaking of big winds, it's probably time to talk a
little bit about our sponsor. Let's tell you what. Let's
get back into our topic, which is we're we're in
(13:41):
the second gen and we're kind of in the middle
here we're talking about, um, some of the some of
the stuff that they offered on the second gen that
they didn't on the first. But there's so much Ben
and I do want to mention that, you know, in
the second gen, it underwent five revisions during the ten
years of production that this thing happened, you know, was
was being produced, so that everybody ten years from there
(14:03):
were five revisions and they call them and you can
kind of break these apart within that generation into type one, two, three, four, five, UM,
really kind of straight. And there's a lot of stuff
about these cars that you'll you'll find as you're reading
about them that you just never really knew unless you
own one. Maybe, UM stuff that I found out, like
I found out that all of the second generation m
R two's came with a staggered wheel set up where
(14:25):
the wheels and tires in the back were wider than
the ones in the front. I had no idea that
they were doing that. I know a lot of sports
cars do that. I mean big time sports cars, like
you know, some of the UM Corvettes and things like that.
Of course, yeah, very high end vehicles will do this,
and and I just had no idea that the second
gen m R two was doing that. And a lot
of a lot of the second gen changes revisions occur
(14:47):
in market specific ways. What we mean by that is,
for instance, UM the automatic transmission gets discontinued in the
United Kingdom in or they stopped making the vehicle entirely
in the United States. They do this, so these changes
(15:09):
are not necessarily global changes, although the generations of the
Mark two are are global. Yeah, that's right. And they
did things like they would make a spider version for
one particular market and they didn't for another market, like
a lot of the cars that went to the UK,
and I think it's we're markets m m R two spiders.
But the odd thing about this one is the toyot
(15:30):
didn't even put their name on the on those vehicles
because they knew that those roofs leaked on those vehicles,
right that that particular year, that particular make and model.
Whoever is doing it, they knew that the roofs leak,
and they don't want their names associated with it. So
there's these odd oddities to go along with it. And
one of the oddities I think in the last one
I'll mentioned on on um the second gen is uh
UM UH twyter Racing Development or TRD offered a special
(15:54):
body kit conversion that could for turning turning m R
two's into what they called a wide body TRD two
thousand GT replica. And this is so cool, ben if
you if you haven't seen one, you should take a
look at a photo one. Just do a keyword search online.
There are only thirty five of these things that were
completed by a company called Toyota Technocraft Limited. They're about
(16:15):
four inches wider with the body kit uh they had,
and and they all had additional engine, suspension, wheel, and
interior upgrades that were available, but they didn't have to
be selected. It wasn't like every one of them got
the same treatment. So they're all completely different. Every one
of them is different. Some some went for the full deal,
like everything to be changed. Others just selected one maybe
maybe just the body maybe yeah, or a combination the two.
(16:39):
They had power options that went up to five hundred
horsepower on these things, so if you did get the
engine upgrades, you can go up to five horsepower. And
had that really cool looking wide body kit. And I've
mentioned how I love wide body kits, so this is
right at my alley. I love these things. And there's
a register that you can kind of track some of
these things. But a lot of them, it finds out,
are kind of lost to time. I mean, some of
them are unknown. There were ten that came to the
(16:59):
United States. They just don't know where they went to.
