ponypal

I'm curious because once I saw the SC it was all over for me as far as any other car was concerned. I grew up around muscle cars... had a 69 Mach I back when it wasn't a vintage car. Years later I owned a couple Supras... never new. I had to wait till they were older so I could afford them. After that, a '92 prelude, one of my favorites. Cars always had to have good lines and power, to appeal to me... even though I'm a conservative driver (most of the time). I bought my first Lexus a few years ago...a '94 LS 400 with 190k miles... because my husband was having health issues and most cars were uncomfortable for him to ride in. I liked the car a lot but kind of felt like I was driving an old person's car... even though I'm getting to that age myself, although I still feel (and sometimes act) like a 20 year old, lol. I didn't really look at other Lexus models at the time so didn't know what was out there. Just happened to find this one for sale and liked it. And through the course of the next few years, I learned a lot about the issues these cars have, but also I learned that once attended to, they are very strong, comfortable and reliable.

About 2 months ago I was searching the highways for my next car. The car for *me.* I pretty much disliked everything I saw on the road and was feeling disheartened. My brother was selling one of his 1970 Mach I's and he also has a California Special. Out of my price range but I sure love those cars, having grown up around them. However, they are noisy, loose and uncomfortable for what I want now... plus even though my husband grew up on motorcycles and mustangs, his pain issues rule out the vintage cars. I checked out all the usual cars everyone's driving... crossovers, suv's, or things that look like jellybeans with their sides shaved off. I got interested in the Toyota Solara for awhile but it wasn't quite right, although better than anything else so far. Then one day in September, I pull into a restaurant and see this car parked next to me... this beautiful car.. and I just STARE at it. What IS that? Wow! SC 300, it says. I can't wait to learn more. How did I not see this car before? After a few days of intense reading (my butt was hurting from all the lurking) I decide it's the SC 400 I want. Preferably a 1992 after even more reading. I miss out on a good one a couple hours away, then the next one, also a 1992, ends up in somewhat of a bidding war and I back out, despite the car's still youthful beauty and charm at only 35k miles. Then I see *her*... the one that is to be mine. The one I was meant to find. A classy well-loved 1995 SC 400 with 60k miles. Four hours away. Brought her home last night.

So I was wondering about the age range of people who love these cars. For me, at my age, it was the reminiscence the SC has of the muscle cars from the 60's and 70's. Cars that had their own look and didn't blend in. The SC has the stylish broad shoulders of that era... but slightly understated and a smoother quieter ride. I see the younger guys who respect and admire the power and are into modifications and racing, too. I'm curious if there's an in between crowd of admirers as well, or is it mostly younger and older ones who appreciate the SC? Maybe it is a younger and older person's car because the middle ones are driving suv's and raising kids. Yesterday at the Lexus dealership I was struck by the two generations who were drooling over my car as I got it checked out. Senior salesman, probably in his 60's, came over and said, "Wow, we don't see many of these! I can't wait to look underneath it when it's up on the rack," and then a much younger employee came over with his jaw dropped and eyes wide, huge smile, and said essentially the same thing. So there it was... the older and the younger one.

What's your story?

TXMAG

iTrader: (1)

Seeing the videos of Clint Pohler's SC300 back in the early 2000s. Just a cool looking car walking down Vipers, Lambos, Hyabusas, etc. Was hooked from that moment.

I'll almost certainly never take mine to that extreme but it was his videos that made me fall in love with this platform.

tfwnoturbo

I stumbled upon the SC while searching out my first car. Previously I had looked at several other coupes such as Preludes, cobalts, etc. I initially lusted after the E36 and E46 BMW's however my budget was a mere 3500 bucks, well above the average price tag for a clean, no-problems-right-now bimmer. So I just dumped the prospect of owning a bmw and decided to hunt for something else. Then I found the SC. I vaguely remembered it from Forza as the Toyota Soarer, and I remembered the Soarer that ran in D1GP for a while, the Vertex one driven by Takahiro Ueno. I started doing research on the SC and realized that it was my best bet at getting a rear drive inline six, a combination which i'd grown to love from playing various racing games. I decided on the SC300 because insurance would slam me if I tried to get a V8 Sports coupe at 16, and I knew about the 2JZ and it's potential. I got fortunate enough and found my current SC300, a 2000 model year with around 155k on the clock for $4000, and talked them down 500 dollars. Soon enough she was mine. And oh boy, the honeymoon stage was probably the best time of my life. I never felt happier than when I was in the driver seat tackling curves and making that engine sing. It's been 3 years and I am completely in love with it. I've come to appreciate every curve, line and design cue of the body, memorized how the car behaves and how it reacts to different inputs, and I know it's limits and I know not to push them too hard. I doubt I would have any better of an experience with any bimmer or prelude, this car is something special.

