Love your adventures, Tom! Always read them. Always learn something.

Normally when faced with these kinds of things, I just move on to another store, but I was feeling a bit spicy that day and wanted to pin this guy down  with the actual regulations. Also, I got a blog out of it. 

Building one of the best cars in the world, and keeping it almost completely isolated to a single market, for over 50 years? That’s wonderfully weird.

Toyota Tercel. Bought the base model (no a/c, no radio, no power anything, not even a passenger-side rearview) for MSRP in late ‘91, which was around 7 grand at the time—comes out to ~$15k today. Most reliable, dependable, and predictable vehicle I’ve ever owned. When it came to amenities and frills, there were none,…

Yep, the Fit has got to be a finalist here. The amount of useable space they managed to find in an efficient, cheap, and small vehicle is incredible.  That they also managed to make it decently fun car to drive (particularly in manual transmission guise) was the icing on the cake.  So obviously they stopped importing…

A wealthy region’s governments actually coming up with a practical solution instead of just a new way to treat unhoused people like subhumans?

The genius of the Prius is still not quite appreciated. Not only for things like this, but for just how bulletproof they are. It’s even more impressive when you think of how new hybrid technology was when it came out. It’s about the cheapest non-EV you could possibly own - I know I miss my ‘04 terribly. 

Really? No Toyota Hilux?

Except the humble corolla all trac bought out the D pillar lights in 1988 four years ahead of the Volvo 850 wagon to give a wide load opening.
Also single reverse light in the ATM machine.
Europe versions also had bumper mounted rear fogs (another now popular move).

Yeah, I was pointing out the ‘glowing’ clear plastic LED element which, to my knowledge, the XC60 was the first Volvo to have it.

It’s not the vertical lights. It’s the use of LEDs to create a continuous line rather than a bunch of dots. (And the integration of that line in the styling.)

Why chose a car that came up like 15 years after this trend started as an example ?

We have lived in the San Jose area for the last 20 years and none of our cars have ever been broken into. And we are not particularly careful about anything. In fact I’ve been living in the Bay Area, Oakland, and also LA since the 1980's and I’ve only ever had one car break-in- That one happened during a visit to Vanco…

Late to the party due to time differences of living in the Antipodes.
But this car was a first! - D pillar tailights? The humble 1988 AE95 Corolla 4wd / Tercel /Carib Sprinter / Alltrac was five years ahead of old mate Volvo 850 wagon.

The roof mounted tail lights of the Citroen DS.

Okay, so you answered the question yourself. Toyota, Honda, Ford, Chevrolet, etc., are the competitive brands.

Toyota in America should be selling HiLux. This makes Tacoma look stupid.

Crazy similar, right?

“On the other hand, this seems super shady (and un-Canadian).”

I do prefer watching a resto of a free Charade than some of the “I just bought crashed *insert supercar here* and it cost me this much to fix”  *cough Tarvish* videos