Might be some barn finds. They're probably I would say
the Bulker in private collection, I would think so, or
maybe the who knows, Maybe the body kits ended up
on a shelf and someone's graduation. It's sitting there. But
you know what, that's also good because someone could apply
them later, so who knows. Yeah, that's nice. Okay wait wait, okay,
So well, let's also mentioned the mr J concept, right,
(17:22):
So when the MRJ concept comes out in nineteen five, Now,
remember we said that the Mark two goes to right,
so we know that they are already some cues that
they're going to change the game. And this third generation
when the MRJ concept comes out in again at the
Tokyo Motor Show, we've they've got a lot of commentators saying,
(17:46):
you know, uh nod in the wink, here we come here,
we're seeing the third generation uh MR two. They even
went so far as to predict when it would go
on sale and how much it would cost. But it
turns out that that was just the variant because they
also released in MR S in the MRS kind of
(18:07):
cracks me up. I always thinking I just see it
as as misses. So they released toy to release the
misses in Japan, but MRS is the is the code
dame for it, and and everywhere else in um well
actually not everywhere else but in in the United States
was called the m R two Spider, and then it
was called the m R two Roadster in Europe and
that kind of makes sense. And yeah, and m R
S stands for Midship Runabout Sports. So anyhow, the this concept,
(18:31):
this roadster, and I'm glad we brought that up, is
something that the chief engineer at the time, Tadashi Nakagawa
said that, uh, he was building to break the cycle
of growth, he called it, and uh one of his
issues was that there's this tendency which we've seen in everything,
even the Mini, for successive vehicle generations to get bigger
(18:53):
and bigger and bigger. Yeah, and that's definitely what was
gonna get gonna happen, I think with the with the
third generation, if they didn't make a dramatic change, and
that's what did. Um. When you look at the third generation,
which was again two thousand seven when we ended production,
when Japan end of production, that we ben um, you
and I, well, that the competition for this type of vehicle,
(19:13):
if you want to think about it this way, the
Honda S two thousand, the mas M X five, Miata,
and the Porsche Boxer, which, by the way, I gotta
say that the the m R two third generation, to me,
this looks like a Porsche Boxer. I mean it looks
like a smaller Boxer really, so you can kind of
think of it that way. But um, the idea was
it was a different approach. I mean you mentioned this already,
(19:33):
the cut the cycle of growth, you know, to keep
them getting bigger, and the idea was something that they
called the Toyota Project Genesis, and the plan was to
attract buyers from a younger age bracket that um maybe
hopefully increased sales numbers in the United States because I
guess they had dropped off in the US quite a bit.
Um surprisingly so though, I mean that the second gen
was such a great car, um, But the biggest change
(19:54):
I think was maybe the switchover from the hard top
to the open open rooftop option, you know, like like
a true convertible top. Yes, yeah, yeah, I mean it
made it a true spider car, right, and when we
when we look at this, this is leading up to
our our big question here, which I'm trying not to
ask yet, so okay, spoiler though at the end, you
(20:16):
know a question we're gonna ask, all right. So, um,
the m R two Spider that's a great point. It's
distinguished from a lot of its competition because, of course,
you know, there's the m X five, there's the Honda
S two thousand and the box Ster. Um. It came
with a heated rear glass window standard and so at
the time that this came out, most convertible is actually
(20:37):
had a plastic rear one. Yeah, and those plastic windows
would turn yellow and they would there was a disaster.
I'm gonna be honest. Those plastic windows suck. They were terrible.
You couldn't see through me even when they were supposedly clear. Um.
I had an MG midget which should turn immediately yellow,
and it was just useless after that point. I mean,
I couldn't see through it. It was strictly counted on mirrors,
(20:58):
you know. If you had to top up so um
put in a glass window back. There was a big deal.
And you know, I know there are other convertibles that
did that, but maybe not convertibles this size in that class,
you know, for that price. Right as we know, this
stuff can be this stuff can be qualified. But I
will see. You know, I've got some pictures of the
third Gin in front of me. I you know, I
was playing you a little bit dismissively when I said,
(21:20):
you know, let's go some cubes from the box there.
But you're right, man, it's clearly I see where it's
coming from. It does. And tell you what, I just
want to say maybe one more quick thing about the
third Gin and then and then talk about a little
bit about racing, and then that's it, and you've got
that question you want to ask me. Um, all right,
I just want to say that, you know, they did
offer the sequential manual, which is kind of an interesting thing,
(21:40):
which um they had. They had, of course, the clutch
operated manual, and then they also had this sequential manual
which was you know, as you imagine, you just bumped
the shifts are up, you know, forward to up shift,
backward to downshift. UM. Interesting thing. And the thing is
it was unable to launch quite as quickly as the
clutch operated manual. So you'll find that, you know, zero
to sixty times, which were somewhere in the neighbor of
six point eight to eight point seven seconds. Man, that's
(22:02):
a big difference. That's a huge difference. Um, that's that
great fluctuation there in time is based on which manual
transmission you selected. And I don't even know if there
was an automatic transmission. I didn't even think to look
that up. I've just got the information about the manual
and then the sequential manual. One interesting thing about the
two thousand three uh sequential manual is the is the
(22:25):
steering wheel mounted buttons. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Yes, you
could You could shift with with your thumbs really, which
is kind of cool too, so you didn't have to
use the stick in the middle. You could use your
thumbs to shift, which is UM. I don't know, I
guess maybe a progression towards the paddle shifters that we
see now. All kind of stuff is always and just
last two last quick things that I want to mention
(22:45):
and that's really it. And um there were some special editions.
