I love cool cars/vehicles, but I hate driving and owning them (too much money and liability). I’ve spent most of my adult life living in NYC and committing via bike, but I did briefly live in DC for a few years and needed a vehicle there. Decided I’d get something old and cool, so I found me a '95 Toyota Land Cruiser originally imported from Australia (and ended up in a Virginia warehouse somehow).
Despite my hate for driving and owning a vehicle, I certainly loved the heck out of my Land Cruiser! So many cool features and such great engineering. And being from Australia, it was Right Hand Drive, which always resulted in impromptu convos or thumbs up while sitting at stop lights. I’ve never been engaged more with strangers over a car than when I’d drive around in my Land Cruiser.
I ended up selling it when I left DC. Didn’t need it any longer. But mainly because I’m not a mechanic or well versed in cars enough to hunt down replacement parts for an old imported RHD Land Cruiser. Ended up being more work and money than I wanted to manage. Now I’m happily back on my bike which doesn’t require gas or repairs or insurance haha.
It treated me well though, and always grateful that I was briefly a Land Cruiser owner.
Nice! Yeah, I mainly got it because of its reputation for reliability and usefulness, and it certainly lived up to that. But being almost 30yrs old, it was definitely not an easy or comfortable machine to actually drive on-road. Thing’s mad heavy and not meant for driving above 65mph.
Driving on the highway was the worst…unless it was raining or snowing. Then I was cruising past everyone effortlessly. Never felt more safe driving in snow or rain than in my Land Cruiser.
Hope Toyota starts making the GR86 in something besides green again soon
Edit: well maybe I will have to get a BRZ instead - literally 90% of the GR86s available within 100 miles are thegreen Hakone edition with leather and crap I don’t want, which also means a BRZ would be like $10k cheaper
I came across a 2002 toyota camry with a deeply worn exterior that was sitting in a relatives driveway and everyone claimed it was the best car and deeply coveted.
Now i’m like… do I need a camry? I never thought of this option before.
achi mama, I finally replaced my 2007 Toyota Battle Yaris hatchback (a partially murdered out Yaris) with another mildly warm hatch, a 2018 Toyota Corolla iM. it’s a weird one for the US; they only did this “iM” for one year before redesigning the Corolla hatchback in 2019, so it’s actually just a Euro/JP (manufactured in Japan) Toyota hatchback that they sold as a “Corolla” but that has no Corolla badging on it whatsoever. anyway, I adore this thing (especially with hatchbacks becoming less common in the US). feels downright luxurious having all these fancy amenities I was missing out on (but while still having a physical button option for just about everything) – I guess I just gotta buy a Toyota hatchback once every 17 years I’ll be good to go
