RAND(Squawk): MR2 Mk1, in the UK, at 40 years old

Version 1.1 Wed 23rd Oct 2024

Version 1.3 on 9 November 2024 - Added SC & SE

The Toyota MR2 MK1s rolled off the production lines between 1984 and 1989. This compact, mid-engined, two seater has been providing delightful motoring to enthusiastic owners ever since.

One of the pillars of the MR2 community is Neil Jones, from South Wales, who specialises in dismantling and providing spares to keep other MR2s MK1s in running order. As a result of his work he comes across many MR2 Mk1s some in dilapidated and some in perfect running order but many in between. The question he most often receives is "How many other MR2 MK1s are still on the road ?" In order to answer this question he reached out across his social media channels, dug deep into his notebooks and compiled a list of known MR2 MK1s. Myself as an owner of an MR2 had previously collected a large number of photos of other MR2s mostly from Facebook. Nik at the MR2 Drivers club provided a list of registration numbers for 141 MK1s listed with the club. Using these sources along with the galleries of photos from the MR2 National Show ( years 2022, 2023, 2024) an even longer list was compiled. The official MOT and car tax check services were used to confirm the road status and year of manufacture, if not known.

This article provides an analysis of the list that currently stands at about 600 entries. However not all information is available for all the cars. Production numbers from the French MR2 Club has about 15,000 MR2 Mk1s coming to the UK. The list is mostly UK registered cars but some others are included.

Production numbers

Age of cars

The cars on the compiled list are distributed across the mid 80's to early '90s. Where the year of registration is known it is used else the registration letter is used to date the car. There are some anomalies in this list as some cars have been fitted with vanity plates and foreign registered cars do not indicate the registration year. It does appear that the bulk of survey cars (151+167 = 318 ) were registered in the 1988 & 1989 registration periods being towards the end of the production run.

Age by years

Road status

The main reason for compiling this survey is to answer the question, "How many cars are still on the road ?" The answer is not so simple. There are specific legal needs to have a car on the UK roads. Mostly the survey has relied on the declaration of the owners as to the on / off the road status. Any car that showed up at the recent MR2 Drivers Club national shows is assumed to be on the road at that time. These are listed as on22, on23 and on24. Some cars were checked using the DVLA car tax/MOT lookup tools. The minor complications are that some roadworthy cars are stored off the road in an untaxed SORN state saving on costs over the winter, and some race and rally cars have MOT but no tax. It was decided to go with the total of cars in near road status as the answer to the question. The entries SORN22, SORN23 etc are the ones that are SORNed but last had a recent MOT. For Example SORN24 cars would have had their last MOT expire during 2024. The blank and not found entries are assumed to be off the road as the car may either have been scrapped, exported, or have a different registration number.

Cars by known status

<<< off road - status - on road >>>
from 533 cars with details

We can see from the above numbers for that out of 533 cars listed ( 48 + 65 + 268 = 381 ) (71 %) are either definitely on or very close to being on the road. The MOT & SORN cars were all checked using the look up tool see that the most recently passed MOT was within two years of the current date. A further 33 cars had valid MOTs in 2022 and could be considered to be close to being on the road.

Features

The colour distribution of survey cars shows that red is the most popular, 222, followed by White, 161 and all the different shades of blue, ( 63+4+29+4+18 ) 118. The official blue cars were either known as Helios blue or Mica blue however it's not always easy to determine from photos which exact shade of blue is used. The four Sherwood cars could be included in the blue category as that colouration is dark blue top half with a silver bottom half.

Colour Slices

As well as road going status the colour, T-bar/sunroof and current mileage were obtained by the survey where possible. We can see that there is a fairly even split between sunroof (219) and T-bar cars (206) with just 20 examples having neither.

Tee bar and Sunroof details

Since the original publication a list of 50 Supercharger and Special editions has been received.

Supercharger and Special Editions

Looking at the survivability of the Supercharger editions we see that Supercharger cars are less likely to be on the road compared with the population of all surveyed cars. (1+16+1+2+5) / 50 = 25/50 = 50 % on the road (compared to 71% of all surveyed cars).

On road status of SC and SE cars

Mileage

Within the survey are the declared mileages and the researched mileages from the MOT look up tool. We can see that the average mileage of all the cars surveyed is about 106,000 miles. It can be seen that the 71 off the road cars have slightly higher mileages being 109,000 especially when compared to the cars that have a current valid MOT and are SORN, 82,189 miles.

Mileage by Road status

Distribution of recorded mileage

Highest known mileage

There are 5 cars with over 200,000 declared miles. The car with the highest MOT millage of 268,633 miles is

G977 ECK

and is owned by Nik Milford the Director of the MR2 Drivers Club

How Many Left

The "How many left" website that uses official DVLA data contributes some other numbers. Showing approximately 6000 cars on SORN and 1,735 ( 35%) are currently still licensed but has little other data regarding actual road going status or features.

Conclusions

The survey numbers show the majority of surveyed cars (both on and off the road) in the 100k-150k millage range. The completion of that millage and being nearly 40 years old, most cars would need some mechanical and probably bodywork attention. However from the examples seen at shows and events many owners are willing to put in the investment needed to keep their examples on the road.

The advantage of having an active owners community is that many of the wrinkles and foibles of the MR2 MK1 are well documented and there is a community to reach out for help and support. This survey does favour active cars and club members cars and shows 70% of the surveyed cars are or have been recently still on the road. The "How Many Left" numbers are larger than our survey but lack the details to draw many conclusions.

The Toyota MR2 MK1 community is flourishing from a social point of view with a very active nationwide drivers club and other well attended gatherings.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary this year there were three notable gatherings of cars. One event at Neil Jones's South Wales retreat, another at the Silverstone Classic festival, and the annual MR2 Drivers club annual mid year show. With a very active owners club and people dedicated to providing spares and support we all look forward to many more years of active ownership.

See the survey data here - To add or correct an entry email to Clive@SpikyNorman.net with MR2 in the subject line. Any more discovered cars will be added to the master listing as we go along.

Events 2024

National Day at Hatton Park https://mr2dc.com/gallery2/gallery/2024-national-day-mk1s/

Neil Jones 40 Aniversary Drive out

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bri77uk/albums/72177720319112257

Silverstone Classic Festival Circuit drive See https://www.silverstonefestival-images.com

Acknowledgments

Thanks for the data used in this article to Neil Jones and MR2 Drivers Club (reg numbers only)

RAND(Squawk)

Thursday, 3 October 2024

MR2 Mk1, in the UK, at 40 years old - A review of known cars