**A Toyota MR2 Project: Restoring a Classic Car to Its Former Glory**

As I sat down with my trusty Toyota MR2, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and nostalgia. The car's original charm and character are still very much intact, despite its rough exterior condition. With its pop-up headlights and manual roll-up windows, the MR2 is a true classic that never goes out of style.

One of the things that really caught my attention was the T-top roof or "T-bar" as Toyota calls it. I've always been a fan of glass roofs, and this little spring wing deflector is just one of the many clever features that set the MR2 apart from other cars of its era. The fact that it's not actually a part of the car, but rather an aftermarket addition, is just another testament to the ingenuity of Toyota's design team.

Of course, no discussion of the MR2 would be complete without mentioning its infamous snorkel. This little fiberglass accessory may look a bit rough around the edges, and its hold on the car is far from secure, but it serves a very important purpose: providing extra cooling to the engine bay. And let's be honest, there's something undeniably cool about the way it looks, even if it does have that somewhat confused "dog" look.

Now, I know what you're thinking: where's the test drive? Where's the chance to get behind the wheel and see how this car handles? Well, I'm afraid that's not going to happen today. As much as I'd love to take this baby out for a spin, I have to prioritize its safety first. This car has been sitting in my garage for months, with over 200,000 miles on it - the last thing I need is to put it back on the road and risk causing more damage.

Instead, I've decided to focus on restoring this MR2 to its former glory. My goal is to make it a reliable and solid platform for learning advanced driving techniques like heel-toe down shifting, and maybe even some autocross. And the best part? I'm doing it all on a shoestring budget - after all, this car was only purchased for $1,000.

Now, before anyone gets too excited, let me reassure you that I won't be abandoning any of my other builds to focus solely on this MR2. My SL will still get its fair share of attention, as will my Aston, and of course, my ultimate daily driver - a car that's getting some mods of its own. This MR2 project is just another addition to the mix, one that I hope you'll all enjoy following along with.

If you do like what you see so far, be sure to subscribe and hit that notification button. You'll also get access to my Q&A video series at the end of the week, where we'll tackle any questions you might have about this car or anything else related to automotive projects.

**Merchandise Alert**

As a special treat for all my loyal readers, I'm excited to announce that I now offer merchandise featuring some fantastic designs inspired by my everyday life. From French-themed shirts to stickers and other fun accessories, every single dollar will go towards supporting my builds and helping me get these cars back on the road.

So what are you waiting for? Take a look around my merchandise store - I hope you'll find something that catches your eye (or just about anything, really).

**Stay in Touch**

Finally, if you have any questions or comments, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can contact me through social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter (@aaronvarnish), as well as my email address - [estavarish@gmail.com](mailto:estavarish@gmail.com). I'll do my best to respond promptly and help with any queries you might have.

