Junkyard Find: 1989 Toyota Cressida
You rarely see first-gen Cressidas, such as the junked ’80 I found last week these days; it seems that the third-gen (84-88) models make up the bulk of survivor Cressidas in North America. Fourth-gen examples— like this one I spotted in a Los Angeles self-service yard— are about as common as Crowns.
Toyota’s reputation for reliability wasn’t all that strong when the first-gen Cressidas hit the highway (we often forget that Malaise Era Toyotas were actually quite flaky by modern standards, though they held together somewhat better than most of the Detroit and European competition back then), but that had all changed by the time today’s Junkyard Find rolled out of the showroom. Why, then, did Cressida sales fall apart by the early 90s? Blame Lexus!
Potent and smooth as the 7M-GE was, this car was really a Supra under the skin and luxury-car shoppers— who had come to associate the Toyota name with downscale Corollas and Celicas— knew it. Meanwhile, the second-gen Camry was cheaper, roomier, and less thirsty. Sandwiched in the ever-narrowing space between the LS400 and Camry, the Cressida was gone by the 1992 model year.
Leather! Luxury! I’m going to keep my eyes open for these things on the street.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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You're greatly exaggerating the "rareness" of the MX83. They're not difficult to find if you are looking for one, and they're certainly far more prevelant than any Crown.
Ahhh, the MX83. I had an 89' that I sold earlier this year. I did a Nissan VG30ET swap with a 5 speed into it and tuned to 420hp (search YouTube). It was a real pleasure to drive. One of the funnest cars I've owned. The stock 7M was a head gasket victim. When that happens and it's not taken care of promptly, coolant will sit in the cylinders and rot the thing out. The JZX81 MarkII and Chaser siblings in Japan are very popular drift cars, so these have taken off here as well. You always find them in non-running form, but pristine interior and body, and around 80k miles. Around here in the midwest, nobody just throws away a car like that, so they pop up from time to time. I would imagine in Californy, where they don't let you have cars sit around not running, they've all been crushed.