tsmith1315

I'm a lifelong car nut. Sports cars, muscle cars, classics, antiques - American, European. Throughout the 70's, 80's, 90's they were my dreams, still are. Not just run of the mill cars, cool stuff like the Alfa 33 Stradale, Ferrari 206SP, Cobra coupe, Cheetah, Scarab, -beautiful, fast, exotic- cars you weren't likely to see in your lifetime, and in the pre-google days you had to be willing to put in some effort just to find a picture of some of them. In 1990 at 24, my daily driver was a hot-rodded '75 Alfa Spyder, about 175 HP. It sounded fantastic, like an Italian car should, and I'm sure I never put it in gear without redlining it at least once. A 2-liter aluminum block fuel-injected twin cam motor making 175 HP without boost doesn't seem like much now, but in 1990 things were different:

A Ferrari 328 made 270HP. Porsche's 3.6L C2 made about 250 HP. The 5.0L Mustang GT was liberally rated at 225 HP, and the standard C4 Corvette made 250HP. These were the typical hot cars guys went in debt for- young men, successful men, and elites. There were others and exceptions of course, but this was the general state of performance cars in the public eye. Am I making sense here? 300HP stock was approaching the boundary, 250HP was indeed exceptional.

Meanwhile, in another automotive arena was the stately Lexus LS400 4-door. A new name in the car world, boasting a 4L aluminum 4-cam V-8 silently making 250HP for successful salesmen and well-to-do grandmothers. Not exactly the car a 24 yr old dreams of, but it WAS an impressive powerplant to be hiding in a luxury cruiser. And any REAL car enthusiast knew it.

Skip ahead to one morning in 1991, and not much had changed in the car world...
As I walked up to the stereo shop where I worked... there, sitting outside the bay door was a sleek, low slung, long-hooded pearl white coupe, slick as wet glass with no hard angles to be seen anywhere. It said SC400 on the back, which told me that Lexus had made a coupe with that wonderful 250HP 4 cam V8 underneath. Now THAT was one cool executive GT. I was stricken for a moment, walked slowly around looking at every angle. It was parked pointing uphill and looking down on it from the front, I said to myself, "One day I'll have to get one of these." With that car, Lexus had made a statement and I was listening.

BTW- I've read a few comments regarding the SC's style as bland or common. If it seems to look like everything else to you, it doesn't. After 1992, everything else began to look like the SC.

KahnBB6

iTrader: (5)

Ponypal,

I took delight in reading your post. Though I was not around when they were brand new, I also owned a 1969 Mustang fastback twenty years ago. It wasn't a Mach I (I wish... couldn't afford one of those at the time) but it was a 302 V8 model and as a first car... I had zero complaints. To this day I wish I'd never sold it and still plan to buy another one and update it with many of the upgrade aftermarket suspension and brake parts made for old Mustangs these days. I loved (and still love) the body lines of those cars, the seating position, the interiors, the feel, the smell, etc. Completely stock, one of those cars does make you feel you're in something "of the era" but they can be improved somewhat while still looking stock. I'd never go for a numbers-matching vintage Mustang. I'd want to change a few things and drive it too much for a show queen. Still... I could never buy a fastback today for what I was able to sell it for sixteen years ago. The market absolutely jumped only a few years after letting mine go.

Also similar to you, after that I got into a late model Honda Prelude. A manual Type SH model. I loved the styling of that one also and I'd spent much time in a front-drive car but at the time the double-wishbones at four corners, front suspension arms designed to (for the time) try to minimize torque steer, and the active differential made it something special. I loved that high revving engine that went to 7200rpm. It was a classy and utterly reliable car. By design it consumed motor oil between changes depending on how it was driven and the fuel economy, for a 2.2L four cylinder was about average even by Honda standards. I eventually upgraded it with thicker solid swaybars, a Koni coilover suspension and Hawk HPS brake pads, both of which suited the car very well for technical roads. However it was too expensive to realistically add any horsepower to the engine, which would have needed a near-$10k rebuild to do so reliably. Resale plummeted and I just kept it. That car lasted for ten years with only 140k miles and would have served me for years and years after if some idiot kid hadn't been texting on his phone when he should have been paying attention and stopped behind me. He totaled that car.

After a few months of looking at every car possible within my price range that wasn't front-drive or automatic, enter the SC. I had nearly given up on trying to find a 2+2 seating rear-wheel-drive or all-wheel-drive manual car with 250-300+ horsepower that I could afford. The dealerships usually played games, private sellers were few or else the car I was looking at had some major undisclosed issue or major design flaw. Or else I DID find what I was looking for at other venues only to realize it was laughably out of my budget. And then I found an ad for this 1993 SC300 5-speed an hour away from me. It wasn't expensive and also wasn't cheap and it had a couple of issues but it was a very clean one-owner accident free car with a clean title and in totally original condition. "Like a racy Buick with a stick-shift" was my initial impression. But then I realized what it reminded me of: my 1969 Mustang.