There were like a thousand limited production V edition cars
that were sent to Japan. UM and the UK is
kind of a farewell to the m R two and
in the two thousand seven mill a year and uh,
they've got you know, just different appearance packages. I guess,
different color wheels and accents and things like that. Minor
body change. Yeah. The t F three hundred series was
(23:07):
something different they had. They had one hundred and eighty
two horsepower engine in that one, which is probably something
worth looking for. UM. And that's again a UK car,
so there were only three hundred of those produced. UM
and it was also available as a dealer installed package,
so you can install the package that would make a
t TE turbo. I guess yeah, yeah, you could make.
You could make one of these vehicles. I guess if
you were a customer that already had an m R
(23:29):
two and wanted to upgrade your m R two, so
the dealer could do that for you. And the last one,
and I think, you know it's a stepping back because
I forgot to mention this in the second gender part.
If you if you'll just give me this one little
grace period here, I'm sorry about that, but I think
we need to mention it. In motorsport, they competed in
LAMA and in m R two, and we need to
mention that. I'm that there was a vehicle that was
(23:52):
created by a team STARRED, which stands for Sigma Advanced
Research Development, and it was the Starred MC eight R
and it was seven was a modified lengthened version of
the UH the second generation m R two which was
built for GT racing by the Toyota Works team, which
is that SARD company I mentioned, and it was a
twin turbo version of the four leader Toyota V eight
(24:14):
engine then six hundred horsepower or fours for are Aussie friends,
and it was eligible for GT one category competition in
the LAMA series and only one m C eight road
car was ever built to meet the hamligation requirements for
But no one knows where that one m C eight
(24:34):
R is right now, there's so many mystery cars. Yeah,
no one knows where that that one vehicle is. And
and it also competed in the Japanese Grand Touring Championship
which is now the Super GT Series. But um, I
love that. I like to end on something like that.
You know, where's that m C eight R that we're
missing though, the one hamligation special like the one road
car that you can use. I don't know if they
probably know where the race car is, right, but they
(24:56):
don't know where the street car. So that's I'm doing
in air quotes, which is Japan barn find just waiting
to happen. Yes, let us know if you find it now, Scott,
I hate to say it, but we do have to go. Yeah,
we do have to go. How about this real quick
without any explanation? Okay, alright, so find a question. Okay,
if you could pick one generation? Which one first gen?
(25:18):
First gen only because of my personal experience with it
and I explained it, so sorry, but what's your first
your favorite? Rather? Um, you know man. Honestly, I would
have to say I'm still whirling with it, but I
think I think they're gen. They're gen see, so you
know what, we both picked cars that we had personal experience.
I wonder if we had ever been in a second
(25:38):
gen if we would have picked a second gen because
those seem to be a pretty awesome car. We're gonna
have people right into it, So you guys are crazy.
Second gens are clearly superior. We'd love to know what
you think about, especially if you have some experience with
a Mr too. Let us know. You can find Scott
and I on our website car stuff show dot com,
drop us line on Facebook and Twitter, give us ratings
on iTunes, and of course we want to hear your
(26:02):
car stories or ideas for a topic and an upcoming podcast.
Send your suggestions, comments, feedback, limrits of one line or
bar jokes to car stuff at discovery dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, is how
stuff works dot com. Let us know what you think,
send an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
(26:28):
M
CarStuff News
Hosts And Creators
Scott Benjamin
Ben Bowlin
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