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Interesting imported JDM Toyota cars in India from the 90s & 2000s

18th January 2024, 15:30 by Utkarsh Chaudhary

Talking about the Supra, only a few of them came to India and a significant number of these cars are still on the road.

BHPian Shreyfiesta recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Back in the early nineties, all we Indians got to see in the form of imported cars were the occasional Mercedes Benz-es, blue-moon Honda Accords and those ubiquitous Toyota Corollas. Any Gulf returnee or NRI had one around. Corolla was not too flashy, performed brilliantly, and managed to stand out from the crowd of Ambys and Fiats. Everyone appreciated the Corolla for its reliability and near-immortal nature, nothing much ever happened to it, and it ran uncomplaining, kilometre after kilometre, lapping its own odometer a few times over before signs of ageing cropped up.

Giving company to the Corollas were bigger and more opulent Crowns. Other Toyota models like Estima, Celsior, Celica and Sera also were imported to India in high numbers. Late into the same decade came the Starlet, a bare-basic Toyota car. It was very nearly the perfect transport, and it came cheap. The Starlet was a hatchback, and India saw quite a good number of these in its diesel versions, both turbo and NA engine options. So you had all the virtues of a Toyota and the economy of a diesel rolled into an inexpensive package.

So how come Toyota didn't the Starlet launch here, especially when the middle class was taking to the Maruti 800 in droves? A made-in-India Starlet would have cost as much as an Esteem back then, and this obviously just didn't make sense for Toyota. And of course, you had the Tercel, a sedan based on a slightly longer and wider platform.

JDM version of the Tercel was called the Corsa, this was meant for markets where GM-Opel, who also produced a car by the same name, was absent. So it was with cars like the Corsa that Toyota established its hegemony over the South Asian markets. It can get you from point A to point B innumerable times and still do it all over again.

Tercel, Corolla, Corsa and Crown came to India in droves, with their reliability factor constantly working into the Indian collective subconscious. If it is a Toyota, it can't go wrong. An automobile version of the Swiss Army, versatile and very dependable. There's still a good number of people who use these cars and are still pleased as punch with the performance of their ageing cars.

Harshad Mehta with his Lexus LS400, a.k.a Toyota Celsior.

BHPian Mirage posted this photo of a T120 generation Celica on the forum in 2006.

Cut to early-2000s. You might have heard that most of the Bollywood film stars and rich businessmen preferred to be chauffeured around in a Lexus LX470. But most of them were not actually original LX470s.

Yes, you heard it right! The majority of the LX470s you see here are rebadged diesel-engined Land Cruisers with Lexus faces. Make no mistake, there exists many legit J100 Land Cruiser imports too in India. It was cheaper to get a Lexus converted Land Cruiser 100 from the Middle East or Japan than to import an original LX470 from the US. The Lexus SUV was sold only with 4.7-litre 2UZ-FE petrol engine, but most examples came to India have the 4.2-litre diesel from Land Cruiser 100. Cygnus and Amazon versions were the closest you could get to the LX470.

There was a big scam in India on Landcruisers back in the 2000s. There were many importers in our country who would import these cars. They would buy a fresh Land Cruiser in Dubai. Ship it to India as a 10-year-old Lexus LX under the TR scheme. For inspection, these guys would drive in an older LX and then drive the new car out. The car then gets sold to someone else, but registration still remains in the name of a labourer who has returned to India.

Amitabh Bachchan's Land Cruiser Cygnus with Lexus kit. A legit Land Cruiser 100 is seen in the background.

Dia Mirza, Indian model, actress and producer posing with her Land Cruiser Cygnus.

Cars were shown to be older than they actually were, this was done to get more depreciation on the book value of the car while calculating the customs duty. Lexus was made only in the US and it wasn't possible to import from any other country than the home country. For registering such cars, imported car dealers used to bribe small RTOs of various states (HR 18 in most cases). So most of these were grey imports which came to India via the TR/ EPCG route.

At a later stage, DRI and Customs had identified many car smuggling rackets run by foreign car dealers. They not only undervalued the vehicles but also allegedly declared older cars as new. In 2006, a Bollywood actress' Land Cruiser was seized by DRI for the same reason. She bought the car via an import car dealer in Mumbai. Documents stated its year of manufacture as 1998 while the actual year of manufacture was 2003, DRI sources said. Value of the vehicle was declared very less with a customs duty of ₹ 9 lakh being paid on the vehicle. The importer and the broker miscleared the chassis number of the SUV that had a market value of ₹ 60 lakh back then, so the actual duty payable was around ₹ 20 lakh.

Malayalam actor Mohanlal with his legit 1999 UAE-Spec Land Cruiser 100 in the movie Ravanaprabhu.

BHPian salty dog's 1993 Toyota MR-2, a picture from 2008.

Yash Sawant's Toyota Altezza AS200. 1/4 surviving Altezzas in our country.

The EPCG scheme was mainly for the hotel business. If they earned foreign exchange, they could import a car for as little as 12% import duty. Cars imported using the EPCG scheme had to wear yellow plates and could not be sold for 5 years. Most of the Aristos, Celsiors and Harriers came to our country via the EPCG route.

Like what I said about the Land Cruiser 100, import car dealers used to rebadge Celsior and Aristo too, as LS430 and GS300. Interestingly, 90 percent of the Aristos imported to India were V300 Vertex Edition models with the 2JZ-GTE under the hood. The turbo 2JZ was first introduced on Aristo, Supra only got it later. There are a few Aristos in India that still survive.

Talking about the Supra, only a few of them came to India, most are legit imports too. Just like the Supra, only a few Altezzas were brought to India, and a significant proportion of these cars are still on the road. Both AS200 and RS200 versions of the Altezza exist in our country.

Then there were many seventh-gen Celicas, these cars used to retail for about ₹ 15 lakhs back in the early 2000s. Star hotels, on the other side, had a large fleet of Celsior to ferry their special guests.

BHPian Akshay1234 spotted this Toyota Aristo along with a Porsche 911 Carrera in 2007.