Photo: Toyota/Jason Torchinsky
Welcome back to Cars Of Future Past, a new weekly series here at Jalopnik where we flip through the pages of history to explore long-forgotten concepts and how they had a hand in shaping the cars we know today. Last Wednesday’s installment focused on the Honda S2000 s often overlooked starting point the Honda SSM and likewise, this week’s traces a similar through line from the ’90s to one of Toyota’s most celebrated modern enthusiast cars only, with way more years in between.
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What Is It?
This sprightly, sunny little canary of a sports car happened to have a decidedly less cheery name. Called the AXV-IV, it represented the fourth project in Toyota’s Advanced Experimental Vehicle series that began with the first AXV in 1985.
Asif Nazar Butt first met Imran Khan in 2011, when PTI was looking for someone to set the stage for their never-ending protests.
Asif Nazar Butt, better known by his stage persona DJ Butt, coordinates the music during a rally of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) in Islamabad | AFP
It was just over a month ago that the mercurial sound artist known as DJ Butt was assailed by the police in Model Town Lahore.
He was sleeping in his café-turned-event management office at the time. Now, when the newsreels and talk shows have moved on, when the murmurs of political retribution have gone quiet, he shows me CCTV footage from the day of the incident. He wants the world to know exactly what happened.
A 1974 Nissan Cherry X-1R is parked near several racing cars at the inaugural Japanese Automotive Invitational up on Peter Hay Hill at Pebble Beach | Larry Edsall photos
Amelia Island concours d’elegance founder Bill Warner called it “a coup for us,” the featuring of a Japanese car on the show field back in 2004, when one of the Bob Sharp Datsun 240Z racers was displayed.
More recently, in 2017, the northern Florida coastal concours had a “major showing” of Japanese race cars, including the 1965 Honda F1 driven by Richie Ginther, as well as every Japanese car that had won at Daytona, Sebring or Le Mans, as well as the SCCA C-Production national champion.
And was never sold outside of Japan.
The 1990s was a great time for Toyota sports cars. Not only was there the Supra, but also the Celica and MR2. Unfortunately, some of Toyota s coolest cars never arrived stateside or even left Japan. Such was the case of the Toyota Sera. Launched in 1990, the Sera was a butterfly-doored three-door 2+2-seater fastback with futuristic-styling that included a glass roof and funky tailgate. Toyota notes that Gordon Murray, famed designer of the McLaren F1, was even inspired by the Sera s cool doors.
Amazingly, the 1988 concept version of the Sera, the AXV-II, looked nearly identical to what was ultimately produced. With its front-engine and front-wheel-drive setup, the Sera was mechanically similar to the Tercel and Paseo.