It's available in Automatic Transmission or Manual Transmission and Four Wheel Drive or Two Wheel Drive. If you're looking for economy, the diesel unit is available with the 1N type 1.5L inline-four engine (55hp). There's the 1.3 Liter inline-four gasoline engine with a 4E-FTE type (135hp Turbo) or the 4E-FE type (85hp). The last generation was introduced in 1996 and has a variety of engines to choose from. It was known as Toyota's basic small vehicle with a hatchback design. It is essentially the same car with a different bodyshell.The Starlet had an amazing run with Toyota from 1973 to 1999. If you enjoy performance cars and have the opportunity to buy a good, unmolested one of these, do it! There are fewer EP82s around nowadays although you do see the replacement EP91 Glanza V for sale from time to time. You can probably tell I really liked this car. The rear disc brakes were sensitive to road crud and required several rebuilds, but this is fairly standard for rear disc brakes on cars like this. It needed a few small parts replacing in my ownership: a heater hose & thermostat. I used Mintex 1144 compound pads and Toyo Proxes T1-R tyres. It did get through a lot of front brake pads and front tyres. The oil change intervals were rather short at 5000 km (3100 miles) but I’m convinced that sticking to them religiously made a substantial contribution to the reliability I enjoyed. Various naysayers (and I’ll admit I had been one of them) predicted expensive turbo failure etc. It never let me down and completed a 2000 mile driving holiday in France without fault. I was so impressed with the reliability of this car. I even made use of the ‘lo’ boost switch at times. The ‘sedately’ bit was difficult, but it still managed over 40 mpg most of the time. The 1.3 litre engine meant I was able to take advantage of cheap road tax and excellent fuel consumption if driven sedately. I really didn’t care: once the geometry had been set up properly the cornering performance was excellent, with predictable and manageable understeer when pushed. Low profile tyres and stiffened suspension did not make for a comfortable ride over bumps. Drivingįorced induction is addictive! This car inflamed more tempers than anything else I’ve driven, with particular enjoyment coming from exiting a 2 lane roundabout with the boost about to kick in. Some of the later special edition GT advance and GT limited models had ABS and a LSD. Remote fuel filler cap and boot release (I’m scraping the barrel now).ĪBS? Traction control? ESP? No, no and no.The interior was fairly sparse and not really any different to a ‘standard’ Starlet of similar age. Cobra Thatcham category 1 alarm/immobiliser (‘fond’ memories of this going off in the middle of a rainy night and going through its full repertoire of annoying alarm sounds – if you’ve ever owned a car with one of these I’m sure you know what I mean).Įven in standard form the power to weight ratio is extremely favourable, with 135 bhp in a car weighing 890 kg. Slightly lowered and stiffened suspension.This one was no exception and had a few performance modifications, some of which the previous owner didn’t even know about: The EP82 is powered by Toyota’s 4E-FTE 1.3 litre engine with CT9 turbocharger and it is rare to find one without any modifications. I don’t know what the top speed was or should be – the 0-60 time was and still is much more relevant for me in this type of car. But it had the performance to live up to the bodykit and big exhaust. To the uninitiated, it looked like I’d bought a rubbish car and put a bodykit and big exhaust on it to give an air of performance far in excess of reality. This Toyota Starlet GT Turbo was my first Japanese import car and I regret selling it more than any other car I’ve owned.
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