Toyota Caldina, Today Associe, And ‘A True POS’: Members’ Rides

Last week we enjoyed Dottie’s fascinating collection of offbeat cars. That one was fun because I got to sneak in another Miata without featuring another Miata. I love Miatas, but I try to not let these get repetitive.

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This week we meet Vetatur. Vetatur is an architect and engineer living in NYC. He apparently does rope inspections, which has me very curious. But this isn’t about that, this is about the cars! And this one takes me back. My very first Members’ Rides post featured a heavily customized JDM classic, and as I have had RHD cars for several years now, I always love them. Vetatur has two unusual JDM cars that I am very excited to share with you. Then there is, of course, the USDM backup in case things go wrong. Lucky for him, they rarely do.

What’s currently in the garage?

• 1993 Honda Today Associe Gi
• 1996 Toyota Caldina TZ AWD
• 2003 Ford Focus Wagon

Just for fun, let’s start with the Focus

I call it Focal Matter. It’s a rusty beater to use if the JDM cars are waiting for parts or if something nasty has to be moved. It’s a true POS, rusted out and hideous. I mostly keep it around because I fear that if I throw it away, both of the JDM cars will immediately stop being reliable.

I bought it used from Facebook. Some guy selling it for his brother, yada-yada. Even before I bought it, I hated it. I had some weird notion that buying a car I actively dislike might be a wise and mature decision. A hairshirt in Tundra Green, as it were. Sometimes when I’m driving it, I forget that I’m not in a cute Kei car and expect people to notice me and smile, and then I remember that I’m driving a car that a meth head would apologize for and I get a little sad.

Any redeeming qualities about owning Focal Matter?

It is a compact station wagon, which is the correct and proper shape/size for a family car. Tundra Green is a great color. It’s the kind of car I would love, if it wasn’t so brown and New Edge on the inside, aside from being rusty and vibrating a lot.

What do you hate so much about it?

Ford did everything they could to make it annoying to drive. Most user interfaces are counterintuitive or unpleasant. It’s locked me out several times, which has never happened to me with the dozens of other cars I have owned through the years.

No one can program a key for it, so no spare. There is no clock aside from an unreadable one on the radio, you can’t get fresh air through the vents (it always passes over the heater), and so on. Many parts are unavailable including engine/transmission mounts. I got Chinese knockoff replacements and the car shakes like a dog shitting razors.

What is the story behind the Caldina?

The Caldina was bought at auction in Japan on accident, three years ago – I was trying to score an Ipsum, but weird things kept happening with my bids. As a test of another bidding method, I made a very low bid on this Caldina and ended up winning. It is a ’96 2.0 TZ 4WD, with a 135hp 3S-FE engine and an automatic transmission.

How is it?

It is simply a car, maximum normcore but every so often some other driver will spot it. I waited until I was in a coffee shop with my wife and some others and then told her that I had accidentally bought her a car. She was mildly miffed, but once the car arrived, she liked it and she recently turned down an offer of $5K from someone who approached her. She only got her license a few years ago, and she now has much more experience driving RHD than LHD.

Anything you’d like to do to it?

It would be sold for $6K if anyone offered it. It has been very reliable and takes us all over the place, but I want something goofier, more blatantly JDM. People ask to buy it every so often but last time I spoke to someone, the kids started crying (literally) at the thought of selling it. Plus, my wife does NOT want to have to commute in Focal Matter while I am shipping the Caldina’s replacement!

I am sort of planning on installing a front roo-bar on the Caldina; it had one originally and I would like it back. It deserves some alloys, too. I used to plan on installing a 3S-GTE, it’s a comparably simple swap, but a friend’s experience doing the same in an old RAV4 has given me cold feet. He’s five years and many many thousands in, and it remains non-op.

Have you had any issues with it?

Issues include having to buy new struts and going through four alternators before the right one was installed. Also, a hubcap fell off two years ago and I cannot for the life of me find another one – they are all in Russia and because of sanctions, they cannot be shipped here. If anyone has one sitting in their garage, please advise!

OK, now let’s talk about your Today Associe

The Today Associe was first shown in May 1993, it was an ovoid development of the original Today. The original version was mostly sold as a commercial vehicle (it was a hatchback, but for tax reasons it was a commercial with a folding “emergency” rear seat). In the spirit of the bubble economy, Honda decided to offer a strictly passenger-oriented derivative, and to accentuate its lack of utility they gave it a fixed rear window (not a hatch) much like the original Mini.

As with all golden-era Hondas, it is a few inches lower than it should be. The fixed rear window gives it more torsional rigidity than the typical kei car, and it was only sold with relatively full equipment (standard AC, power steering, power windows up front, fuel injection, etc). If an Autozam AZ-1 is the Ferrari of the Keis, this is the Jaguar.