Thanks for watching, and I look forward to sharing this project's progress with all of you. It's going to be a wild ride!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhow's it going guys my name is de varias and today I bought the worst toyota mr2 in the country this is gonna be fun so let's start off with a little bit of a history lesson this is a 1991 co2 mr2 and in the late 80s and early 90s a lot of car manufacturers were learning from their mistakes in the 80s the power-crazed 80s and the very stringent regulations of the 70s that's sort of outside the box thinking LED car manufacturers like co2 and other big names to really give new platforms ago so this is a mid rear-engine platform and that's what the mr stands for the engine is behind the driver and that means that the weight distribution of this car is on point actually the weight distribution it's a little bit biased towards the rear which makes this car a little bit happy in the bends but this platform was popularized by the likes of Ferrari and Lamborghini and supercars but never really put in a production attainable affordable sports car until the mr2 came along now I know that Pontiac had the Fiero and the Fiero was a success in its own right but it never really achieved the cult status that this car did especially because Piero was a car for a person that looked at a Ferrari and said I can make that and an mr2 was actually thought of as a poor man's Ferrari in terms of the handling and power and the overall look while the Fiero was just kind of a starting point for a kick car you even had companies like Honda getting into the mix with their NSX and the NSX is basically a bigger version of this car with a bigger naturally aspirated engine and it produced a little bit more power but it had the same basic driving dynamic and those cars are kind of going stratospheric with their prices in the used car market but these cars are relatively cheap mainly because they made too many of them not too many in terms of Toyota this is not a Corolla but they did make around twenty thousand for the US market that includes the naturally aspirated and the turbo versions for the second generation like this one is an NSX they only made 9,000 of those and let's say a Toyota Supra which is made by Toyota they only made 11,000 of those so those are basically twice as rare as this but I think that this is one of the best sports car values you can buy in the used car market today because if you get a really good like the best mr2 turbo in the world then you'd be looking at around 10 to $15,000 but I didn't have 10 or $15,000 to spend but I still wanted an mr2 turbo so what I did is I bought one for it thousand dollars and I didn't really care about anything else and here's what that's like now the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that this is not actually a terrible model so the turbo model usually comes with a different front grille there's like holes here for fog lights and the rear wing seems to be missing the turbo models usually have a rear wing at three-piece that bolts on to the trunk and also the side panels but there's nothing on this car but oddly enough there are holes in this trunk panel right here and there are holes down the side that have been filled in really really poorly so that means that this car unfortunately is not a turbo model except for the fact that this actually has the turbo engine this is the 3s GTE the second gen model of the 3s GT this is a 2-liter 4-cylinder with a turbocharger making around about 200 horsepower in the same amount of torque now this drivetrain is exactly what makes this car so unique and this was actually a powerhouse of an engine because although in stock form it could handle 200 maybe 250 horsepower in different iterations when you boost this thing this can make a serious amount of power and in the light car like this especially with all the weight over the rear wheels that made this car seriously quick just to give you guys an idea of how quick exactly if this car can be later models the 94 95 models with the gen 3 3 sut which basically had a revised intake manifold and some updated turbo components but had the same basic architecture it made this car do the quarter-mile in 13.1 seconds now just for comparison's sake that's round about the same as what Car and Driver did with my Mercedes SL 55 AMG and that had around 500 horsepower so power-to-weight ratio is the name of the game here although this car was actually quite small and diminutive in stature it was faster than the super turbo it was faster than the Acura NSX and it was also faster than the Ferrari 3/4 80s so when people say this is a poor man's Ferrari they really do mean it because it was actually faster than a Ferrari in its day now I know you're probably thinking that yeah I'm talking about later model examples being faster than a Ferrari but how good is this car how good is the car that I just bought for $1,000 basically sound unseen from a kid on Craigslist well here's the clip of when I first laid eyes on this car and I wasn't exactly impressed and there she is let's take a look so that is some extra bonus parts stock turbo and wastegate okay okay oh and there's a spoiler it looks like a looks like a stock spoiler but do you have a side so I think that there's like two extra pieces yeah it looks like it's okay cool so do you know what color originally this car was because some of it is so that's red like you can see over here but but inside the door it's blue so but that doesn't definitely doesn't like om pain so we have this that's not okay okay so there's a manual switch for the fans so this definitely looks like a swap but this is a 2nd gen 3 s GT turbo looks a little bigger so