Written 31/12/22: Set 29/12/22
An unfit lad in Penang. Today marks the eighth day in the little island, and today is the day to look at the car that received my approval the day before.
Now, I will say that this car had HIGH HOPES. When I mean high, I mean HIGH. Unlike the other options that are in our shortlist, this was a car that on paper, appealed to everyone in the family. The father likes it because its spacious and comfortable, plus a classic. The mother likes it as its a sedan that can fit everybody in it, and the young chap likes it because it has a 2JZ in it.
Indeed it does, there was the assumption that it was the Toyota Crown Comfort which at best had a 3L diesel engine (And 5L that was generally export only that did exist in Singapore simply as the Toyota Crown) We’ll discuss about that more shortly after I list everything about the day.
We’ll get back to it shortly. For now, here’s the trip to the car.
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| You don’t see the XV30 generation Toyota Camry, Perodua Myvi and Hyundai Matrix of this era anymore in Singapore. (They still exist at the time of writing, all in super minute numbers) |
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| Mercedes A-Class GTA Effect |
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| Traffic jams are effectively the staple of Penang. |
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| I don’t know how common FJ Cruiser’s are in Malaysia, but good god was this the third unit I’ve seen. |
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| Mercedes SE |
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| Yes, you could occasionally see supercars. |
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| Surprisingly or unsurprisingly, you don’t see Beetle cabriolets in Singapore, much less this generation. |
So, back to the Toyota we were to see. Just how good and nice was it? Is it something within consideration to buy? We’ll see…
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| Crown 3.0 Twin Cam 2.4; I first assumed it was the Comfort and dismissed it as the 3.0L diesel lump. It plainly wasn’t the case. |
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| Look at that wheel offset. |
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| Weathered paint, how long has this car sat again? |
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| Weird stain on that. |
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| I’m not sure how painting works but I’m a bit concerned with those black stains… |
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| The heart of the car: That 2JZ-GE motor that’s highly popular among the tuning scene. |
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| Busted air vents. |
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| The driver window basically stuck itself when being tested. |
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| Surprised 215 width tyres protrude this much. |
Unfortunately, car was a dud. Although alright when tested, we were told that we could test drive the car later, which later, turned into a no, we can’t test drive it until we buy it. Not to mention the dubious way of marketing, whereby the car online is listed for 26,900RM with a 10% discount from 29,900RM. In person, the car is listed for 45,000RM and we were only able to bring the bargaining price down to about 33k RM (Which apparently got brought up to 35k?)
I think you’d understand how unsatisfactory of a situation this was, and buying a car before testing just isn’t a good idea (Lest you’re a youtuber with deep pockets to buy a car sight unseen then spend on repairs), so we ditched the idea of purchasing the car. I needn’t tell you the full story, it sadly just happened to be like this.
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| One massive image file of the car’s VIN. Massively difficult to read but its a JZS155-0024380 with the 2JZ-GE. A real Crown with a 2JZ. |
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| Picture example of what these things are. A Toyota Crown but not the Comfort, yet sporting identical bodywork with the exception of the taillights. |
The hunt continues…
Say apart from cars and after looking at the Crown, we ventured off into another few malls, 1st Avenue and ICT Digital Mall, both of which are side-by-side and have a small bridge that connects both malls together.
ICT Digital Mall hasn’t changed much from how I remembered it to be. A children’s obstacle course (What even are they actually called?) that I cried on embarrassingly with children half my age leaps ahead of me, wasn’t there anymore. I suspect the pandemic had caused that place to shut down which is sad to realize. There were a lot of stores shut up. The ground floor was flourishing, but venture up the higher floors and you realize that in the back-area of the mall houses one too many closed shops. There were much so that each floor had maybe less than 10 stores open as opposed to twice the amount of actual shops occupying. Oddly though, the same sex shop that had been there for years was surviving.
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| See the adjacent shops and you’ll understand what I mean with the amount of closed shops. |
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| A card shop in the midst of closed shops was a bigger surprise than it needed to be. |
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| Found in the carpark of ICT Digital Mall: a Mercedes S-Class |
ICT Digital Mall has a bridge that connects it to 1st Avenue mall. You’d understand the flow of how we travel about.
1st Avenue hasn’t changed much either apart from the to-be-opening and opened stores. More Multi-National-Corporations have moved in like Forever 21 and other stores, while most stores that I recognized remained. We had some A&W (The ice-cream on waffles are sinful) and walked around to see what was new. There wasn’t much but there remained a sushi store that we bought from.
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| Liminal space (Crop out the timestamp and you’re good to go) |
Now, plainly there wasn’t much to see in this mall. There was shoe stores and what not, but nothing that would truly excite, so we decided it’d be better for us to vacate and head over to Gurney Plaza and Paragon, which we weren’t able to go to the previous time.
Cue the random carspotting!
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| This might prove nostalgic in several years time; Wira, Axia and a (I think) brand new Mini Cooper (Countryman?) sitting outside a BMW dealership. |
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| Flush wheel fitment if I do say so myself, good luck with humps, though. |
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| These Perodua Kelisa/ Daihatsu Mira things look pretty decent. |
We parked over at Gurney Plaza and walked over to Paragon. It isn’t a long, being of identical proximity as 1st Avenue and the ICT mall was.
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| A Porsche I’m not familiar with, I’d assume a GT3RS? |
Paragon is pretty nice, with new things coming along like Decathlon and Pepper Rice soon to be opening. I must also say that I don’t remember the mall being this big. It seriously is huge and really nice.
We did need a speaker for me to play funky beats in the car, and while we couldn’t find a super tiny one that we say in another store, we found what we’d call a classy (and sexy) Harman Kardon NEO speaker in bronze. Again, we lacked the speaker and up until then, I was playing music for myself it was opted that we buy it for its looks, brand and the fact we needed a speaker for the car. A bit of snooping in a Harvey Norman and a plant shop, we bailed and legged it back to Gurney Plaza.
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| Quad-spoke wheels are underrated, but understandably so because they don’t look good in most cars. |
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| One wonders how you lose the front emblem and a door handle. |
A bit of snooping around for keyboards in Gurney Plaza later, we set off again for dinner, to a Japanese restaurant far from Gurney Plaza. With a long journey, I think you know what this means…
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| Please excuse the horrible brightness on this image. But that speaker is there as an example to why and how we use it. |
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| God knows why people put random things on their dashboards. I won’t ever come to understand it. |
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| Hardly see old Beetle’s surprisingly. This would be the second example I’d see on this trip then. |
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| This is very self-explanatory. |
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| One of two 3-door Renault’s I’ve seen throughout this trip so far. |
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| One of a few Mustang’s spotted, I don’t know if they’re the real big V8’s or Ecoboost’s but I think they give a better atmosphere than uninteresting econoboxes. |
Meal-wise which was plentiful and nice, there wasn’t really much else to write home about. I suppose I’ll see out on the next time I write out something. Cheers and goodbye!
Devices specifications for photos used:
Sony a6400 + 16-50mm Lens Kit
iPhone SE
Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Pro
~Efini
