Photos as Olaf promised.
Before we started. Looks shiny but it was quite oxidised and dirty.
After a wash.
After a quick oxidation removal. Looks better but not as good as it could have with the limited time I had to do it by hand.
Still has major swirls in the paint.
Now on the too cool NZDM things we found on the car. Olaf covered everything we found but here are some photos for reference.
Cold start injector just after the throttle body. Terrible photo but it is connected to the bellowed rubber plug sleeve.
You can sort of see the fuel line running from the left under the spark plug leads and heads under the intake manifold below the vacuum diaphragm toward the top right of the image.
Single engine bay strut brace. Not the normal cross brace the GT, GT-S Hardtops and T-Tops and G-Limited T-Tops got. I have seen photos of a single brace before but never seen a real one.
Dash dimmer switch. UK and Euro models got this too.
Fog light switch. This looks to be a JDM one with turning however there is no relay and no ECU and the lights didn't even work. Not sure what is going on here. Might find out more later on.
The AC has AC and ECO like the JDM models. USDM got AC only. But it doesn't have automatic climate control so no numbers on the temperature scale and no Auto on the fan speed dial. Instead it has OFF, LO, *, **, HI.
Park brake words instead of symbol. Depending on market and year the lights on the dash had different symbols and positions.
Oil level sensor light in orange.
Oil level sensor unit in the sump. This is looking from just in front of the right rear wheel through the under body plastics. You can see the A/C and Alternator belt on the crank pulley.
License plate mounting bracket. It looked identical to my JDM one but even a Japanese plate wouldn't fit on it. It's too narrow and our NZ plates are wider than that too so another interesting item. Euro and UK have a really wide mount bracket to fit their plates.
Wide area for NZ plates on the rear. They used the UK and Euro bumper for these cars which is why the are so much wider than the NZ plate.
Also the TOYOTA badge on the left of a JDM car is now on the right and has a Toyota symbol on the centre of the boot lid.
Blanking plate for the fancy retracting lever for the seat belts when the door opens. It has the lever on the drivers side but not sure if the seat belt unit has it. I've not seen one of these in action before so it would be cool to see how it actually works. My JDM car has the levers but not the belts to go with it.
Non retracting door mirrors. The button is missing. Quite a common thing for a few JDM models not to have this too.
Quarter panel mounted indicators. The JDM models got these in June 1996 but the NZDM model got them from the start.
At this point in time the front indicators and parking light lenses are from a JDM model. The lights that should be on this car as it was when it left the factory have the white parking light in the centre. Toyodiy confirms this with other cars I know that have the clear section and do not match my JDM lights part number.
EDIT: Another thing to note is the side trim is thicker than the JDM cars. Thicker as in sticks out from the car body more than the JDM ones do. This seems to be the same for the USDM cars too.
The other thing that stands out is the stereo is a basic version. Headunit straight to speakers rather than amps and a sub included.
I'm sure there are other little things that we didn't see but without dismantling the car it could be hard to find them.
This car doesn't have power steering but has power windows and AC. Not quite the lowest spec JDM G car with no options. So I think this car is called 'just' Toyota MR2 like the NA 5SFE powered USDM models. No other words or codes to describe it. I know you could get a 2.0 GTi 16 version of these cars which might be a higher spec but can't confirm anything.