Nov 15 2009
MX83 Cressida
The Cressida is a flipping sweet ass sedan. I’ve wanted one of these behemoths since I figured out what they were about 3 or 4 years ago. One thing that easily influenced my decision to love these crazy things is the fact that over seas they are actually called a ‘Chaser’. The Chaser’s chassis code in Japan is jzx81. The chassis code in the US is mx83. This is important because in Japan, the Chaser got a much more venerable motor than was available in the US. The 1JZ-GTE. This twin-turbo power plant was mated to an optoional 5 speed gearbox and was reported to produce 280ps!
The US version of the car of course came with a watered down version of a straight six with no turbo and a very high propensity for blowing head gaskets, even in stock form. Completely stock cars with a stock 7m-GE have been known to blow head gaskets around the 100k mark. These cars were also not available in a manual 5 speed transmission. They were only available with the automatic slushbox and was Toyota’s first foray into a luxury market, and possibly a test car for the brand we know as Lexus today.
When I initially did the research on these cars there was not nearly as much information as there is today. At the time when I was doing research the best solution for these cars was to import a jzx81 front clip, and simply swap everything over. Since the years have passed, there have been quite a few more discoveries into parts interchangability for these cars, and jzx81 clips are getting scarce.
Now I own one! So I’m planning on wasting a bunch of money on it of course! The following pages will detail my progress with the car hopefully, and maybe become informative for others at some point. A basic outline of my plans for the car would consist of switching the motor over to a 2jz-gte, Updating the interior and exterior of the car, slamming it on the ground and making it look HAWT.
Skip on over the next section “just picked it up!“