Toyota Sera

Toyota Sera (EXY10, 1990 to 1996)

A supercar door on an economy-car budget

The Sera is one of my favourite bits of early-90s Toyota mischief. Underneath it is a small front-wheel-drive 2+2 coupe sharing its floorpan and suspension with the humble Starlet and Paseo, and Japan kept it to itself for the whole run. Built from 1990 into the mid-1990s, it should have been utterly forgettable. Then you open a door and the whole plan goes out the window.

Those doors are the headline. People loosely call them gullwing, but strictly they are butterfly (or dihedral) doors, hinged up near the top of the A-pillar so they swing up and outward and take a big slice of roof glass with them. The rest of the greenhouse is a wraparound glass canopy, six separate panes of it, so the car looks like a spaceship that took a wrong turn on the way to the future. Fair warning: all that glass turns the cabin into an actual greenhouse in an Aussie summer, and you will learn to love the air-con.

Here is the trivia that gets everyone. Gordon Murray, the man who penned the McLaren F1, is widely reported to have run a Sera himself, and he has cited its doors as the inspiration for the F1's dihedral setup. It is the story that follows this car everywhere, and it is well documented, so you can tell it at the pub with a straight face.

Now the honest part. This is a design and novelty car, not a fast one. The 1.5-litre 5E-FHE four sends somewhere around 110 PS (a bit over 100 hp) to the front wheels through a 5-speed manual or a 4-speed auto. That is Starlet-brisk and no more. The theatre is the point here, not the pace, and once you make peace with that the Sera is a genuine joy. Roughly 15,900 were built (call it a touch under 16,000, and hedge the exact figure), which is a big reason it has such a devoted cult following. It is odd, and oddness ages well.

Why buy one? Because nothing else at this money opens its doors like a proper supercar, and it carries presence and charm way beyond its price and its power. It is cheap novelty ownership with a real claim to fame bolted to it.

Now what to check, and it is mostly the obvious stuff. It is a 30-year-old car, so look hard for rust in the floors and sills. But spend most of your time on the doors and their glass. The gas struts that hold each door up go tired, the seals harden and start to leak, and the door glass and unique trim are pricey and hard to find. Open every door and make sure each one lifts and holds itself up without sagging. Then check the seals by hunting for water in the footwells, because a baking interior and a damp carpet are common complaints and both trace straight back to tired rubber. The mechanicals are simple shared Toyota economy-car bits, cheap and everywhere, so the glass and the doors are where your money and your worry live. Buy on the condition of the doors and glass above everything else.