Used Car of the Day: 1988 Toyota MR2

by Tim Healey

Published: January 4th, 2024

Today we bring you a 1988 Toyota MR2. I had forgotten this generation of the MR2 existed.

In my defense, I was probably in second grade when these were new.

This one has 176K miles, a body in decent shape and a rebuilt engine. The seller has spare parts available.

The seller says the car runs well and has a detailed description of the rebuild, but he or she also says there is an issue preventing the car from getting smog tested (it's in California).

There is surface rust, but minimal.

Apparently, the interior is also in good shape and features a Sparco pedals and a reupholstered driver's seat. The passenger seat needs to be reupholstered, though the gauges work. There's an aftermarket CD player installed.

If you're into these old Toyotas, click here to check it out.

[Images: Seller]

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Tim Healey

Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.

More by Tim Healey

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3 of 38 comments

DenverMike on Jan 04, 2024

If you’ve never driven one 9/10ths on an off camber, decreasing radius at 3X the posted, go ahead and delete your comment. A buddy was buying one and I met him at the seller with a truck and trailer. $5K firm, knew what he had, no lowballers.
Excellent condition, OK cool everything checked out on the test drive, yep but I suggested from the passenger side, put it in 5th at 30 MPH and stomp on it. It went straight to redline. Got back and without exactly admitting it could use a new clutch, seller was fine with $1000 off.
The buddy drove mine earlier and had to have his own. With this one, show up and break out $6K in an envelope, done deal.

1 Reply
Rlrides on Jan 05, 2024

I had one of these back in 89. It was very fun to drive, but tricky to race in an Auto-X. It suffered from snap oversteer and was hard to catch. Also, the stock clutch would not handle a high rpm launch when new.

Like Reply
- DenverMike on Jan 05, 2024
  
  I don’t believe they’re snappy at all, as long as you stay ON the gas, exiting a turn, keeping the back end planted, just know that going in, especially when the back end starts to come around.
  It’s one of the hardest things to unlearn. Except that’s true for all vehicles and goes against what we were taught in Drivers Ed.
  Mid engine means you can carry more speed into the turn and brake harder up to the apex, vs front engine.
  
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