One Owner, Two 71-Series Toyota Mark IIs — and an Altezza Six-Speed in the Twin-Turbo

AUTO MESSE WEB has profiled an owner who showed two separately modified 71-series Toyota Mark IIs at a classic car event in Shimonoseki — one built around a later Toyota gearbox, the other around a set of individual throttle bodies.

Both cars appeared at the Mojiko Retro Neo-Classic Car Festival at Kaikyo Messe Shimonoseki, under the event's "Special Selection 77" banner. Per the feature, the owner — identified only by his given name, Makoto — has been in the 71 series since he was eighteen: he bought a late-model 71 Cresta with the twin-cam engine shortly after earning his license, drifted away from the family for a while, and found the interest returning in his late twenties.

The white twin-turbo: an Altezza six-speed and air suspension

The white twin-turbo Mark II has been in his ownership for roughly twenty-one years, and it is the car fitted with the newer transmission hardware. According to the feature, it pairs a factory Toyota Altezza six-speed manual with an OS Giken twin-plate clutch, on air suspension using AirForce struts and AirLift management. Eighteen-inch SSR Formula Mesh wheels fill the arches.

The key point for readers outside Japan is that the six-speed did not come in this car. It was sourced from the Altezza, a considerably later Toyota, and fitting it is a much larger job than the parts list suggests. The 71-series Mark II and its Cresta and Chaser siblings are front-engine, rear-drive sedans from Japan's 1980s "hi-so car" boom — a domestic trend built around upscale rear-drive sedans — and they are a generation removed from the donor.

The gold Grande Limited: six individual throttle bodies

The second car is a gold Grande Limited, acquired seven or eight years ago and running seventeen-inch wheels built around factory disc centers. Its defining modification came later: per the feature, the owner happened to come across a set of six individual throttle bodies for the twin-cam engine and weighed buying yet another car to put them on, before deciding to fit them to the Grande Limited he already owned.

Per the feature, both engines are otherwise left largely standard, with intake and exhaust work rather than internal modification.

Together the two cars show different routes through the same model: the white car combines period styling with a later Toyota six-speed, while the Grande Limited is centered on its six-throttle intake. It is recognizably the same instinct that produced the manual-swapped Y31 Gloria — keeping a thirty-plus-year-old sedan in use by borrowing from a newer Toyota — and it is a common thread through the tuning world in Japan.