Start of a Love Affair - Pictures and Stories of Your First Toyota Experience

[DHC6twinotter]

The first Toyota in my family was a '78 Toyota HiAce van that my parents bought new when they moved to the Philippines. I was born 4 years after they bought the van, but here is a pic of the van with my parents and my sister:



It was a base model and had a 4 speed manual tranny and a gas motor, but I'm not sure which motor it was. I'm leaning towards it being an 18R, but it may have been a 12, 16, or 20R. There was no radio, no AC, and no carpet. I remember thinking how cool it was that I could look through the bolt holes in the floor and watch the road go by.

We had the van until we left the Philippines in '90. It had never given us any trouble, and we really worked it hard. My parents would load it up with a half-ton of equipment and drive it across the mountains on some pretty crazy roads. Because the Philippines has more than 7,000 islands, we had to ferry the van pretty often. My parents had a lot of stories of the loaded van nearly getting ditched in the ocean as the deckhands would drive across wooden planks while loading the van onto ships.

Over the years, the hubcaps and emblems had been stolen, and once, even our spare tire was stolen. My mom and I were in the parked van when it happened, but the thieves had the tire out before we could figure out what all the noise was. My mom ended up having to buy the wheel back, and after a bit of bartering, got it back for 100 pesos ($2-3, IIRC).

I had a lot of fond memories in that van. My dad was always a GM guy, so when we moved back to the states in '90, he bought an '84 Buick Century that we (parents and my two siblings) traveled in, and pretty much lived out of, for the next 4-5 years. With the exception of our Plymouth minivan, my dad has always purchased Buicks. His '94 Regal with the 3.8 is just about to hit 290k.

My '90 4Runner was my first vehicle. In '01, I bought it from a friend for $2400. It had 134k on it. It now has over 220k, and it runs great, although it needs brake work and the tranny doesn't always work right. I'm sold on Toyota, and I will probably always own one.

My brother has an '04 IS300 with a manual tranny. It has been a really good car for him, and other than a clutch when he first bought the car, he has done very little work to it. He has close to 180k on it now. His first car was an '88 Celica All-Trac (AWD and turbo). He picked it up as a project for $350, but he isn't mechanically inclined at all, so he sold it.

So anyways, that's the history of Toyota in our family.

[Googer]

I bought my first new vehicle it was a 1984 Toyota SR5 Pickup 4x4 with a 22r I lived so close to work that it had very low miles, as I got married and my family grew I needed a larger vehicle but I kept it and only drove it on the weekends when I needed to load up some tools and go work on my rental properties the years passed and it ran great but it did leak oil, my son reached the age of 17 and I handed him the keys, It only had 108,000 mils on it. He drove it for about 3 months before he blew up the motor by letting it run out of oil. I put a new motor in it and have it to tis day.

[Googer]

Nice!