Driving the secret cars of Toyota's heritage collection

Get behind the wheel now and you soon find that this curvy little 4x4’s connotations of pace and poise are faint at best. Compared with today’s crop of genuinely sporty compact SUVs, powered as they are by buzzy turbo triples or torquey diesel lumps, the RAV4’s naturally aspirated 2.0-litre engine feels a bit gutless, and the thrumming noise it makes at idle is rather more reminiscent of barns than beaches.

Climb up through the gears, however, and it’s plain to see where the RAV4’s enduring appeal lies. Even on empty, flat and generally untroubling suburban streets, it inspires a confidence that’s often missing from today’s diminutive runarounds, which aren’t so disparate in terms of footprint.

Potholes, kerbs and cobbles are hardly a challenging test for any 4x4, but the sense of solidity in the RAV4 is pervasive and hints at the all-terrain ability that set this car aside from its contemporary competitors and arguably even its spiritual descendants. No wonder around 90% of all RAV4s ever built are still roadworthy.

The cabin isn’t exactly inspiring by today’s standards, dominated as it is by grey plastic, black vinyl and hefty manual controls, but there’s a certain charm to be found in its honesty and, without sliding into nostalgic cliché, it’s far more intuitively laid out than the majority of newer examples.

That lack of pretention, coupled with the RAV4’s enduring popularity, means that, despite the novelty of driving what is essentially a museum exhibit on public roads, no one stops and stares, bombards us with questions when we stop or rushes to snap a picture for Instagram. This is the ideal quasi-classic car for introverts: simple, affordable and subtle.

Back in the flattering light of Toyota’s workshop and with its fresh paint polished to within an inch of its life, it’s clear just how much time and effort has been devoted to saving N897 VHN. Once the previous owner’s self-applied plastic wheel arch trims were removed to uncover near-fatal amounts of corrosion, it became obvious this was to be more than a spit-and-polish clean-up job.

In a saga more befitting a priceless 1960s Lamborghini, this RAV4’s recommissioning turned into a full-bore restoration, with the team even going so far as to buy a donor car for the sole purpose of removing its entire roof, their own car having been fitted with a leaky, non-factory-specification aftermarket sunroof.

But the RAV4 isn’t the only artefact in Toyota’s workshop-cum-museum that’s worth gawping at, and it’s certainly not the car that gets the most attention. Nestled at the back of a nondescript warehouse in Sussex are some of Toyota’s and Lexus’s most important, acclaimed and popular models, kept so that they can be rolled out for big events and magazine features such as this.

Behind a row of 2020 Corollas, C-HRs and Toyota Camrys, we discover proper bedroom-wall-worthy classics, including an original MR2 sports car and a legendary rear-wheel-drive Corolla AE86 – the thinking man’s drift weapon. Full-time press fleet technician Mike Croft doesn’t hesitate in choosing the latter as his pick of the bunch. “There aren’t many of these about, especially in this sort of condition,” he says. “There are a lot of imports, rather than genuine UK cars like this one.”

This comes from a man who was once one of just five technicians in Europe trained to work on Lexus’s ultra-exclusive LFA hypercar – an example of which sits just metres away, well out of range of door dings and dropped spanners.

The 11-year-old LFA has firmly established itself as one of the most spine-tingling supercars of all time. Its 4.8-litre V10 engine revs up to its 9400rpm limit so quickly that an analogue tachometer wouldn’t be able to keep up. Its bodywork is made of carbonfibre composite and it took nearly a decade to develop.

But Croft isn’t too fazed by its reputation. “Bits of it are different,” he says. “It’s got a torque tube rather than a propshaft, so the engine and clutch are at the front and the gearbox at the back. But generally, it just needs servicing and it holds up really well, even on the track.”

We dare not move the LFA from its clearly designated parking spot to see for ourselves, but a quick blip of the throttle is evidence enough that this is something pretty special even by supercar standards.

Croft says the oldest car in the collection, an immaculate 1966 Corona, is equally trouble-free. Pleasingly unmodified, save for the addition of a modern stereo (a boon on longer trips, which it still undertakes from time to time), it sits between a Yaris GRMN, kept on following the hot supermini’s relatively recent media launch, and a wackily restyled Toyota Aygo city car, aptly called Crazy – as the ‘graffiti’ adorned across its widened flanks suggests.

Crazy is what happens when you remove the rear seats from your boggo runabout, replace them with a 200bhp turbocharged motor, bolt on a rear wing from a genuine Champ Car and install a limited-slip differential… at the rear. Forget the regular Aygo’s future classic potential; this is nothing less than a rare display of lunacy from one of the industry’s more reputedly ‘sane’ companies. It thoroughly deserves a spot in the history books.

As does, you could argue, the rally-ready first-generation Toyota Prius that’s halfway through a thorough refresh on the other side of the workshop. Created in 2002 to demonstrate the reliability of what was then a completely newfangled powertrain, this stripped-out eco warrior took part in the arduous Midnight Sun to Red Sea rally from Sweden to Jordan in 2002, and it didn’t do too badly, in spite of its electrified innards’ heft.

Stickered up and with a spartan interior, it’s a far cry from the Prius that took you home from your last night out, and it played a pivotal role in the model’s early success. Hybrid technology has come a long way since, but this is yet another example of how even some of seemingly the most mundane and mainstream cars will enjoy a long-lasting legacy.

Even more unexpected is the newest addition to Toyota’s treasure trove: a 2001 Toyota Yaris that’s unassuming in the extreme – until you take a closer look at its odometer. Yes, it really has covered just 149 miles since it left the showroom almost two decades ago. The story goes that it was bought in Ireland, clipped the garage door when it arrived at the new owner’s home, was then repaired and has been dry-stored ever since.

To all intents and purposes, it’s a brand new car – even the original tyres are present and correct – and it has now been given a permanent home here among the Toyota and Lexus greats.

Should we have to justify the ‘classic’ status of some of these cars? Certainly there will be dissenters who argue that budget runarounds are disposable, and let’s not pretend a base-spec city car could hold its own at a concours d’élégance. But these cars have done far more for mass mobility than the Aston Martin DB6, Ferrari 250 GTO or McLaren F1 ever did and are therefore surely deserving of some sort of commemoration.

Croft sums it up pretty concisely in describing how new members of the fleet are selected. “The criteria are: very good condition, low mileage or something that’s a bit rare,” he says. “If you can get all of that, perfect.”

With hypercars, track toys and even the hilarious one-off Hilux Bruiser pick-up truck on its roster, this heritage fleet is living proof that automotive history is worth not only preserving but driving as well.

Meeting a hero: the original MR2

Squat, compact, angular and resplendent as this example is in Super Red, it’s easy to see why the Mk1 Toyota MR2 is nicknamed the baby Ferrari. Back away and squint and it could almost be an F40.

Mounted amidships is a naturally aspirated 1.6-litre four-cylinder engine borrowed from the contemporary Corolla, which calls upon 127bhp and 97lb ft to send this 1030kg two-seat coupé from 0-62mph in 8.5sec – competitive for its time (1984 to 1989).

Crashes and corrosion have diminished the MR2’s number over the past three decades, so it cuts a somewhat unfamiliar figure out on public roads. That’s fortunate, because if it weren’t for other road users staring, there’s every chance it could vanish under the wheels of a passing lorry. Vulnerability somewhat overrides the sense of fun around town, so sweeping B-roads provide the best opportunity for seeing if this car has stood the test of time.