Our Cars: Que Sera, Sera

Big words to live up to for what was essentially a Starlet in a trenchcoat and top hat, so how did Toyota achieve all this? Well, somehow the designers managed to convince the engineers to throw the rulebook out of the window and give the AXV-II a glass canopy roof and butterfly doors. Yes, you read that right. And did it work? It seems so, as Car Styling magazine wrote at the time: ‘if one regards the production Starlet as an everyday utensil, the AXV-II may be described as a car for out-of-the-ordinary enjoyment’.

Still, we’ve been here before; about a million times before. OEMs tease us with futuristic concepts, which invariably get washed out through internal design reviews due to all kinds of usually very valid reasons, such as budget, feasibility or even a wake-up call from a customer clinic. By the time it reaches production, if indeed that even happens, the result is so watered down that it might have retained a lighting detail or a body crease that could just resemble the show pony initially presented to the world a few years before. If you’re lucky.

But this, emphatically, is not what happened to the AXV-II. Oh, no. In a bout of temporary collective insanity, and mostly because the foundations of the show car had been so firmly set in an existing production model, just two years later Toyota decided it was ready to launch the road-going version of its winged-concept. They called it Sera, the French translation of ‘will be’, and despite some visual changes and a conservatively beefed up 1.5-litre, 108bhp engine, it looked as much like the Jetsons’ flying car as its prototype.

Even for the madness of the time, the Sera was a car of many firsts. Certainly, this was the first time that this type of door design had ever been seen on a Japanese mass-produced car. The Autozam AZ-1 kei car followed a few years later, but in much smaller numbers. Interestingly, there seemed to be an insistence at the time from Toyota to call them gullwing doors, something that some reporters called out as being a bit of a marketing ploy to steal some of the sexy status of the likes of the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL or the extraordinary Bugatti Type 64.

And while I don’t want to get too precious about it, there are differences. While gullwing doors solely open upwards, usually hinged to a single point on a beam in the middle of the roof, the Sera’s doors were hinged both right above the windscreen and at the bottom of the A-pillar allowing them to tilt not only upwards but also forwards for even easier ingress and egress, hence giving them the look of butterfly wings. Like you’d find in a McLaren F1.

Actually, this is the Toyota Sera’s main claim to fame. Gordon Murray himself admitted his inspiration for the F1’s door design came from his neighbour’s Sera, which he’d drive past every day. My sources tell me that a Sera door lives somewhere within the confines of the McLaren Technology Centre to this day, and gets brought out when the team needs further inspiration.

There was plenty more innovation, too. For instance, a coveted option on the Sera was the very high-tech ‘Super-Live Sound’ system, comprising 10 speakers and a subwoofer dotted all around the car. This included a box-type two-way rear speaker bar on the rear shelf, above the boot, which at the press of a button (labelled ‘warp’) would control a motor to physically pivot the speakers to point directly in the direction of the passengers (‘Casual Mode’) or to point backward to allow the sound to be reflected by the huge concave rear glasshouse and increase its ‘presence’ (‘Funky Mode’).

The Sera also marked Toyota’s introduction of the Flexible Press System (FPS), an improvement to the conventional panel stamping process of the time. A new method using a liquid chamber as part of the press-forming process, combined with a three-dimensional carbon dioxide laser cutter allowed a reduction in the number of steps usually required to press a new panel from five forming processes (drawing, trimming, bending, cam trimming and cam flanging) to just three (drawing, laser trimming and cam flanging), not only saving precious time during the manufacturing process, but also improving quality and accuracy.

Despite all the technology crammed into this small car and the high praise received from the car design community, only 15,941 Seras were made between February 1990 and December 1995, making it quite a rare car. Why? Not long after its launch, the Japanese economy hit a downturn, and with sales limited to the domestic market, numbers slowly dwindled.

But how does one end up in my garage, circa 30 years later? Luckily the Sera has kept an obscure but steady fanbase over the years, with some having been exported all over the world. The steering wheel being on the correct side for the UK market means a few found their way over here – some of those becoming unfortunate casualties of road salt and British weather. The one now in my possession was first imported in 2000 and has certainly seen its fair share of winters, but is in relatively good condition for its age still. A few have asked me where I found it, but in this particular case I don’t think I can say I found this car; rather it found me.

I have been publicly declaring my fondness for the Sera for a while now. For me, there is something about its personality that is inexplicably charming. In a world of dull suits, the Toyota Sera is the extroverted theatre kid that has no Hollywood ambitions. Toyota never tried to pass it off as a sports car or something it was not. It’s just a flamboyant, futuristic-looking practical commuter, and there is something very authentic about that.

Then, just a couple of weeks ago, I ended up crossing paths with someone whose life circumstances had changed, and was now looking to rehome his beautiful light turquoise mica Toyota Sera. Clearly the thought waves had travelled far and my reputation as both a bit of a Sera fangirl and custodian of silly niche 1990s Japanese cars meant I was entrusted with bringing a trailer, picking up the car from the driveway where it had been SORN’d and providing it with a loving forever home.

In all honesty, I don’t have the space, time or budget for another project – but I have fallen in love with everything about this little spaceship of a car. It flew through its MOT and made it down to Bicester Heritage for the Sunday Scramble without missing a beat. The experience of driving around in what is essentially a greenhouse on wheels was unnerving at first, but now it feels like the space I want to retreat back to after a long day. Among my absolute favourite things these days is driving the Sera around on a rainy day, listening to the raindrops pattering against the glass.

Maybe I did really manifest this car. Maybe the car manifested me. Either way, I haven’t quite figured out what’s next in our journey, apart from the fact that I will share it all with you right here. For now, as the song goes: ‘que sera, sera’, whatever will be, will be.