Hi everyone,

Here is some info on the Sera for anyone who is interested.

Firstly, as far as I know, the Sera is a close relation of the Toyota Starlet. The Starlet's successor/contemporary was the Paseo (we thought it was ugly here too).
In standard form it was equipped with a 1.5 litre, 16v 4 cylinder engine, developing 108 bhp.
Now this sounds absolutely paltry, but because of the fact that the car doesn't weigh very much (I've driven two) it actually goes pretty well - ok so you're not going to get the torquey launch like an SVX (but then other than a well tuned 8 cylinder when do you??).

But admittedly, the long term owners have found the lack of power to be a bit of an issue, that's why my friend has swapped the standard powerplant for 1.3 litre turbocharged unit out of a JDM Starlet turbo - with this the car is transformed. Not only do you get the sort of open mouthed looks when you pull up in it (a la SVX), it's also goes very well indeed. I believe he is planning on upping the boost pressure to 140 - 160 bhp, though there has been talk of 200+.

Regarding the windows/doors, there was a reference to the McLaren F1, in reality, the F1 windows/doors were based on the Sera. The doors themselves aren't actually that heavy, and are lifted via a pair of hydraulic struts on each side, but a major downside is the (almost) all glass roof, which is a little like sitting in a convection oven on a sunny day.

All in all, the Sera was a prototype, that perhaps shouldn't have been built, but I for one, am very glad that it was.

BTW, I've no idea if there were lefthand drive variants of the Sera built (I'll ask my friend).

Cheers for reading my ramblings,

Jason
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'94 Black UK Spec SVX
'00 Black cat called 'Pixel'