you said that does from a Supra yes yeah yeah they have different different hot sides but the CT 26 or what does have a catch can here some of them some other stuff I mean all of this is pretty much home made you know wiring and it's gonna need it going through but starts up fine another another reason you can tell that it's not it wasn't an original turbo is that the turbos have this thing in the middle right here they have like a bigger so like a more pronounced hump and also the front bumper but it's really really common of these are swaps for dynamic I feel like there's a lot of different ideas going going on in this car like the wheels the the engine all that stuff I mean it's a it's it's rough miniature project so it's that's fine all right let's get her on the truck well that was quite an ordeal just because it is a million degrees here in Miami but it's on the trailer and I didn't scrape it and the car actually does one it's not it's not as bad as I but it's also body work and whatnot I think body work can be fixed and running and it is overheating a little bit but we can fix that as well but now I have a 180 mile trip ahead of me it should be fun I can't wait to get this thing home another car by modern standards is actually pretty Spartan but it does run that 3s GT does come to life even though it does have a few issues so let's let's hear what it sounds like keys a little sticky okay so it's not actually the best running car in the world but it does have a lot of the mr2 s original charm stuff like these awesome pop-up headlights and these pretty cool manual roll-up windows now this is I always loved it now all kidding aside one thing that works really really well in this car is the t-top roof or t bar as toyota calls it now I do have the T tops there in my garage they're a glass which is cool I always love glass roofs but this little thing little spring wing deflector is just one of the things that let you know that Toyota was really on their game so this little thing would make sure that wind didn't shear right into your hair now as you had the tops off so this is actually pretty cool tone on both sides you would see stuff like this on a Sun roof but on a car like this I don't even think that the era has this but this is a little cool addition another thing is this aftermarket fiberglass snorkel now it's not actually in the best shape it's not actually the best quality and it's not really held on together by by that much but it does provide some extra cooling to the engine bay and I kind of like the look of it I don't know I'm a little ambivalent because it does have that sort of confused dog look it also doesn't really help that if you open up the hood or engine compartment you see that this doesn't really lead to anywhere there's actually a little little ledge right here that cuts the air and although the intake is right here I doubt this is really doing much there does look kind of cool now usually this is the point of the video where I take this car on a test drive and start talking about things that I have no authority in telling you stuff like snap oversteer and understeer and Oncenter twitchiness and stuff like that stuff I have no idea what they mean but they sound cool on video the reason I'm not doing that is because this car as you can see is a little rough and it's actually not safe to drive and that's actually the point of this project not that it's unsafe to drive but the that I want to make it safe to drive I want this car to be a very very good driver I want it to be an autocross car and I want to be a very cheap bare-bones platform for me to learn how to do advanced techniques like heel toe down shifting and stuff like that and I want to make sure that gets done on a very very small budget because after all this car was a thousand dollars I don't want to put a bunch of money into it it's never gonna be a show car it does have 200 some odd thousand miles on it but I think it can make it and I think that I can make it into something that's solid and reliable and at least more than than what we have here today so that's gonna be the focus of this build now I'm not getting rid of any other builds I'm not putting any other builds on hold this is gonna be in addition to what we usually see as far as my SL on my Aston and my ultimate daily driver which is back there which is getting some mods on it as well this should be a lot of fun and I hope you guys enjoy it but in the next video I'm going to be doing an in-depth look into this car as far as everything wrong with it and there is a lot wrong with this car if you liked this video and I hope you do consider subscribing hit that subscribe button and hit that button next to subscribe button it's a little bill and that is a notification button and that makes you part of my notification squad and that gives you access access to all my videos and you'll get a notification as soon as those videos come out if you'd like to support my channel and I hope you do that you can buy one of these shirts I have these shirts I have French everyday shirts and I have some stickers and other products that you guys might like every single dollar will go towards these builds and not just this one but Mercedes asked in SL all those things need a lot of love and I hope you guys like what what I'm selling if you'd like to contact me for any reason just ask me any questions at all actually I will be doing a Q&A video at the end of the week but if you want something a little more post haste then you can reach me at the real tovarisch that is Instagram and Twitter asked of aarush on Facebook and also esta varnish at gmail.com is my email so I'm easy to reach and I'm easy to find until next time on cars like this that