Toyota MR2: Fear the Robot Eagle!
Members of the MR2 Jihad generally refer to the creature on the hood emblems of their cars as the “Screaming Eagle,” but I say it’s a stoic, tight-beaked Robot Eagle. I hadn’t paid much attention to this emblem, since it’s quite small and mounted on a car snout that sits quite close to the pavement, but then a 24 Hours of LeMons team composed of Toyota engineers created a gigantic Pontiac Trans Am-style decal version for the hood of their MR2. Robot Eagle!
The dragon (or boat, or dragon boat, or whatever it is) emblem on the early Celica was cool, but you won’t see this creature on the domes of the Sakichi Toyoda Memorial Mars Base in the year 2077. The MR2 Robot Eagle, on the other hand, will be plastered all over future galactic installations.
Note the mechanical, right-angle-based grasping talons, which enable the Robot Eagle to dock with its charging station when it isn’t squeezing the giblets out of the wimpy horse on the Porsche emblem.
Imagine the meetings in Tokyo, during the design phase of the original MR2, as variations of the Robot Eagle were shown to the Toyota suits. Did the original have laser eyes and bolt heads on the wings, only to be watered down by conservative salarymen? We may never know.
LeMons racers have always loved the Pontiac Screamin’ Chicken, seen here as the extremely frightening Bob Ross Screamin’ Chicken on the hood of a fourth-gen Firebird. Other teams simply buy knockoff Screamin’ Chicken decals and slap them on their Saturn SC2s and Nissan 240SXs.
I think it’s time for the Robot Eagle to challenge the Screamin’ Chicken for icon status. Who will fight for the glory of the Robot Eagle?
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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In the empire of the Robot Eagle, we all wear gas masks, black trench coats and oversized gloves. We'll live in borg-like zigarats, eat food in pill form (if ever), and only exist as the marauders of a horrifying new future. Long live Robot Eagle.
I always loved that emblem even if it was a bit Pontiac derivative. It's just as awesome as the "TWIN CAM 16" sticker on the left tail light. I don't know if I would plaster a giant sticker of it on my own MR2 but it would make for a wicked garage poster.