(Submitted by Gordon Turner)
Let’s take a trip back to the mid-1990s, when gas was cheaper, the world looked brighter and a young fella was getting ready to buy his first new car…
In 1994 I was a 31-year-old school teacher in Southern California with (finally!) enough scratch to buy a decent car. Since moving to the Golden State in 1990, I’d suffered through an oil-devouring VW Rabbit, and later a Geo Metro that was rapidly on its way to automotive heaven. The question was: What do I get? I wanted something cool lookin’ (For the ladies!) as well as affordable, practical and with good MPG. Hmmmmm…
As a young bachelor, I immediately began focusing on cars like the Mitsubishi Eclipse, Honda Civic Del Sol and the Mazda MX-3. If you recall, these are examples of an extinct species of automobile, the Japanus sportus coupeus, which were gussied up economy cars that looked, well, “sporty” (Oh yeah! For the ladies!). Such creatures would virtually disappear from our shores by the late 90s, done in by poor sales and an ever-rising Yen. But that’s a story for another time…
At any rate, I passed on the Del Sol (it shook like Elvis in Vegas) and the MX-3 (crappy rear visibility), and decided to buy a Toyota Paseo. The Paseo, a sleek-looking coupe based on the pedestrian Tercel platform, had a 1.5-liter engine that put out 93 horsies and came with the following options: sunroof, A/C, automatic and a cassette player (you want to be able to blast your new Spin Doctors tape, doncha?). It was known as the Cynos in Japan and other parts of the world.
Now, the only thing was to find a dealer, buy the car and drive off into the sunset. So I took myself down to Chuck Obershaw Toyota (“the biggest dealer in the Inland Empire”!), gave them 14k and walked out with my first brand-new car. WOW! A car that didn’t slurp oil, wasn’t a hand me down from my dad and had a functioning engine! Yeah! My first Paseo was white, with auto, a/c, and a cassette player (For the ladies!) Other options? Who cares?
Sadly, tragedy struck about a year later, when an uninsured auto mechanic rear ended my baby and totaled it. Fortunately, I was able to replace it with a teal model with the same (lack of) options. That car shared the following adventures with me:
Living overseas, in Japan (My father, bless his soul, took care of the car for me.)
Various lady friends
Going to graduate school
Becoming a librarian and moving from Oregon to Texas
Every auto-biography must have a final chapter, and mine ended this past spring. My ol’ reliable Toyota developed a nasty idling illness that even several hundred dollars couldn’t cure. Clearly it was time to get rid of the ol’ gal; I replaced her with a brand new Honda Civic, which was as superior to my Paseo as it itself had been to my Geo Metro. I guess things stay the same but keep changing (or something like that, I can’t really remember). I took her down to Carmax (fortunately she didn’t stall when the folks there test drove her) and sold her. Still, there’s a final footnote to my Toyota tale….
Recently, and out of curiosity I searched my local Craigslist for Toyota Paseos for sale and, lo and behold, found mine. Looks like Carmax flipped my old ride to a local dealer, who was now advertising it as a “Hard-to-find model. Clean title and actual miles. One-owner Vehicle. A/C is cold!! Very clean interior. Very cheap on gas. Perfect first car.” They also took a whole bunch of nice pics, which I’ve used for this article. Good thing, since I didn’t have any handy.
Yes, it was a perfect first car for me, and hopefully it will be the same for someone else.
Farewell, last of the sporty coupes, and Godspeed. May your new owner treat you with the same respect as I did.
I test-drove one of these in 1993ish and liked it. Way tighter and zippier and cornerier (is that a word?) than my ’89 Beretta. But my Chevy had it waaaaaay beat on room, so I stayed where I was.
Nice story! I LOL’d at the Spin Doctors reference. Also, you really had me fooled with those pics – I thought they had been taken a decade or more ago! The thin paint on my ’06 Mazda shows a lot more wear than this car does.
How cool to get to see your old car again. I remember 1994 as well, as I was also considering another car. But I was at the polar opposite end of the spectrum from you – married, 3 kids in carseats, and in need of room, room, room. I waited a year and bought a 1 year old 94 Ford Club Wagon.
So, as you can imagine, cars like your Paseo from that era were in kind of an automotive blind spot for me. That kind of car had migrated to irrelevance to my station in life at the time, so it is good to get to know one a little. Thanks for your well-told tale.
You had a really neat first new car! It will always be special to you.
This car looks similar to my first new car, an ’89 Toyota Corolla SR5. The 1.6 4AF engine used a carburetor, the last year for that, and it had a 5 speed stick. I was a newly commissioned USMC 2nd Lieutenant and drove the hell out of my first new car all around Quantico, VA, Camp Lejeune, NC, several road trips home to Atlanta, GA (my mom stored it for me during the Gulf War 90-91), then as a civilian onto Harrisonburg, VA and then Kingman, AZ. By 1994 in Kingman, I was bitten by the SUV craze and sold my first new car to a co-worker and bought a new ’94 Mazda Navajo (Ford Explorer). After selling the Corolla, my co-worker moved to California and took the car with him, so who knows where it is now?
I’ve owned several vehicles since then, but that first new car is the one that I’ll have the fondest memories of.
Worked with a blonde bartender who had one of these. Once, on the Forth of July, she was shocked to discover that England does not celebrate it, and made sure all the patrons knew it…typical Paseo buyer if there ever was one
This was a popular class of car back then that is all but extinct today. Of the three you mentioned the most interesting to me was the MX-3 with that tiny, tiny V6 engine option.
You took great care of your Paseo, it looks new in the pics. I love that it has a proper dead pedal for the driver and check out that cool Supra style 3-piece rear spoiler. Both take away from the chick car image that these cars used to have.
Why is there a sort of carpet over the dash ?
My next-door neighbour has a white Paseo and needs a replacement outside handle for the L/H door. If these cars are common in the US maybe I should check American ebay.
That’s a dash cover. It protects the dash from sun damage and cuts down on shiny dash glare. Not uncommon in the southwest.
Another car NewZealand is littered with the Cynos/Paseo twins.
The Toyota Sera gullwing car was also based on the Tercel wasn’t it? I’ve seen a couple of those but I’m not sure they would last 18 years as well as Gordon’s Paseo
I would love to know where my first car, a 1974 Camaro Type LT is. After I traded her on a 1980 Mustang 2.3 (fuel mileage was key!) it was the last I saw her as I left the Ford dealership. Your first car always has a special place in a young drivers heartl. And as the other folks have already stated, you took exceptional care of your car to have survived this long looking so good.
I love the teal blue. Like the GM LeMans blue of the 60’s, it’s a timeless color and makes a car stand out all the more.
Nice tale! I found out what happened to my ’92 Ford Ranger recently when after months with the Mazda, I was going through papers, and found the sellers report on it, and the VIN, so I typed it in, sure enough, S Tacoma Honda did what they said they’d do, flip it to a used car lot.
It went to a buy here, pay here lot and it was sold! Don’t know how much or when, or what they did with it, as Google search referenced the page, but when I clicked on the link, it had been removed, and the page simply said, it was sold.
It was a good truck for me at the time, now my little Mazda Protege5 serves me more than fine these days.
I had the rare 1997 Paseo CONVERTIBLE. It was a little jewel, but being the only Toyota l have ever had, l was surprised at the constant power window failures, fading paint, water-filling headlamps, and crude top. Toyota quality?