Junkyard Find: 1984 Toyota Cressida
Since nearly all of my Junkyard Finds are in Colorado and California, both places where the Toyota Cressida sold well, we get quite a few of these Lexus-precursor luxury Toyotas in this series. We’ve seen this ’80, this ’82 this ’84, this ’86 wagon, this ’87, this ’89, this ’90, and this ’92 in this series so far (plus some bonus Michael Bay Edition Tokyo Taxis, courtesy of Crabspirits), and my recent trip to Los Angeles (during which I shot this optioned-up, rust-free ’82 Subaru BRAT) gives us this once-gorgeous two-tone ’84.
There was a time when an Alpine cassette deck was an irresistible target for smash-your-window-and-tear-up-your-dash thieves. Now the junkyard can’t get 10 bucks for them, in spite of the endorsement in an Ice-T song.
Not even 200,000 miles on the clock.
This transmission mode selector is the switch at the heart of controlling my Junkyard Boogaloo Boombox. I already have a spare, so I didn’t feel the need to buy this one.
The brown leather has held up fairly well for a non-coddled Southern California car.
Toyota lost something when it went away from model-specific hood ornaments.
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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This site really needs to do something about its spam filter. It blocks everything regardless. I think I am just going to quit after this post. My friend had the same year Cressida as this and it went well over 200k before the Michigan winters did the body in. The engine and drive train were still good and I remember he had very few issues with it. Great cars and one that put the Japanese manufacturers on top.
I always liked these Cressidas along with the Maximas and Mazda 929s which were very good cars for the time and lead the way for Lexus, Infinity, and Acura. The Big 3 had become more into rebadging and into cheapening their brands. My best friend had a 1984 Cressida in dark grey with a grey velour interior which was a really nice car and extremely reliable. Michigan winters with the tin worm working its magic lead to my friend had to scrap it even though it was still running strong after almost 300k miles.