1971 Toyota Crown Custom Wagon

Known in Japan as "the Whale" this Crown Custom Wagon was spotted down at the SoDo importer of Japanese cars designed for use in Japan. Most of their vehicles are from early 90s, as cars that don't meet American standards for smog and safety are eligible for import when 25 years old.

* Love the double-grill look and the way-up-front side mirrors.
* This car has a manual transmission of course, so if you've ever had a hankering to drive a left-handed three-speed column shifter, here's your chance.

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1984 Toyota Camry - I Come to Bury Detroit, Not to Praise It

Look around on any busy city street. How many Toyota Camrys do you see? Half a dozen maybe? More? Some of them twenty and even thirty years old? I can remember when seeing a thirty-five year old car in the city was a strange occurrence. Toyota, Honda and Nissan changed that. Probably the only Camry I don't see every day is the very first model, pictured below. Camry has been the best-selling car in America for fifteen years running and no end in sight. Back in the day, Ford tried frantically to move enough Tauruses to keep that title; now they no longer care. Toyota may have sold 178,000 Camrys in the first half of 2018, but Ford sold 451,000 F-150 pickups.

* This Camry is a small, very basic economy car. Funny how every car model seems to get bigger and more luxurious the longer it remains in production. The original owner opted for an automatic transmission, but this is the base model and it does not have the nice rims and two-tone paint job seen on the Camry LE.
* Say, what the heck is a "camry"? According to Toyota, "Camry" comes from the Japanese word kanmuri for "Crown". OK then. I mean, Toyota, already has a model called Crown.

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Suddenly, It's 1974!

Which is the best set of wheels to get you home in time to watch President Nixon resign? This 1973 Dodge Dart Swinger has the cool Rallye wheels, unusual on the inexpensive Dart. On the other hand, these Datsun B210 four doors with their 1.4 liter engines kept you from running out of gas during the recent oil crisis.

Note the last picture below appears to show a Scion all the way on the right. That's an illusion; it's 1974! Let's get Led Zeppelin tickets!

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