Japan is home to some very interesting developments of initially uninteresting cars. The Toyota Starlet is one such example, as it’s a honest, humdrum hatchback with no real styling effort seemingly undertaken at any point, except for the unapologetically jazzy seat trim.
But give it seriously heavy-looking body cladding and available four-wheel-drive, and the car is transformed into a camping-themed soft roader in an instant.
The Remix is so 1990s I should be writing this on a CRT monitor and a 56k modem at best.
Inside, there are sport seats and shiny yellow switchgear, without forgetting the automatic transmission as so often brandished in Japanese promotional material. These are city cars, and they rarely need a 5-speed shifter on the home market. Over here, I don’t think the Starlet was even available with A/T.
“I love camping”, declares the spare wheel cover.
The Starlet in non-sporty guise was available with two flavours of 1.3-litre engines, and the Glanza turbo version had roughly 50-60 horsepower more than the base units.
Still, the Remix sold – at least this particular car was shot by Wikimedia user Tennen-Gas.
Japanese Soft-Roader Weekend Edition: Toyota Starlet Remix
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Crazy how out-of-place those two yellow knobs look. Wonder how the colour looks like after 20+ years of use?
A friend of mine had the ordinary Starlet of this generation in high school. It was all things Toyota, but also highly tossable. Very good for forest gravel roads, too – even without 4wd and camping theme. -
tire cover text reminds me of this
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Our sadly deceased neighbour, Phylis, had one of these in that orangey yellow. A used JDM import, it’s one of few of this model I’ve ever seen here. Hers was bright orange, (much more orange than the yellowy in those pictures), with the grey lower cladding and since she left it parked outside in our harsh sunlight the paint had gone quite chalky. I offered to cut it back and repolish it, and it came up like new and then stayed that way for the next year. I guess it had never been cleaned properly in it’s life up to then and it had taken fifteen years or so for the paint to oxidise to that extent. Unfortunately she had a heart condition and suffered a fatal heart-attack about two years ago. We helped her daughter clean out the house and I did my polishing again, and this time cleaned the interior which was covered in dog hairs from her two dogs- the reason she’d brought the car in the first place, so she could walk the dogs at some of our remoter beaches.
Again the car came up like new and the plasticky interior did as well. It took a roll of tape to do it, but those fabrics that look like they’re made from mouse fur are very hardwearing.
The car cleaned up so well, that her daughter decided to keep it, (and the dogs too, to our relief) and I still see it being driven around. And it’s still shiny.-
Good to hear there’s a happy ending!
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If I used one of this as a teenager I would have been bullied
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Looks like 2/3 of a Subaru Outback (hood/grille/lights at least)
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