man every single inch of this car needs work so I guess I need to wrench every day youhow's it going guys my name is de varias and today I bought the worst toyota mr2 in the country this is gonna be fun so let's start off with a little bit of a history lesson this is a 1991 co2 mr2 and in the late 80s and early 90s a lot of car manufacturers were learning from their mistakes in the 80s the power-crazed 80s and the very stringent regulations of the 70s that's sort of outside the box thinking LED car manufacturers like co2 and other big names to really give new platforms ago so this is a mid rear-engine platform and that's what the mr stands for the engine is behind the driver and that means that the weight distribution of this car is on point actually the weight distribution it's a little bit biased towards the rear which makes this car a little bit happy in the bends but this platform was popularized by the likes of Ferrari and Lamborghini and supercars but never really put in a production attainable affordable sports car until the mr2 came along now I know that Pontiac had the Fiero and the Fiero was a success in its own right but it never really achieved the cult status that this car did especially because Piero was a car for a person that looked at a Ferrari and said I can make that and an mr2 was actually thought of as a poor man's Ferrari in terms of the handling and power and the overall look while the Fiero was just kind of a starting point for a kick car you even had companies like Honda getting into the mix with their NSX and the NSX is basically a bigger version of this car with a bigger naturally aspirated engine and it produced a little bit more power but it had the same basic driving dynamic and those cars are kind of going stratospheric with their prices in the used car market but these cars are relatively cheap mainly because they made too many of them not too many in terms of Toyota this is not a Corolla but they did make around twenty thousand for the US market that includes the naturally aspirated and the turbo versions for the second generation like this one is an NSX they only made 9,000 of those and let's say a Toyota Supra which is made by Toyota they only made 11,000 of those so those are basically twice as rare as this but I think that this is one of the best sports car values you can buy in the used car market today because if you get a really good like the best mr2 turbo in the world then you'd be looking at around 10 to $15,000 but I didn't have 10 or $15,000 to spend but I still wanted an mr2 turbo so what I did is I bought one for it thousand dollars and I didn't really care about anything else and here's what that's like now the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that this is not actually a terrible model so the turbo model usually comes with a different front grille there's like holes here for fog lights and the rear wing seems to be missing the turbo models usually have a rear wing at three-piece that bolts on to the trunk and also the side panels but there's nothing on this car but oddly enough there are holes in this trunk panel right here and there are holes down the side that have been filled in really really poorly so that means that this car unfortunately is not a turbo model except for the fact that this actually has the turbo engine this is the 3s GTE the second gen model of the 3s GT this is a 2-liter 4-cylinder with a turbocharger making around about 200 horsepower in the same amount of torque now this drivetrain is exactly what makes this car so unique and this was actually a powerhouse of an engine because although in stock form it could handle 200 maybe 250 horsepower in different iterations when you boost this thing this can make a serious amount of power and in the light car like this especially with all the weight over the rear wheels that made this car seriously quick just to give you guys an idea of how quick exactly if this car can be later models the 94 95 models with the gen 3 3 sut which basically had a revised intake manifold and some updated turbo components but had the same basic architecture it made this car do the quarter-mile in 13.1 seconds now just for comparison's sake that's round about the same as what Car and Driver did with my Mercedes SL 55 AMG and that had around 500 horsepower so power-to-weight ratio is the name of the game here although this car was actually quite small and diminutive in stature it was faster than the super turbo it was faster than the Acura NSX and it was also faster than the Ferrari 3/4 80s so when people say this is a poor man's Ferrari they really do mean it because it was actually faster than a Ferrari in its day now I know you're probably thinking that yeah I'm talking about later model examples being faster than a Ferrari but how good is this car how good is the car that I just bought for $1,000 basically sound unseen from a kid on Craigslist well here's the clip of when I first laid eyes on this car and I wasn't exactly impressed and there she is let's take a look so that is some extra bonus parts stock turbo and wastegate okay okay oh and there's a spoiler it looks like a looks like a stock spoiler but do you have a side so I think that there's like two extra pieces yeah it looks like it's okay cool so do you know what color originally this car was because some of it is so that's red like you can see over here but but inside the door it's blue so but that doesn't definitely doesn't like om pain so we have this that's not okay okay so there's a manual switch for the fans so this definitely looks like a swap but this is a 2nd gen 3 s GT turbo looks a little bigger so you said that does from a Supra yes yeah yeah they have different different hot sides but