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1980’s Toyota Luxury!

'80 Cressida

In 1980 the Toyota Cressida standard features included A/C, automatic transmission, PS, rear seat armrests, a stereo, radials, reclining front seats and a rear window defroster. This example is listed here on eBay, parked in Orlando, Florida with the high bid of $3,050 at the time of writing.

'80 Cressida int.

This 2nd owner purchased this car in 2007 from the original owner. Recent work includes, according to the seller: front strut, A/C compressor, half top, rear brakes, idle arm, transmission mount, transmission and rear seals, overhauled engine with almost zero miles on it.

'80 Cressida trunk

There is a small tear in the left seat. There are more images in the ad for your review.

'80 Cressida left side

There is one wire hub cap missing but other then that this is a clean and complete looking 1980 Cressida. The owner reports 90K, we don’t know if this is the total mileage on the car or what the odometer reads? The owner says the car is in need of tires. This Cressida needs to be sold because space is needed for a newer car. Is this your opportunity to get some Toyota 80’s luxury?

Motor-on,

Robert

Comments

  1. Avatar Eric

    Pre Avalon beautiful

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  2. Avatar Tim

    The beginning of the end of quality design and manufacture of exciting automobiles. Putting this in my garage would be something akin to collecting toilets for their beauty.

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  3. Avatar RayT

    Yawn.

    I have to wonder: some of the least-interesting cars that have ever put rubber to pavement show up as low-mileage, pampered creampuffs, while quite a few of the most desirable, low-volume fun machines are seen here as battered, incomplete, barely salvageable (if at all) rusted hulks.

    Life just ain’t fair sometimes….

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    • Avatar Jamie Staff

      @Ray — I think it has something to do with the “fun/want to drive”, “fun/want to be seen in”, or “fun/want to be around it” factor of the car…I know the cars I have that I love tend to be the ones I grab the key for as I’m heading out the door!

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  4. Avatar Walt

    The Cressidas are great cars,but they are very hard to find now as the younger set loved
    them for racing and drifting.My daily driver is a ’91 Cressida,took me over 2 years to
    find a single owner car from an older person who took great care of it, getting close
    to 100,000 miles on her now, spotless interior etc. It never will be a real head turner,
    but I see people who know older Toyotas still looking at her. I found another ’89 for
    my Granddaughter with about 100 on the clock also. She still has it and loves it.
    Posted from Hawaii BTW, Please note, 56 bids so
    far at the time of this post.

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    • Avatar Tim

      The Duesenberg was a great car. The Cressida was an appliance.

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      • Avatar jaygryph

        Depends on your definition of ‘great’. A work of art can inspire the mind and give way to intricate fantasy, but it can not feed you. A plow, while a filthy and common appliance may not inspire much more than a begrudging respect for it’s utility, can also quite literally keep one alive.

        While both have their uses, the greatness of one is rooted squarely in the solid foundation laid by the other.

        Go to a concourse show sometime. The lawn will be packed with great cars. Inspired designs, fanciful ornaments and features from decades long passed. The owners and restorers will wax on endlessly about the wonders and ethos of their machines and further fuel the aura of awe our culture has built up around them.

        Ask them how they got to the event, and if they drove there by way of the car’s they are prattling on about. The most likely response is a ‘heavens no!’ because they instead got there by way of a modern, refined, computer designed and rigorously tested machine with heated seats, power steering, and internet connected radio and navigation. A manifold reliable machine by comparison. A machine that is the embodiment of the research and advanced experimental technologies the ‘great’ cars were striving to implement.

        The topic of greatness is not a black and white issue as many many car folks see it. They tend to forget that at one time the Model A, shoebox Ford, 57 Chevy, 59 Cadillac, Chrysler Airflow, etc were relegated to the scrap heap by the hundreds of thousands. Cars that are iconic and respected now, were once completely disposable cast offs that were derided and often times something that you could literally not pay to get rid of.

        A long hood, one off parts, and a coach built body do not a great car make, though many such cars come from that mould. It’s a similar idea to ‘rarity does not equal valuable’, as many of the cars on this site have shown.

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  5. Avatar James

    I always remember the day my dad came home in one of these back in 1985 it was brand new at the time.. I was never so glad when 3 months later he sold it and bought a 1971 Plymouth scamp

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  6. Avatar KN

    This proves that my day was right, “there’s is an ass for every seat”.