The styling was totally unique to the SC series but it had exactly the spirit of what 60's and 70's muscle cars from the U.S. and Australia had in their body lines. The interior made me feel like I was inside the estranged cousin vehicle of the early 90's LS400. The driver's seat, engine note, steering wheel, shifter position and everything about controlling the car made me feel like I was in a better version (for the driver) of what my 1969 Ford had been. It was rear-drive but had a double-wishbone suspension just as advanced as the Honda Prelude I'd recently had totaled. And it even had dual front airbags! I'd been in a car wreck before so that was important to me.

So I bought it. I had to address some TLC issues up front and do all the major maintenance right away since there were no service records other than older ones from Lexus.com and Carfax... but I loved it instantly.

More importantly, I already knew what the car was capable of: turbocharging the stock inline-six, swapping in a 1JZ-GTE or 2JZ-GTE engine (one of which was emission legal in Cali if I could get it), two other upgrade transmissions from the stock W58 5-speed (today we have even more upgrade manual gearbox options than the R154 and V160), several limited slip differential options, enormous horsepower potential with Toyota durability and longevity (rather like vintage muscle cars in that regard), and it was a practical car to boot. As many posts on ClubLexus over the years attest, the 1992-2000 SC's (and the almost-identical-with-some-different-options 1991-2000 JDM Soarers) are effectively MKIV Toyota Supras. They were built on the same assembly line and are nearly the same chassis after all.

Six years later I'm close to getting my car how I wanted it when I first bought it, having slowly upgraded and restored it in stages. The beauty of these cars is that they are great classics no matter how stock or modified.

I hope you enjoy yours and don't be surprised if you start wanting to upgrade a few things on it. Brakes, wheels, suspension and steering rack bushings are fairly easy and recommended and will change the car. Also keep an eye on your engine computer-- since all SC's are quite old now it is very common to need to send your ECU in for capacitor replacement to make sure it's still healthy.

Welcome to the SC world, Ponypal!

Sylexus

iTrader: (1)

Mines shorter.

Two door. Lexus.

ponypal

Compendious, Sylexus.

Enjoyed all your stories very much, thank you. I consider some of us fortunate to not have had larger budgets. We had to search longer and discern more about how to get the best for our dollars in the impossible search for a car worthy to stand alone. Hate to think that if I was wealthier I might have settled for a newer muscle car and not felt the satisfaction I feel now... as if I pulled some big coup by coming across the SC that others aren't even aware of.

Thanks for the upgrading tips, KahnBB6. This is going to be a very long relationship and I mean to give it my all over time. Reading your posts remind me that I sold my 1969 Mach I in decent and powerful condition for $1700 (ouch) back in the early 80's. My brother has been offered $35k for his. I think I was worried I'd kill myself in it back then. But it was a beauty, White with black hood and red stripes. 351C. It was with those memories that I was looking for something presently and you said it well: the SC is the only car I've come across that settles my angst at missing the cars of the distant past. It has the same spirit indeed (and I love this generation was designed in California - it shows!). I wasn't interested in modern mustangs, chargers, camaros... even though they have returned to some recognizable characteristics. Aside from the new ones being out of my budget, I didn't want to look like a menopausal woman out to relive her youth. My golden (Sandstone Beige) SC 400 is a car I can let my hair down in and feel at home.

tsmith1315, to me the SC is anything but bland or common. I was going to say it's a sleeper but it's not even that because the first time I saw one, my gut said this car stands above all the others. I couldn't believe my luck that there were low mileage well loved models that were affordable.

I'm no mechanic but thankfully my husband is. He replaced the engine in my Supra (which I never should've sold), so I have him in my corner and I do a lot of reading and he listens very well when I bring up everyone's experiences and recommendations. I ordered the 3-set book of service manuals and electronic diagrams for him off ebay last night.

I hope we get to hear more stories about how and why this era of SC grabbed us.

Thanks,

Sharon/Ponypal

ThomasGS4

iTrader: (19)

Some great reads in here. I am glad to see that the majority of the owners in this group, (at least on ClubLexus,) are able to form complete sentences and can effectively share their thoughts and ideas.


Now, back in the mid-late '90s, the Mother of a good friend of mine had an Onyx black with black leather, '95-96 SC300. Living in an era of traditionally square vehicles, to see one that had flowing curves and great proportions not only stood out to me, but made me want one something awful. It wasn't until years later that I inherited one from an uncle of mine, a 1994 Diamond White Pearl SC400, which initially brought me to this forum in 2008. Unfortunately, said SC hadn't received the proper tender loving care that these cars require, and I decided it would be best to part ways and get a vehicle that was more practical at the time - a '98 GS400.