the CT 26 or what does have a catch can here some of them some other stuff I mean all of this is pretty much home made you know wiring and it's gonna need it going through but starts up fine another another reason you can tell that it's not it wasn't an original turbo is that the turbos have this thing in the middle right here they have like a bigger so like a more pronounced hump and also the front bumper but it's really really common of these are swaps for dynamic I feel like there's a lot of different ideas going going on in this car like the wheels the the engine all that stuff I mean it's a it's it's rough miniature project so it's that's fine all right let's get her on the truck well that was quite an ordeal just because it is a million degrees here in Miami but it's on the trailer and I didn't scrape it and the car actually does one it's not it's not as bad as I but it's also body work and whatnot I think body work can be fixed and running and it is overheating a little bit but we can fix that as well but now I have a 180 mile trip ahead of me it should be fun I can't wait to get this thing home another car by modern standards is actually pretty Spartan but it does run that 3s GT does come to life even though it does have a few issues so let's let's hear what it sounds like keys a little sticky okay so it's not actually the best running car in the world but it does have a lot of the mr2 s original charm stuff like these awesome pop-up headlights and these pretty cool manual roll-up windows now this is I always loved it now all kidding aside one thing that works really really well in this car is the t-top roof or t bar as toyota calls it now I do have the T tops there in my garage they're a glass which is cool I always love glass roofs but this little thing little spring wing deflector is just one of the things that let you know that Toyota was really on their game so this little thing would make sure that wind didn't shear right into your hair now as you had the tops off so this is actually pretty cool tone on both sides you would see stuff like this on a Sun roof but on a car like this I don't even think that the era has this but this is a little cool addition another thing is this aftermarket fiberglass snorkel now it's not actually in the best shape it's not actually the best quality and it's not really held on together by by that much but it does provide some extra cooling to the engine bay and I kind of like the look of it I don't know I'm a little ambivalent because it does have that sort of confused dog look it also doesn't really help that if you open up the hood or engine compartment you see that this doesn't really lead to anywhere there's actually a little little ledge right here that cuts the air and although the intake is right here I doubt this is really doing much there does look kind of cool now usually this is the point of the video where I take this car on a test drive and start talking about things that I have no authority in telling you stuff like snap oversteer and understeer and Oncenter twitchiness and stuff like that stuff I have no idea what they mean but they sound cool on video the reason I'm not doing that is because this car as you can see is a little rough and it's actually not safe to drive and that's actually the point of this project not that it's unsafe to drive but the that I want to make it safe to drive I want this car to be a very very good driver I want it to be an autocross car and I want to be a very cheap bare-bones platform for me to learn how to do advanced techniques like heel toe down shifting and stuff like that and I want to make sure that gets done on a very very small budget because after all this car was a thousand dollars I don't want to put a bunch of money into it it's never gonna be a show car it does have 200 some odd thousand miles on it but I think it can make it and I think that I can make it into something that's solid and reliable and at least more than than what we have here today so that's gonna be the focus of this build now I'm not getting rid of any other builds I'm not putting any other builds on hold this is gonna be in addition to what we usually see as far as my SL on my Aston and my ultimate daily driver which is back there which is getting some mods on it as well this should be a lot of fun and I hope you guys enjoy it but in the next video I'm going to be doing an in-depth look into this car as far as everything wrong with it and there is a lot wrong with this car if you liked this video and I hope you do consider subscribing hit that subscribe button and hit that button next to subscribe button it's a little bill and that is a notification button and that makes you part of my notification squad and that gives you access access to all my videos and you'll get a notification as soon as those videos come out if you'd like to support my channel and I hope you do that you can buy one of these shirts I have these shirts I have French everyday shirts and I have some stickers and other products that you guys might like every single dollar will go towards these builds and not just this one but Mercedes asked in SL all those things need a lot of love and I hope you guys like what what I'm selling if you'd like to contact me for any reason just ask me any questions at all actually I will be doing a Q&A video at the end of the week but if you want something a little more post haste then you can reach me at the real tovarisch that is Instagram and Twitter asked of aarush on Facebook and also esta varnish at gmail.com is my email so I'm easy to reach and I'm easy to find until next time on cars like this that man every single inch of this car needs work so I guess I need to wrench every day you\n"