I mostly want to share this car.
I'm always ready to tell stories about it,
to explain its background when I open the hood
or when people come up to me.
It's always a good idea to tell
what you have gone through at each step of the restoration,
so you can share it with other people
and make them feel what you have felt.
My name is Romain, and I drive a 1976 Toyota Corolla KE35SR.
I grew up in the back of a Renault 5 and a Mercedes 190.
Every summer, we would visit my family in Portugal,
and on the highway, I would play a game with my father and my kid brother.
The goal was to guess the make of cars and trucks.
Once we got there, my father would win, because it was full of old cars
that my brother and I didn't know.
That's where it all started.
I became interested in those cars.
I am curious, and not knowing what make they were intrigued me.
We had the chance
to welcome home a Toyota Hilux from the '90s.
It was an old sanitation car
that we turned into a civilian car for my grandfather
so that he could use it as an everyday car in Portugal.
He still uses it now, and it was his only car for a long time.
Whenever I go now, I see his 4x4
and the neighbor's car that I've always seen.
It is an old Datsun station wagon.
Every summer, it was packed from top to bottom
with onions, potatoes,
and you even had dirt on the seats.
When I go back, I find it hasn't aged.
Of course, it has a few defects, but it is over 40 years old and has seen a lot.
Its sturdiness always struck me.
I found it so interesting.
I came to realize that these cars
had a story and a soul.
The first Japanese model that we got was a Mazda MX-5.
It was brand-new,
and now I think it has almost 100,000 miles.
At the same time,
I was an art student,
so I already had a clear idea of what I wanted
and what projects I had,
which helped me pick my future first car.
Above all, I wanted my car to look like no other, to have a soul
and something extra, something special.
I really wanted to create something for me and for my children too,
like a heritage.
Just like my father's talent for mechanics, for everything he taught me
and will continue to pass on to me.
I am very grateful to him for that.
I had come across a Toyota Coupé in Portugal back then
that I really liked,
and I think it was less than a year later
that I found an ad on the Internet
for the exact same car in red and white
with optional chrome-plated rods.
It reminded me of Starsky & Hutch, so I fell for it.
I really liked it, so that's the one I chose.
Blindly.
Because after buying it, I realized it was far from beautiful.
It had been damaged and quickly covered with paint
and also tampered with here and there,
but it still had this charming element that I liked,
and it couldn't be any other car.
But we had to restore it.
Even with all these faults,
I couldn't stop finding it more and more beautiful,
whatever the angle.
It truly was.
We spent a lot of time on it,
taking it apart, changing parts and redoing it.
It turned out
that we wouldn't give up
even if we had a tremendous amount of work.
It mostly was a family adventure between a father and a son
and the rest of the family
who had to put up with a dismantled car for over two years,
but all ended well.
And my father, who is over 50,
keeps on saying, "When I'm older, I want a Porsche 911."
I hope that, one day, I can help him live that dream.