It just couldn’t be JDM ‘90s Week without a good old RWD Toyota saloon, could it? In the mid-‘90s, the number one Japanese automaker still had a lot of those in their massive lineup. Your various grades and types of Crown, the Comfort taxi, the Celsior, the Aristo, the Century of course… Aside from the taxi, the smallest RWD model still in the range was the Mark II / Chaser / Cresta – three slightly different shades of reasonably-priced executive cars.
The heyday of the Mark II / Chaser / Cresta triplets corresponds to the height of the economic bubble, which started to implode in 1992. Being that the model we’re looking at here is the X90 Cresta, sold between October 1992 and September 1996, it’s a post-bubble car. Though with such fulsome and rounded styling, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was still hailing from an era of plenty.
The thing is these were designed right when the Bubble Economy was at its peak, so JDM Toyotas of this period are renowned for being bigger and more stuffed with gadgets than the generations that came before and after them. Case in point with this Cresta, which was deliberately designed to be over the “regular car” size limit, and thus subject to a higher tax band. The X80 generation (1987-92) Cresta’s somewhat lithe and athletic profile was discarded for a heftier, mini-Lexus (or rather mini-Celsior) appearance.
The usual two dozen trim and engine combos make the Cresta range a tad complicated to decipher, even when the names are written in Latin script. Basically, trim levels went SC (base model), Suffire (deluxe), Super Lucent (deluxe plus), Super Lucent G (deluxe with extra cheese), Super Lucent Exceed / Limited (top notch) and Tourer V / S (the sort-of-sporty model). Engine options comprised three straight-6s (2.0, 2.5 and 3.0 litre), a 2.4 litre turbo-Diesel and, for the base models, a 1.8 litre 4-cyl. – just to emphasize that this was still clearly below the Toyota Crown.
Our feature car is a Super Lucent – no displacement is indicated, so most likely a 2-litre. It’s a post-facelift car, with a touch more brightwork on the grille and a new set of taillight clusters. I’m still at a loss as to what the Cresta logo is meant to represent. I’m going with origami crane (as seen from the front), or possibly a 16th Century samurai helmet. Either way, there is something distinctly Japanese about it.
The person who ordered this car thirty-odd years ago manifestly preferred to spend their hard-earned yen on toys rather than a big engine or leather seats. The latter is par for the course in Japan, where animal hide is very rarely seen. In terms of gadgetry though, this car tops most Jaguars or BMWs by having a dash-mounted LCD TV set.
The quadruple Sony aerials on the rear are the tell-tale external sign that this car is wired for TV. I’ve seen this on several older saloons here – typically Nissan Cedrics, Mazda Sentias or Toyota Crown Majestas. I think the first time I saw this specific system was on this Century limo I caught back when I lived in Rangoon. You rarely see it fitted on something as modest as a 2-litre Cresta, but then there is a precedent of this T190 Corona having those little antennae, so I guess anything was possible. If I ever see them on a Starlet, that will warrant another CC post.
The Japanese obsession with watching fitting cathode tubes in Toyotas seems to pre-date the ‘90s by quite a few decades, if the above is any indication. Interesting that they picked a T20 Corona (an ancestor of the Cresta, in essence) for this advert.
Whatever gizmos and baubles could be thrown into the mix did not help the Cresta from falling, quite noticeably, from the public’s fickle favour. The X90 managed about 160k sales (all of them in Japan, as far as I know), which was a respectable score in absolute terms, but a 50% drop compared to its X80 predecessor. The same precipitous collapse took place with the Mark II and Chaser, but the Mark recovered a bit with the X100 generation, unlike the other two. But that’s a story for another day.
The Toyota Cresta wasn’t alone in undergoing a growth spurt (mostly on the sides) while losing favour in the ‘90s, even as the economy slowed demand for big cars. A very similar phenomenon took place in the upper strata of the Mazda, Nissan and Honda ranges. Some nameplates recovered, others did not, especially if they were JDM-only. Toyota, to their credit, hedged their bets very capably by launching more modern FWD equivalents (Windom, Avalon) and RWD ones as well (Progrès, Verossa) during that troublesome era. With or without TV, the Cresta and its siblings were no longer prime-time material.
