Category: Cars

mooban def: a village or community (Thai)
(note: I previously wrote about my new ride here)
Maybe I should say the legend “continues,” since I’m told it’s quite possibly run a million kilometers over the past 36 years, but the legend of the Kujira Crown began for me on September 1, 2007. I happened across this ad shortly after it was posted on the Thai Visa forums:

1971 Toyota Crown Deluxe.
RB20 Nissan 2 litre, 24 Valve Fuel Injected 6 Cylinder.
5 Speed Manual
Airconditioning (but needs a re-gas)
Registration expired, can be updated. Owner Book and change of ownership papers supplied.
This is a tired old car, with brakes, steering and suspension from the early 70’s. Goes very well, engine and gearbox is sound. Suit restoration, or farm, mooban hack.
THB35,000-

I wasn’t very hopeful for any kind of car available for $1000 US in Thailand, because cars are, against all economic sense, more expensive here than in the states or even Japan, especially used ones. Let me put it another way: I have never seen a car here selling for five times that much worth driving – five grand US will buy you a real dog in Thailand, and that’s about it.
But the magic words for me in that ad were: 1971, Crown, RB20, 24 valve, Airconditioning. If true, this car had all I needed to get to the university and back every day, in a bit of style, too. The poster of the ad supplied some photos:




It sure didn’t look like a dog… I was intrigued, maybe even sold from the get go. I messaged the seller via private message on the Thai Visa BBS:

Hi, I saw your ad for the ’71 Crown this afternoon. I’m looking for something like this just for shuttling around town, but am living up in Isan. Where is your Crown located? Do you have any further details on its condition/history?

He replied:

The Crown is here in Bangkok. I’ve owned it for about 4 years, purchased off a friend who lived in Khon Kaen for many years, so it’s spent a lot of it’s life in Isan. It’s an ideal old car for getting around town, I drove it from Bangkok to Chonburi and back everyday for 7 months, and it did well. Basically the body is starting to show it’s rust again, bubbling out in a few places, it still washes up nice. It’s a solid ladder frame chassis car, and that’s sound. Brakes, suspension, steering are tired, but it’s remarkably still good to drive, tires are worn out. New Battery, radiator and hoses are fine, clutch, gearbox (very nice 5 speed) and diff are all quiet and good, it doesn’t overheat, use oil, water, and is actually quite economical when driven sedately, it’s also quite fast, and will happily (and dangerously) do 180kmh. Exhaust is good and quiet, it was a well done conversion from probably 8 or 9 years ago. It’s dashboard is in pieces, but I have it all here and it’s easily reinstalled. Aircond is an old under dash unit, but when it had gas, it was remarkably cold and effective!
I’m basically selling it for the price of the engine/gearbox as a 24V RB20 is quite a popular engine here in Bangkok, and the Nissan boys like converting up from the 12V engine, it’s also a good CNG conversion engine apparently.
Give me a call on xxxx if you want any further info!

Needless to say, I called and expressed interest pretty quickly. This turned out to be a good thing, because others started calling the seller after I did. I have to explain something here regarding the seller, who I shall refer top as “C.” As the Dude would say, C is a righteous dude. After I called him, he got calls from other interested parties and even was asked to sell by people who just happened to see the car, but he sold it to me for two reasons; the first was that I called first and the second is that he wanted the car to have a good home. This is the reason he sold it to me so cheaply, and also the reason he didn’t just sell the engine and junk the car, which would have been much, much easier for him. His own words were along the lines of, “If I sold the car just for the engine, they would have junked it and that would have been one less piece of funk left in the world. I think the world needs this kind of funk.” Amen, brother.
When Nam and I made a trip out to Bangkok to actually see the car, it only solidified my desire for it. As I stated previously, it didn’t look like a dog. And driving it around a bit to feel what that transplanted Skyline engine felt like, it sure didn’t bark like a dog either… It was a very cool, peculiar feeling – like cruising down the street in a piece of history. If only cars could talk!
It took a couple of months to get everything together for the change of ownership, which got complicated because the paper owner was a Thai national living overseas who didn’t have a current Thai national ID card. Basically, I wanted the car re-registered so it could be insured before I drove it back to Mahasarakham. I think that most people buying a car at that price would not have bothered registering or insuring it, but in my current situation I have everything to lose and nothing to gain by driving around uninsured.
But it all got sorted out, eventually. When we were down that way for Nutty’s wedding a few weeks back, we stayed a couple extra days and went with C and a helper to the Thai equivalent of the DMV in Nonthaburi and got the car re-registered (which C graciously paid for). They told us to do the change of ownership back in Sarakham, so we made a quick call to Nam’s little sister, Noon, who sells insurance, and got the car immediately insured with basic coverage. We dropped off the helper, parted ways with C near Nam’s aunt’s house in Lad Prao – he watched us drive off into the sunset – and took the car to a garage down the street. This is where I began to suspect that this car was a luck magnet.
The owner of the garage turned out to be Nam’s aunt’s mechanic, who looks after her fleet of company cars and was worried about us getting back to Isan in such an old car. He promptly called over his crew of five greasemonkeys and in 2.5 hours they had checked/changed all belts (including timing belt and bearings), oils, fluids, some failed suspension bushings, and all four tires (C had included a set of decent tires in the trunk – I told you, righteous!).
An hour before it got dark out, we were on our way home.
I sent an SMS to C from a gas station rest stop a couple hours later:

So I got all the belts changed and even the bushings you pointed out under the car. Have stopped on the far side of saraburi for gas but only 600 B went in. Now I know better what the gas gauge is trying to say. Driving a car older than me is humbling in a good way.

