Junkyard Find: 1995 Toyota Previa LE S/C with 465,234 miles

The Toyota Previa minivan was too small, too weird-looking, too underpowered— in short, too Japanese to ever be a runaway sales hit in North America. Fast-forward a couple of decades after the last ones were sold here, though, and we can see that these goofy vans outlasted just about all of their competitors. Here’s one that got close to the half-million-mile mark before being retired in Northern California.

This is the sixth high-mile junkyard Previa I’ve documented over the years; lately I’ve been ignoring discarded sub-400k Previas because I find so many.

Prior to this van, I’ve written about a 1995 All-Trac with 413k miles, a 1994 with 376k miles, a 1991 with 337k miles, a 1991 All-Trac with 318k miles and a 1996 All-Trac with 304k miles.

465,234 miles isn’t good enough to make the Murilee Martin Junkyard Odometer Top Ten, but this van now stands at 12th place overall on the list.

The top two spots are held by Toyotas: a one-owner 1999 Avalon with 949k miles and a 1985 Camry with 648k miles. That Avalon was built in Georgetown, Kentucky, by the way ().

The Previa, like its Toyota Van predecessor, has a mid-mounted straight-four engine tipped onto its side beneath the front seats. I shot this photograph with a 1940 Agfa Speedex film camera, by the way.

This made for efficient packaging (which is important in Japan) but also prevented Toyota from squeezing in a bigger engine that would allow 90 mph cruising on American highways with a full passenger load in hot weather.

For the 1991-1993 Previas, Toyota used a naturally-aspirated 2.4-liter 2TZ-FE engine with 138 horsepower. That wasn’t much for a 3,600-pound van by North American standards. With no room for a V6, Toyota added 20 horses to the 1994-1997 Previa by installing a small Roots-type supercharger in the Supplemental Auxiliary Driveshaft accessory platform (known, aptly, as the SAD) mounted in a hard-to-reach location behind the front bumper. You can identify these Previas by the S/C badges on the hatch.

As I’ve seen at 24 Hours of Lemons races, even the naturally-aspirated Previas are surprisingly nimble on a road course. However, most American minivan shoppers look harder at horsepower numbers and interior volume than handling prowess. The Previa was replaced with the much bigger and less interesting Sienna for the 1998 model year.

This van was known as the Estima in its homeland, and it went through a couple of additional generations after the Previa departed our shores.

I was so impressed by the police vans that I’ve seen in Japan that I bought and built the Fujimi 1/24-scale model kit for my office.

I was tempted to buy the Zeus-body-kit-equipped Estima kit during a recent visit to the model stores of Akihabara, but I need to finish my Billy Carter Redneck Power Chevy Stepside kit first. The second-generation Estima will be legal to import to the United States next year, as long as you buy a first-year example and make sure to get the correct month of manufacture (when the feds say “25 years,” they mean it to the exact day).

Back to today’s Junkyard Find, this van is a rear-wheel-drive model with the top-of-the-line LE trim level, with an MSRP of $27,078 (about $56,870 in 2024 dollars). The All-Trac AWD version listed at $30,218 ($63,465 after inflation). The automatic transmission was mandatory by the 1995, though plenty of early Previas were sold with five-speed manuals.

How many cassettes were played on long road trips during this van’s life?

Was this a farewell card for the van?

Toyota emphasized the Estima’s egg shape in its home-market advertising.

As you’d expect, the US-market Previa commercials are much less interesting.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

1995 Toyota Previa with 450k miles in California wrecking yard.

[Images: The Author]

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Source: The Truth About Cars