The JDM crowd wasn't the first group of car nuts to believe that the grass is always greener on the other side of an ocean. For example, did you know that the original Lexus SC400 could be had in Japan as a twin-turbo inline-six Toyota Soarer? Or that Mazda made a coupe that had a never-seen-in-America triple-rotor engine? And surely you've heard of a little car called the Skyline GT-R, which spent 20 years as a PlayStation fantasy before arriving in our shores in R35 guise.Ī true JDM enthusiast believes that Japanese cars are only authentically experienced when they are equipped to Japanese home-market spec.
You can blame a lot of this on the Gran Turismo series of games, which opened the eyes of many car-crazy young people to the cool, hot, and just plain weird stuff that the Japanese manufacturers don't have the capacity or desire to ship over here. JDM, of course, stands for Japanese Domestic Market, and it also stands for a very popular automotive subculture in North America.Ī true JDM enthusiast believes that Japanese cars are only authentically experienced when they are equipped to Japanese home-market spec.
That's because a significant number of FR-S owners have purchased kits that replaces their Scion logos with the "proper" JDM equivalents. If you're a keen car spotter, chances are that you've already seen an FR-S with Toyota badges on the road. Starting next year, we'll have that chance, as the departing Scion FR-S is replaced at Toyota dealers with a face-lifted, Toyota-badged 86. Insofar as the original Hachi-Roku AE86 Corolla GT-S was the inspiration for the platform, however, most of us would prefer to have our little Toyota RWD coupe with the proper badges. This has always annoyed me, even though at the time I understood and sympathized with the reasons for giving the most youth-oriented product in Toyota's recent history to Scion.
Read our ultimate guide, How to Import a Car from Japan.Ĭan you make this guide better? Are you a huge fan of the Altezza? If so, please contact us.Here in the United States, we called them "the twins," but the Scion FR-S and Subaru BRZ have always had a third, and rather enviably badged, sibling: the Toyota 86 sold in Japan and elsewhere. Rinse and dry before reassembling the headlight. Once you have disassembled the headlights, clean the interior with automotive soap or headlight cleaner and a sponge or lint-free cloth to avoid scratching the headlight. How to clean the interior of Toyota Altezza headlights Let’s have a look at the cheapest and most expensive Altezza’s offered on Of course, you can find some for as little as $3,300, but we don’t recommend buying the cheapest of any model unless you are ready to throw a bunch of money at it, but there are some diamonds in the rough out there. This is one car that you can get a pristine example for around $10,000. Owners with the automatic transmission do not report having this issue.
Many owners have complained that the clutch/transmission develops a bit of a “clunking” as these cars age.
Alternatively, the Altezza’s quipped with the 1G-FE engine seemed to be spared of this problem.Īlthough many purists say that a manual transmission is a must, that may not be the case here. Cars with the 3S-GE engine were well known to have pumps fail prematurely. The best thing to do is to get them inspected regularly to avoid any unwanted surprises.Īs with many other cars, the timing belt needs to be replaced every 80k-100k km (48k-62k miles) in order to avoid catastrophic engine failure due to it being an interference engine.ĭepending on the engine you have the power steering pump can be another weak part under the hood. There are numerous posts about how these fail prematurely, especially in countries where the roads aren’t the greatest. Lower ball joins seem to be the Achilles tendon of the Altezza. As this car is getting up there in age, they have been well documented, and owners have stated what the most common issues are with these cars. Via wikimedia Common Issues with Toyota AltezzaĪs we mentioned in the pros and cons section, the Altezza is not immune to certain issues. Small engines can be quite undersized for the car.