There’s so much here it’s worth listening (as always) to the full podcast because Kevin is an inveterate car buyer and flipper and has driven/bought/sold some weird stuff. Also, he tracked a Daewoo to death. Why do old Hyundai Santa Fe engines go for like $7,000? Which Civic is the right engine?
Kevin’s love for the Yaris and Echo is appealing to me. Especially the Echo.
Here’s the sedan version of the Echo, which was also sold as the Toyota Platz. Can you imagine if they sold it as the Platz here? What a name. Elsewhere this car was badged as the Yaris, which is what the Echo eventually became. The car debuted in the United States in 2002 as a sub-Corolla offering and, for some reason, all the press photos for it are of it in front of various shops and diners.
I can’t explain it either, but I loved the tall coupe version of this car which looked slightly aquatic. Besides its unique look, Kevin attests to owning numerous cars with the Toyota 1NZ engine, which is only good for 109 HP in most uses (Yaris, Scion xA, Scion xB) but can churn miles. To listen to the podcasts episodes you can go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or you can use the RSS feed and point your favorite Podcast player at it. I’m embedding the three most recent episodes below if you want to listen to it from your browser. Please like, subscribe, rate, et cetera.
Canada got an Echo hatchback we never got down here, in both 2-door and 4-door hatch. They even got a sporty RS hatch. When it was replaced by the Yaris, they still got RS variants not sold in the US 🙁 I’d love a 4-door Echo RS hatch in blue or gold