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  7. Avatar Donnie

    Hi Ray .That Toyota is more interesting than most cars of the start of the 1980s

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    • Avatar RayT

      I suppose so, but that’s not saying much! The early ’80s were a pretty forgettable period in automotive history, if you ask me.

      Now if the BF team were featuring a Toyopet Crown Deluxe — certainly as dull a car driving-wise as you can find — today, it would capture my interest!

      Like 0
  8. Avatar Donnie

    ya.ok. Toyota had a sports car in the early 1970 I think it was called a 2000 gt

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  9. Avatar Donnie

    ya what jaygryph said

    Like 0
  10. Avatar DT

    Im into Coronas,Celicas and pick ups. Ive had many 1966 to 1983 Toyotas.I like the 18rc,20r and the 22r

    Like 0
    • Avatar jaygryph

      Do you by chance know the various differences between the 72 and later 78 refresh of the US sold pickups? I keep finding all sorts of little odd changes between the two I have that I never noticed. different grill, lower valance, hood, emblem placement, chrome on top of the doors, chrome interior door pulls, slightly different (better looking I think) gauges on the early trucks, stuff like that.

      Would be neat if there was a list of the changes somewhere. It’d drive a guy nuts trying to fit a later front clip on an early truck with the little tabs and holes in slightly wrong spots.

      Like 0
  11. Avatar Fred

    Great post Jaygryph, A friend bought one of these new and drove it ’til the wheels fell off, probably 15 years and 250K later. Not exactly styling icons but interesting cars in their own way.

    Like 0
    • Avatar jaygryph

      Thanks for reading :)

      I’ve not driven this model of Toyota but have had a number of 72-84 pickups and have really enjoyed driving them. The older pickups in particular are just fun for me. They’re slow, drive like a little tank, but are somehow just a nice thing to putter about in. My modern car is way faster, quieter, and by far a safer vehicle to wad up, but the old trucks have an easy going charm.

      They’re pretty darn easy to work on, parts are cheap, and the 4×4 variants are one of the best cheap ways to have fun with your clothes on.

      I think the highest mile Toy I’ve had was an inherited 81 Hilux 4×4 that had 200k plus miles on it when the spedo quit working in the 90’s, got ran for years and years by my friends father, then became a chopped up mud truck till the body rusted so badly that the windshield fell out and the cab collapsed in a windstorm…the frame and drivetrain still worked great however and it got parted out to keep a dozen others on the road.

      I wonder sometimes when people come in with such negative opinions about things they’ve never owned if it’s just a learned behavior from the car brand faction they run with, or what might cause people to think that way. Hate of a brand or style, particularly one they’ve never tried, is simply uneducated judgement. The best racers and customizers, designers and fabricators don’t stick to one brand or way of thinking. It’s commercial suicide to do so, and it limits your range of abilities.

      On the other hand, the people that do run around close minded sure do a great job of being easy to market to and handily keep the upper tier job market a bit less cluttered. :)

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      • Avatar brakeservo

        My daily driver is a 1998 Toyota Tacoma with 425,000 miles on it. I just changed the oil and filter after a 3,000 mile round trip to Oregon and back. I’ve owned Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Porsche, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, and NONE of those cars was as well built or as long-lasting. Even the original battery lasted 14 years, and at 425,000 miles the rear brakes and automatic transmission have never been touched and all the engine has needed has been 2 exhaust valves, one exhaust manifold and a timing chain. When we pulled the head to do the valves and timing chain the hone marks were still visible on the cylinder walls and it still neither leaks nor consumes oil! It’s been driven hard – although only a 4-cyl automatic 2wd truck, I have towed a number of small cars from Portland, Oregon to Scottsdale, Arizona and once towed a 1953 Bentley from Chico, California to Portland with it (but in terms of accuracy, the Bentley was thoroughly disassembled and it took three trips but there was also the weight of the trailer each time as well as 1/3 of the Bentley’s total weight per trip.) Best motor vehicle I’ve owned so far!

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  12. Avatar brakeservo

    An eBay listing where the seller says overhauled engine!! I’ll share what I know – I sold an old Bentley to a guy from San Francisco a number of years ago. He took it to a mechanic I know who changed the oil, spark plugs and adjusted the valves. The new owner promptly listed it on eBay proclaiming loudly it’s newly rebuild engine!!