He replied:

I’m thrilled you’ve freshened it up and got it back to life Justin, it’s a slick 70’s sled, and there was nothin better than cruisin the cool night Bangkok streets with the windows down… and as you’ll find, she’s no slouch either! Have fun.

and later:

She’s not the youngest girl at the ball, but she still turns a head or two… treat her with the respect she deserves and she’ll look after you…!

and finally:

That’s great news Justin! I was just thinking about you guys then… But there was something I didn’t tell you about the old girl…

I called him to ask what he was talking about… He told me, straight out, that he and other people think that this car is possessed with a friendly spirit who keeps it running. “How else,” he asked, “could it keep running this long this well?”
As I overtook a long line of cars on the long road past Korat, downshifting on the occasional curve and feeling instant response in her sweet spots around the top of third and throughout fourth gear, I thought about what he had said. Yeah, I can accept that, I thought. Thirty six years. A million kilometers. Unknown numbers of passengers from all walks of life gracing the seats. Countless memories. This car has seen it all.
We got home around midnight.

UPDATE: This is what my MS-60 Kujira Crown looks like now: http://cosmicbuddha.com/2012/03/the-toyota-kujira-crown-reborn/

There are several ferries running from Trat to Koh Chang. We chose the Center Point Ferry because it was the only one that looked like it wouldn’t sink if hit by a stiff breeze. The signs for it on the roadway emphasized the fact that they were using Japanese ferries, which was somehow very comforting (I don’t know how I would feel about trusting my life, wife, and car to a ferry made in, say, Kazakhstan or Luxembourg, you know?). It might be since I rode the ferry so many times between Awaji Island and Osaka, but I guess it’s the same thing applied to electronics or cars.

Ferries are great places to check out other people’s cars. Check out the gravel truck.

All of the trucks are carrying building materials!
As it turns out, even though Koh Chang is the second largest island in Thailand, most of it consists of protected forest so everything has to be carried over.

At first I thought these life jackets were solid proof of this ship’s Japanese origin. However…

Not exactly comforting
I couldn’t decide which was more unsettling, the date of manufacture or the implication that these life jackets don’t work well immersed in petroleum products… Surely these weren’t made for papyrus rafts or galleons, right? Steamships?
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Like many tourist boomtowns, Koh Chang has a bit of a confused identity due to the high turnover of businesses. Businesses have to evolve in order to survive, and this also results in some curious hybrids:

A barber shop/real estate company

A burger joint turned into tattoo parlor and postcard shop

This sign, complete with roof, somehow reminded me of the dark wooden ones for onsen in Kurokawa, Kyushu.
We had arrived on the island in the afternoon and just followed the stream of cars off the ferry. Most seemed to be heading down the west coast of the island, so we just followed them since I was worried about getting stuck in the mud since it had been raining off and on all week. The strips of shops and whatnot defining the town areas were, quite honestly, depressing. We hadn’t driven a thousand kilometers away from home to be surrounded by druggie loser expat scum and backpackers in search of The Island, but that’s exactly who most of the island (and especially the town areas) catered to… My wanderlust soon kicked in and I pointed the car south and drove up and down hills, around blind corners, and past breathtaking views of the ocean from the tops of jungle cliffs.
We were on a search for the best accomodations possible, not too expensive yet in a nice location, and preferably away from fat sweaty Europeans in thongs and college students having mushroom epiphanies. Of couse, this led us somewhat off the beaten track:

My car said “oh hell no!” I said, “mush, bitch!” … and of course, that puddle was covering a foot-deep hole.
After following several muddy roads and doubling back after notfinding suitable accomodation, we drove as far as the main road went before reaching a guard shack and this ridiculously pompous sign:

Five bucks just to enter? In Thailand?
So here’s where we hit a curveball. The guard came out of the shack speaking furiously into a two-way and asked if we had reservations. I said no but asked if we could take a look around inside and decide there. He said we would have to pay to even drive onto the resort property. I said no way. He told me to wait a minute and spoke into the two-way. The man on the other end asked what kind of car we were driving.
“Cefiro.”

Membership has its privileges, yo.
Welcome to the Koh Chang Grand Lagoona. The manager was nice and sympathetic to a poor teaching couple from the country and offered us a private boat at one-third of the standard rate. Oh yes.

Morning view. The lagoon is salt water and contains approximately ten hundred thousand million fish.
We borrowed some bicycles and rode through the surf and around the huge resort grounds.

Covering up the resort’s unfortunate little secret.
This resort is pretty much perfect, and priced accordingly. That’s why it hosts royal family members, Miss Universe, and rich Thai families. We felt a bit out of place there, but everyone was really nice about it anyway. There were only two disappointing things about the resort: Weak water pressure on the botas, and an extremely rocky beach. The workers comb the beach all day, but in the surf there are fist-size rocks rolling around and waiting to break your ankle. This beach, in effect, is unswimmable and unwadeable, which is just a damn shame since it defeats the purpose of a beach resort. I guess rich people don’t like getting sand in their ass cracks or something, because none of them seemed even slightly interested in the water.

Our future parking space?
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Conclusion: The western coast of Koh Chang is just okay. Sometimes beautiful but always expensive. It’s also overrun by foreign shitheads and the weasely natives that follow in their wake. If we’re down that way again, we might check out the eastern coast, though.
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All links for the On the Road 2007 series:
On the Road 2007 (Part 1)
On the Road 2007 (Part 2)
On the Road 2007 (Part 3) – Koh Chang
On the Road 2007 (Part 4) – Overloaded
On the Road 2007 (Part 5) – Tamnanpar
On the Road 2007 (Part 6) – The Animatronic Chicken Roasters of Rayong, Thailand