Toyota 2001 MR2 Spyder—A Dream Car if You’re Willing to Pack Light

The Toyota MR2 Spyder is one of the latest of the 2 seater “lower-priced” high-performance roadsters that have become enormously popular over the past decade. Other cars in the niche include the Porsche Boxster, BMW Z3, the Honda S2000 and the Audi TT.

My wife fell in love with the Porsche Boxster when it first came out, but limited supply and dot-commer demand always kept it well out of our price range. We watched with interest when Honda rolled out the more affordable S2000, but again supply/demand also made it too expensive and hard to get. Finally, the Spyder came along…and it was well worth the wait! We bought a forest green 2001 MR2 Spyder with the optional leather package in December 2000 and have put on 5,000+ miles over the past 5 months.

Styling

In my opinion, the Spyder is one of the best looking cars on the road. The Spyder front end was designed by the same team that designed the Boxster, and from the front the cars are almost indistinguishable. However, instead of the rounded Boxster rump, the Spyder has a chopped off rump all its own. I like the look better than the Z3 and S2000, both of which I find a little rakish, and better than the Miata, which I find a little effeminate. Interior styling is sharp, with interesting looking plastic nubbies throughout and chic perforated metal petals.

The Spyder also benefits from its limited production. While the Bay Area has become flooded with Boxsters, Toyota is shipping only about 5,000 Spyders a year to the US. Thus, the Spyder remains relatively uncommon and more distinctive.

While I only occasionally get stopped by strangers wanting to talk about the car, everyone uniformly praises its looks. Top up or top down, it’s a great looking car.

Handling and Performance

The Spyder is a 4 cylinder, rear engine, rear wheel drive, manual drive car. Although the car is very light and the engine is high performance, I don’t think its acceleration matches other high-performance cars. Other Epinions reviews have debated its quickness, and I won’t further the debate except to say that if you’re looking for the very fastest car off the line, the Spyder isn’t it.

Having said that, the Spyder handles and performs like a dream. It delivers consistent power at the high and low ends of the RPM range, and it has plenty of oomph to keep us interested. Even better, the Spyder shines on windy roads, and I love attacking the curves. Steering is extremely responsive and the car hugs the curves tightly. Driving curvy stretches is an absolute joy ride. Fast U-turns provoke a gleeful “Whee!” from Lisa.

Shifting is elegant except third gear can be a little hard to find. Also, some knock the Spyder for wanting to shift into fifth gear around 50 MPH, leaving you in fifth gear for a long time.

Price and Ongoing Costs

The Spyder is a relative bargain, with an MSRP in the mid-20s. The car comes fully loaded: air conditioning, CD player, remote keyless entry, power everything, ABS and dual airbags. The only real option is a leather package (leather seats, leather top and few other minor goodies). Even with the leather package, dealer markup (a couple thousand in December), tax and all of the assorted fees, we walked out the door for less than $29k. Don’t get me wrong, that’s plenty of money to this frugal dude. But the pricing compares extremely favorably with its competition: the MSRP for the S2000 is in the low $30s (with dealer markup running another $10k in December), and the others (Z3, Boxster, TT) go quickly up from there.

Operating costs are reasonable. Fuel economy has been awesome. I’ve been consistently averaging over 30 MPG, producing huge savings as gas goes over $2/gallon in the Bay Area. Also, with its ABS brakes, daytime running lights and dual airbags, insurance has been much less than I thought it would be.

Storage

The Spyder’s Achilles heel is its storage—it’s a joke.

There are 3 “secure” storage spaces: a small space above the spare tire in the front (about the size of a small backpack), the glove compartment, and a cabinet behind the passenger area. The latter is the primary storage option, but it’s ridiculously small and cumbersome. For example, I can BARELY fit my laptop bag in there. Small and compressible duffel bags will fit; a toaster box will not. Worse, this space is not really secure; a 7 year old kid with a screwdriver could easily pry open its plastic doors.

Personally, I’m a little surprised Toyota wasn’t able to improve the storage situation—with all of the smart engineering in the car, I’m incredulous they could not find a way to design the car to create more usable space.

For day-to-day living, I store items either in the passenger seat area or in the narrow gap between my seat and the back of the passenger area. These areas work well for plastic bagged groceries, but paper bagged groceries are tougher. Shopping trips to Costco are usually out of the picture, although one time we did pick up a paper towel 12-pack which barely fit on Lisa’s lap. While my offices are 5 minutes from the SFO Airport, I usually get excused from giving friends a ride to the airport as their luggage won’t fit in the car.

With the limited storage capacity, the Spyder just won’t work in a single-car household. Fortunately, we also have a Honda CR-V, which we use for all functional trips. (See my$.02’s review of it).

The Top

The top is operated manually, but it’s pretty easy to handle. A single person can do it without problem usually in just 2 or 3 minutes. I’ve been especially impressed with the top’s waterproofing. Even in the soggy Bay Area, the top has been completely watertight.

Sound

I’ve also been impressed with the relatively quiet ride. Even with the top down, the road noise doesn’t require me to yell to passengers. However, I’ve been disappointed with the sound system. Acoustics with the top up are poor; but with the top down, the sound quality isn’t really acceptable. Although the convertible design will prevent the sound system from ever being great, Toyota should consider improving sound quality and acoustics.

Visibility

Generally, exterior and interior visibility is pretty good. However, the rear view mirror is exactly where a car would be on the right at a four way stop sign. Also, with the top up, rear right visibility is very poor. Finally, the right set of dashboard controls are set well back and thus can be difficult to see.

Fit ‘n’ Finish

The Spyder exemplifies the quality we expect from Toyota. The car is surprisingly free from rattles, squeaks, and whistling (top up or top down), and everything works perfectly. I did recently get a recall notice indicating some minor issues with the shifting mechanism, although I’ve not experienced any problems. Mechanically, the car has been hassle-free.

In Conclusion

I’m not the type of person who needs to have the newest, sexiest car. My prior car was a 1989 Honda Civic 4 door that would go without a bath for years. I’m very much a utilitarian car buyer and driver.

So I had a lot of trepidation about purchasing a high performance sports car. I especially feared a high-maintenance car would own me, as opposed to me owning the car. Certainly I think about my car more than I used to—making sure the top is up when there’s a chance of rain; making sure that I’m not scheduled to take someone to the airport—but in all other respects the Spyder has been blissfully low maintenance. Even the utilitarian in me has been satisfied with the good gas mileage, the safety features, the relatively low insurance and the competitive purchase price. However, with such a good looking car, I do feel compelled to keep it clean, so I make far more trips to the car wash than ever before!

While I would have been satisfied with a car that competently got me between points A and B, the car is also a lot of fun. Driving to work with the top down is a joy, not a chore, and tooling around the Bay Area hills is a blast. The Spyder is the classic fun, good-looking, low hassle convertible we’ve all dreamed about. Why shouldn’t we live the dream?