The lasting appeal of Toyota

It’s funny how the ever-turning wheel of time comes full circle, and the things which were so not cool back in the day, now have a certain vintage or retro appeal.

My father-in-law also once drove a Cressida: a 1.8 LS in white, with horrible chocolate brown draylon-type upholstery. It was just the sort of car you’d expect a Pretoria civil servant to drive (and he was working for the Department of Transport back then).

Even though I appreciated Japanese cars – I learned to drive in a Datsun 1200 and I owned a 1964 Datsun Fairlady sports car – I thought the Toyotas were gruesome. When I moved from Harare to Windhoek and had a company soft loan available for a car, I almost bought a Corolla (one of the first front-wheel-drive ones), but the “uncool” image of Toyota put me off. So I bought an Opel Kadett. And it was such a piece of junk I still regret that decision to this day.

Cressidas did get a bit more appealing over the years – particularly the last one, powered by a great 3.0 litre, twin-cam 24-valve engine. Sadly that combination was not as awesome on the road as it was on paper.

One thing about Cressidas which nobody can deny – and which is why so many of them are still around – is that they simply do not break.

The Camry, a big frontwheel-drive saloon, was a suitable successor to the rear-drive Cressida, but these days if you want a big-booted car from the Toyota stable, you’ve got to go to the Lexus luxury brand. And that’s not cheap.

Personally, I think there’s still a market for a big Toyota saloon in this country – where we travel vast distances, at serious speed, with large loads. A RAV4 SUV or even the rear-wheeldrive Rush family SUV are not quite the same. – Brendan Seery