Apropos of absolutely nothing whatsoever, I fancied a look at something a little out of the ordinary from the Orient. I have a particular fascination with certain forbidden fruits enjoyed by the Japanese in their domestic market and after a little rummaging I soon uncovered this document from 1986. It’s one of my favourites. The Z20 Toyota Soarer.
“SUPER GRAN TURISMO SOARER’S ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT”.
Yep, that’s what they say. They’re right, too.


The Toyota Soarer. This was a name that was never officially marketed in the UK. We received the Z40 SC430 coupe-convertible, which was a kind of gigantized Mercedes SL as re-imagined by the Japanese after imbibing heavily of Sake. Before that there was the z30 SC3/400 which we DIDN’T get, the slinky, rounded, bullet shaped super-express with either eight cylinders in a vee, or six and a pair of nice big blowers.
This brochure refers to the shape before, which ran from 1986 until 1991. And looking at it from where I’m sitting, having just driven home in a car which doesn’t have a CRT screen on the dashboard, nor one-touch electroluminescent HVAC controls, it looks absolutely incredible.

Remember: This was 1986.
This is probably the most wonderfully, surreally out-there dashboard I’ve ever encountered, fusing science-fiction technology with almost perversely bland design.
That steering wheel may be buttoned up to the max, but it looks more akin to something from a van than a personal luxury coupe. The dashboard itself is pretty much style-free, but look closely at the image and you’ll see that the whole thing is trimmed in a suede material which must have felt great to the touch.

Then you see the rest of the interior. Those seats look almost impossibly inviting, front and rear. Then there’s the curious wired remote control for the sound and TV (Yes, TV!) system. The TV antenna is integrated into the left side window. Who can say how effective it was. However, amidst the largely Japanese text of this brochure, I did find “VTR” so perhaps there’s a video input should reception be less than ideal.

Let’s try and get to grips with the technology available here. The Z20 Soarer pilot found himself, if he had spent enough Yen, amidst a landscape of acronyms and trademarks. “Toyota Electro Multivision” is the standout; that colour screen which handled features as disparate as ride height control, fuel consumption monitoring, TV and seat lumbar support adjustment. Astonishingly, this feature was also available on the previous Z10 model, but with a smaller, instrument cluster mounted screen.
You also had the Multi Control Panel, which had a touch-sensitive switch panel, beautifully designed so that certain buttons would illuminate and become press-able depending on whether the panel was set to control audio, climate control and whatever the third option was. There was also “Space Vision Meter” and I don’t really know what that was, beside it sounding awesome.

Fun to drive? Yeah, why not. The ingredients were more than sufficiently interesting. If you really wanted you could plump for a regular 105PS 1G-EU engine, which was at least a straight six so we were already off to a good start. Then you could have the twin-cam 24v version with 140PS. Much better.
Or, and this is when the fun starts, you could opt for the 1G-GTEU, the twin-turbocharged version of the same, offering 185PS. But top dog was the 230PS 7M-GTE, forerunner of the Fast and Furious 2JZ. Yummy.
So with all this lovely grunt available, it would be silly if there was no decent way of chanelling it to the ground, so Toyota Electronic Modulated Suspension was a must, and gave you another thing to monitor on your Toyota Electro Multivision screen. In fact, active air suspension was only mere garnish to a very sophisticated chassis with double wishbones all round, four wheel ventilated discs and electronic skid control.
What a car.

And it was all wrapped in such deliciously plain packaging. Your bog-basic 2.0 VZ was only a light accesorizing away from the full on 3.0 GT Limited.
You see, when the next generation, the Z30 arrived in 1991, it all looked so obvious. It looked like the kind of car you would expect to be bristling with technology, so nothing really came as a surprise.  Actually, that’s not fair. A good Z30 is a thoroughly entertaining machine. But it doesn’t have nearly the WTF?! factor of the Z20.
1986. Sheesh.
(All images are of original manufacturer publicity materials photographed by me. Copyright remains property of Toyota, who also had some excellent Supras, Celicas and MR2s available in 1986. But I want Toyota Electro Vision).