Nice, these Toyota Crestas are getting to be as rare as real Vauxhall Crestas here now, I looked at one for sale a wehile ago it had the 2.4 diesel but with manfdatory blown cylinder head, new heads are available its a fast moving part actually, but towing it home then pouring more cash over it made the car a no no, I was after another daily diesel not another project.
I never had this generation but had two earlier versions, and a later X110 Mark II – great cars.
Ah, the Cresta.
In the early 2000’s, my son and I watched an Anime series called “Great Teacher Onizuka” (GTO). It was about a school teacher who, among other things, was always at odds with the headmaster. One of the side plot lines concerned the headmaster’s cherished white Cresta, which was always suffering from various mishaps.
A few years later, we were in a cab in Kyoto, and a white Cresta of the right vintage pulled in front of us. My son and I got a little excited about this, because it’s not every day you see an Anime character in real life. I’m sure the cab driver thought we were nuts.
Thank you for this and countless other write-ups of the stuff you find in Tokyo. It’s a real treat. Please carry on.
I’m liking ’90s week! Maybe because I lived through the era, I don’t know, but there were some good times that might have been even better with a Cresta in the picture. This is similar, sort of, to the last version of the US market Cressida which then pretty much was phased out due to Lexus but could likely have worn the badge itself.
The available permutations are staggering, frankly. It’s hard to conceptualize what a juggernaut Toyota already was back then, never mind now. The number of different engines in the same car is similar to what you’d find in Europe in many saloon cars, I don’t know that it was ever like that over here in the U.S.. Well, maybe back in the 70s? But not by the ’90s except maybe in the pickup truck market.
Very much enjoying this week, Tatra-san! A Tatra a day keeps the winter blahs away.
I’m still amazed how much differentiation they put into the cars for their different dealer chains. Chaser. Mark II. Cresta. All recognizably Toyota, but despite being the same size, all recognizably different. Haruto-san might not be able to tell which one was which if he wasn’t a car guy, but he could have seen they were different.
If Toyota could do this at a profit in the nineties, why couldn’t GM in the eighties? Why couldn’t BMC/Leyland in the sixties and seventies? Or is there some nuance in the Japanese dealer scene that isn’t transferrable? I’m tempted to say the Japanese society’s sense of honour toward the customer might have had something to do with it, or am I off-track?
The Honorable Customer? Can you imagine it?
In this country, the members of our august parliaments can barely hiss out the appellation “the Honorable member” without adding ten adjacent insults, let alone some pimpled youth who’s selling you something treating you as other than a source of commission and instant warranty voidance. (“My bed broke on the first day!’ “What’d you do on it?” None of your business!” “Well, that voids the warranty!”, etc)
I’m not sure about the Leyland comparison: these Japanese many-brands tended all to work, whereas the British stuff tended to need it. (Btw, if you are off-track, please god it’s not in a Britbox, we like you here).
The name of this one came about – again, it’s well known, and I’m surprised it’s not in the article – when a senior manager in marketing, who had been on a brief visit to Fukishima (during an earlier, far-less covered incident with the power plant), returned, and was asked if his health was ok. His answer, which he adopted from the Anglo, was that he was in “glowing health”, but it got tangled through interpretation and became the literal version of “super lucent”, which is “very glowing” – which, by all accounts, and worryingly, he actually was – and the staff just adopted that out of an exhausted sense that they were being asked to name just too many cars every week.
(Minor nit, but really, Professor T, one has come to expect the full story from one as esteemed as yourself, but I suppose we can fall into error. Btw, that reminds me, Toyota provisionally named one of their vans the “Esteamed”, because it looked like a dumpling, but removed the past tense and added an “a” (whilst deleting the existing one) when they finally released the skinny Previa, because they surmised that folk didn’t want to arrive at their destinations in groups of eight in a boiled foodstuff, but now I am digressing).