    Unless substantiated, don’t take the claims of an overhauled or rebuilt motor too seriously . . . or question why the car is for sale so quickly after such work was done!

    Hopefully the seller’s mechanical skills are better than his English skills!

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  13. Avatar Tundra/BMW Guy

    I happen to have owned many many many Toyota’s. From the lowly Corrolla all the way to the Cressida and even a Supra! The vehicles are usually utilitarian with just what’s needed to make it comfortable. Toyota builds QUALITY vehicles. None of my vehicles have ever left me without at least 200k on the odo and one actually not until 450k and it ended up being given to a fresh new 16 year old driver and he tried to kill it. Now, with that being said, they are trying to get less stodgy but they fluctuate back and forth. While this one isn’t pretty, I would bet it is just now about broken in. As for the “engine rebuild” at 90k, my only thought is poor maintenance. Or an unscrupulous mechanic.
    To jaygryph: Toyota’s “add on’s” and exterior badges, grills, lights, rims, have no rhyme or reason. You can look at two Limited Edition same vehicles and their options and badges will be totally different.
    I love the old muscle cars and exotics but for my dependable go anywhere vehicles – ALL Toyota’s!

    Like 0
    • Avatar Tim

      Sadly, many of my family members have had toyotas from the 80’s through very recent models. While occasionally they will go to high miles, they are built to the minimal (read: profit) standards, and as such literally melt when they touch road salt, and most have had mechanical parts fail ridiculously early in the vehicles lifespan. Most recently, a late model Camry had its water pump fail, and the dealer charged $1400 to replace it, and don’t consider it a warranty part for some insane reason. The pumps they use are incredibly lightweight, and it’s not surprising it fails. Other common issues include power locks that work intermittently, premature rear suspension wear causing noise and valves going bad when the engine is practically new. Every time the Toyota dealer either can’t figure it out and still charges the customer for their wasted time, or fixes it and charges the customer absolutely ludacris money for it. Jut garbage.
      I’ve got 40+ vehicles, everything from Cadillacs and Ford pickups to Austins and Jaguars, and in my experience, most of these cars were built by passionate people, and that shows in the quality and longevity of the vehicle. I’ve got 80 year old cars that are original and never had the engine apart or the clutch changed and they still operate well today. That mentality of quality died with the influx of cars from Asia, whose ethos was profit over everything, even if it means cheapening the build quality. A good example is of the brake linkage that Toyota changed mid production run and the result was hundreds of accidents and many deaths. They changed the linkage to make it cheaper to produce.
      I’ll take quality thanks. You guys enjoy your toyotas, they just aren’t for me.

      Like 0
  14. Avatar brakeservo

    Wow Tim, just the opposite of my experience – my daily driver is a 1998 Toyota Tacoma with 425,000 miles. Yesterday I drove it over 250 miles across the desert at 80 mph and my only concern is the tires need re-balancing – an issue that has nothing to do with the original build quality. As I said earlier my car still has the original rear brakes, the automatic transmission has required no work whatsoever and the engine has merely required two exhaust valves, an exhaust manifold and a timing chain. Well and a few O2 sensors and two catalytic converters. The original Toyota labelled battery lasted 14 years and over 200,000 miles. In a week or two I’ll wrack up another couple thousand miles to L.A. and back – while the truck has been wrecked twice and looks so ugly I worry about getting a littering ticket when I park it, I’m committed to seeing at least 500,000 miles on the odometer before I replace it. As one who started out with British sports cars (Bugeye Sprites, TR3’s, Austin Healeys and have worked may way up through Jaguar, Aston-Martin, Bentley & Rolls-Royce and a Cobra, I never thought I’d say this about any Japanese car but I absolutely love my truck! As far as the pragmatic use as a transportation motor vehicle it is absolutely the best car I’ve ever owned! (photo above shows it a few hours after it went backwards at 50+ mph on black ice into an embankment and ditch. On the tailgate I attempted to list every other make of bike & car I’d ever owned . . . some pretty obscure stuff is to be found there such as Tatra, Jawa, Armstrong-Siddeley, Riley, Chaika etc etc etc.)

    Like 0

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