I first read a brief notice about it in 1993 and then saw it listed in the Auto Katalog yearbook; the existence of two completely separate Today body styles was a riddle to me. The car was a complete failure, being released in an austere, post-bubble economy and with limited usability. The rear of the car was completely redesigned in February 1996 and received a proper hatch. They are quite popular in Kei car racing in Japan thanks to the stiff bodies and the ease of swapping in the engine from a Honda Beat.

How did you end up with it?

Some Delica importer nearby brought it in to fill a small space in a container and didn’t know what to do with it. He sat it on the side of the road out in the Hamptons with a “for sale” sign, which led to zero responses. I haggled for thirteen months and bought it for the cost of shipping, but it needed some work as lots of seals were dried out and the paint had lost its clear coat.

Has it been hard to keep on the road?

No, it’s been very reliable. Aside from some wear and tear bits, parts are unobtainable, but I did score an original factory center console/cupholder and an OEM car cover (from Siberia). I picked it up four years ago, on the day my wife went into the delivery room. And made it back in time for the birth of my son (pictured in the mailbox-sized trunk).

How do you like it?

I love it. The Today is just so damned cute. Most of what I love about it is true for all kei cars though; the size and packaging and funny looks. And parking in NYC is infinitely satisfying.

It’s perfect for zooming around the boroughs, and it’s so easy to find parking. I’ve had it up to northern Connecticut and out to Montauk a few times, but it is not an interstate machine. It’s very nimble but it is not a sports car or even a GTi; the fun is in practically wearing the car and how happy it makes people.

Any plans for it?

I’m a nerd for original. I’ve installed some OEM bits (dashboard clock, console with cup holder) but that’s as far as it goes. I plan on teaching my daughter how to drive in this one, but I would happily swap it for a Suzuki Wagon R or a Suzuki Alto Hustle.

Have you had other JDM cars in the past?

These are my first two JDMs. I did have a Peugeot 505 Turbo S back in the 1990s and I’ve owned two Chevrolet Turbo Sprints, but other than that I’m fairly average. I always liked Japanese cars and used to passionately read about the non-export cars in various magazines and yearbooks; so, these are dreams come true!

In reality, I would prefer a Suzuki, but these deals just happened and they have both been very reliable. The Honda is for weekends only; my wife commutes daily in the Caldina. Considering that most old Caldinas are in Kenya, Kazakhstan, Bolivia, or Mongolia, working as share taxis, I think ours is luckier than most its brethren.

They are so reliable, in fact, that the Focus mostly remains parked. I usually just move it out of the way once a week to get the Honda out of the garage. By the time I need it (to move something dirty, for instance, or if I need to move five people), the battery is likely empty and I have to pump the tires.

That’s awesome. So what would be in the dream garage?

• Isotta-Fraschini 8C Monterosa
• Suzuki Alto Hustle
• Isuzu Florian

What do you like about each of these?

Well, I’m a Suzuki man at heart. I just went to the Suzuki Museum in Hamamatsu, Japan, a few weeks ago. The Hustle is one of those marvelous afterthoughts; a cargo box married to the regular Alto front end – like a Citroën C15 or an Opel Combo or such. I love afterthought designs, when a car or engine is re-engineered to do things it was never meant to do from the beginning.

The Hustle also sold terribly, and I love failures, too. Autopian readers should get it. The Isotta is more of a glorious failure; it’s a vaguely amorphous shape and it was doomed fifteen ways from Sunday. Super rare, and apparently no one had cameras in the late 1940s so there are not many pictures of them, either. Any car with a double-barreled name is cool with me; I almost picked the Armstrong-Siddeley Star Sapphire instead, but they’re just too common.

The Florian is from another (mostly) extinct car brand. The Chevrolet LUV has the same front end, so it is vaguely familiar but with an unusual, six-light body. One of the very few cars that I would choose the sedan over the wagon. One of the lovely, filigrane, Italianate late-60s Japanese designs, later weighed down with baroque imagery and blocky bumpers (but I love those too!). And a cheesy name – it’s named after an Austrian emperor’s horse, in the spirit of the Cedric, Tiara, and the Fairlady. They were expensive and utterly uncompetitive, mainly sold to Isuzu execs and as part of large truck deals. Production lasted fifteen years, often not breaking into four digits per year.

I guess I like baffling/misguided corporate decisions and market failures; although this doesn’t necessarily extend to liking unreliable cars.

Thanks Vetatur!

Do y’all want a kei car more than ever now? I sure do. These posts keep adding to my list of desired cars. It’s dangerous!

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