My Glanza!
Site last updated : 22nd May
2000
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Click on the thumbnail photo above to view large sized version. Each photo is around 30-40kb in size.
I bought my 1996 Toyota Starlet Glanza V on 4th February 2000 after a 2 month search for a car to replace my old 1988 Daihatsu Charade. Sadly my poor Charade was reaching the end of its life. It had served me well and was extremely fuel economical. However after clocking up 150,000 kms, it was getting a bit too difficult to maintain.
Searching for my new car came in the form of buying the AutoTrader and Trade & Exchange every week. The New Zealand Herald also has good motoring section every Wednesday and Saturdays. Online you can check places like Lifestyle vehicles, Ted Traceys, AMG cars, etc but I have found their stock lists not being kept up to date on a regular basis. NZ Herald and Trade & Exchange are also on the web and can be used as a tool to compare prices of cars.
The following were the types of cars that I was keeping at eye out for. They range in price greatly from NZ$8000 to NZ$25000. I didn't really know what I was looking for, if the car caught my eye I was willing to spend a little more but the more expensive cars were way beyond my price range.
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Subaru Legacy RS or GT Sedans (1993-95)
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Subaru Imprezza WRX (1993-94)
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Nissan Pulsar GTI-R (1990-92)
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Mitsubishi Lancer GSR (1994)
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Mitsubishi Lancer EVO I & II (1992-1994)
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Toyota Starlet GT Turbos (1992 onwards)
Eventually I noticed an ad in the Newspaper for a 1994 Starlet GTT facelift model. It was being sold by the Albany Toyota Signature Class Car Centre. To cut the long story short, I did manage to test drive the car but it was sold while I was still thinking about buying it. I was told about the Glanzas by my friend who saw it while he was playing Gran Turismo on the Playstation. For a long time I never knew what they looked like, eventually I managed to source some pics of the Glanza from the web. The Albany Toyota Signature Centre had a few non-turbo Glanza for sale but no turbo versions that I could see. Upon mentioning that I was interested in the Turbo Glanzas the dealer said he would ring around to see if he could find one. I didn't actually think they would be able to find one because Toyota dealerships usually never stock Turbo Starlets.
A couple of days later, the dealer rang back and said he managed to find one! It was probably the only one in all the Toyota franchised dealerships in New Zealand! Even the dealer thought it was an anomaly. They would not usually get those sort of cars into NZ and I doubt if Toyota New Zealand would import anymore of them in the near future. The price would be too expensive and rare. Anyway, upon testdriving the car I loved it. The only caveat was that it was an automatic. After some mulling about it and talking with friends (some of whom advocated manual transmission only!!!) coupled with an extremely good deal by the dealer I decided to buy it.
I have since found that the automatic was a good idea. Sure, you lose the "manual" feeling and lack of ability to control the car to how you like to drive but in reality most of the time I drive is in peak hour traffic and I get stuck in traffic jams everyday. This is where autos really pays off. I find the car still produces enough grunt (from my perspective anyway), being such a small car, its really zippy and quick. Fast enough to overtake all of the other standard cars out on the roads anyway. The car's main points is its looks. It looks great and it looks fast. The colour was perfect too! All in all I am pretty happy with the car.
By the way, Toyota Signature Class cars sold at Toyota Signature Class Centres are worth it. You probably pay a little extra over the standard car dealers but they guarantee your car. It was because they gave me a special deal of 3 year or 60,000km mechanical warranty AND 2 year or 40,000km free servicing that convinced me to purchase the Glanza from them. The dealers were really friendly and helpful.
Click the link to start the pictoral walkthrough. I will walk you through each of the photos as shown in the thumbnails above talking about the various features of my car.
------>>>>> WALKTHROUGH Part
1 <<<<<-----
------>>>>> WALKTHROUGH Part 2
<<<<<-----
NOTE: The following are very graphic intensive pages to present good quality pictures. The size is about 550Kb spread over 2 pages. Please be patient while waiting for the picture to load particularly if the connection is slow.