The Toyota MR2 is Decadent and Depraved

by Tjames Madison

2001-12-21 04:29:40

Laughable Technology

It's ugly and weird and I won't ever set foot in one again.

I drove a Toyota MR2 today. '86 or thereabouts, one of those real creepy looking old ones that look like a doorstopper. What a weirdo sled. First off, it's about three inches off the ground, and I kept hitting the rearview mirror with my head when I got into it. Then, it's got this big rectangular boxlike thing that goes front to back down the middle of the car (it's a mid-engined car, so everything is in the wrong place, and the boxlike thing is actually the gas tank and you get to sit right next to it as you drive around. Wheee!) And the shifter is like up around chest level when you're sitting behind the wheel, and it's sort of angled so you can shift it from the awkward position you're grabbing it at. And sitting there, three inches off the ground, reaching up to shift, resting your arm on a giant gasoline bomb, it feels more like you're driving a TIE Fighter from the Star Track than a real car.

And also it's hard as fuck to steer an MR2, not just because it's rear-wheel driven, but also because Toyota just wanted to piss people off. And it also stalls all the time and you have to mash on the gas pedal just to get it out of idle when you get off the clutch.

Another terrible problem with this car is that it seems like it should go real fast, since it's pointy and reasonably sleek-looking (and has all sorts of Special Buttons and Levers on the inside,) but with its puny, completely inadequate 118-HP engine, it plods around like an overweight Chevette. People in inappropriately large Dodge Ram trucks swerved around me and honked their horns in derision as I desperately tried to muscle the car out of yet another stall. Soccer moms lined up in an angry queue of minivans behind me, and I'm pretty sure a three-year-old child flipped me off one time.

I only drove it for half an hour before I decided I would never even get in the car again. It's just basically Wrong, and I can't support this sort of thing. I understand the newer models, the MR2 Spyders in particular, are quite nice. But avoid the ones from the 80s at all costs, unless you're crazy and just want to drive an Unnatural Vehicle.

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