Fast forward to 2016 when I received the opportunity to trade my grocery getter, "park anywhere," 2wd '99 Toyota 4Runner with 245k miles, for a beautiful, Onyx black with black leather, '97 SC400. It essentially was the car I had lusted for many years back and alas, it was mine! I feel the reason I own a few older vehicles is due in part that they remind me of a different and arguably better time. If something makes you that happy, why would you want to get rid of it?

Duck05

Sharon, welcome to the Club.... I have to say 1st gen SC owners are a passionate group and your observation of extremes in age are generally true. I am on the "much older" side of the spectrum as demonstrated by the CL meets with the majority of SC owners being in the younger crowd (but they are very gracious to me).

I am an original buyer of a '92 SC300 which made the rounds in the family with myself starting out for about a year or so and then the wife for 11 years followed by the son who drove it for 7. In 2011, he gave it back to me but it was in sad shape mechanically. I almost went in another direction but after joining CL and reading a lot of what people were doing with this platform I began a 5 year journey and invested, on purpose, a lot dollars to evolve the car to where it is today. The goals and methods are unique to most and having this forum to research and learn about different approaches and ideas to apply have been many hours of enjoyable reading and exchanges with various club members around the US and the globe (the folks "down under" are constant contributors).

While I did "lust" after this car in 1992 and was able to acquire a new one off the lot, after almost 20 years later and seeing the different mods and options we could apply I have changed the look, feel, and ride of the car. The result is definitely not "original" or showroom but taking it to where it is now has been fun. Major mods are listed in the signature block.

Good luck with your new project. If you are a "NorCal" member, hope to see you at an event or meet soon.....

Here is a "before" and after set of photos for our car.....

From 2011 after the return;


From the Dublin meet:

ThomasGS4

iTrader: (19)

Great post, Duck05. You are one of the few folks from this forum that I recall that purchased their 1SC brand spankin' new.

ponypal

ThomasGS4, the classic black interior definitely takes me back. Beautiful, as is the outside. Serendipitous trade!

Thanks for the welcome, Duck05. Stunning transformation. I'm touched you kept her. I'm sure she appreciates the new look and you appreciate the long history and family connection. Now my car feels naked all of a sudden, lol.

Love to attend a NorCal meet.

Duck05

Here you go....

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/nor...0-22-16-a.html


And, the "Aftermath" thread from the last big event of 2016:

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/nor...th-thread.html

ponypal

Thank you! I have houseguests that week plus an appt. in Sacramento on that day :-( But I am looking forward to making them other times. Used to go to some of the Mustang meets with my brother. Lots of fun.

CoOl21

For me, I've always been a Toyota fanboy. Started from the AE86 (never actually owned one, the closest thing was an AE85, 5dr hatch as my first car to learn manual on), to the MR2 AW11. To me, it was never about how fast it could go, how much I could tune it, but the joy that these cars gave me when I'm on the road. It also helps that they were easy to maintain and repair. As time moved I and I needed money for school, traded the AE85 and the MR2 for books and laptop. Those were dark days, driving around parent's Yaris, the spirit of those Toyotas was missing, and I felt myself longing for something more.

Recently, I landed myself with a steady job, bought a place with the money saved over the years and started thinking what my next car should be. I'm a big car nut, like many of us here, I can ID a vehicle with a glance. I've contemplated with the idea of old BMW 2002 or E30 325i, Porsche 944 (something 5~10k here up in Canada). In the end, I knew I wanted a Toyota, but after buying a place, the FR-S was out of the question. Plus, I'm not a big fan of buying new car. To me, aged cars gives it character, personality and something new cars just don't have... the trial of time. Not many cars designs can endure the test of time, many becomes forgotten after 10 years, others gets mistaken for other vehicles. After sifting through my options, I was left with only 1 vehicle, the SC.

The lines and the curves made it iconic, even to today's standards. It wasn't so much as lust (I think my friends will say otherwise), but I fell in love with the design, the simple elegance of the long bonnet, the smooth flow from the front to the rear. It isn't just a car that gets the passenger from A-B like many of the cars today, but something that needs to be cherished on the road, one that's meant to be driven and enjoyed.

(don't worry,this isn't illegal parking, I actually work at the complex. that front bumper is getting painted soon)

ems

iTrader: (1)

Had a LS400 looooved it, sold it, regretted it, years past, missed it, wanted a project coupe, figured I'd come back to the L and bought and restored a sc300 5spd. It's a part of me now.