By Cameron Moore
When freshman automotive restoration student Tripp Robinson first saw a Toyota Sera on Instagram, he thought it was a modified Honda Civic. Then he noticed the butterfly-style glass doors lifted upward like wings, the kind you’d expect on a supercar. “That’s what hooked me,” he said. “The butterfly doors. The coolness factor.” Now that same car, one of only a handful in the nation, and likely the only one in Kansas, is parked here at McPherson College.
Robinson grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, surrounded by a wide variety of cars. His family has diverse tastes, ranging from a Cadillac Allanté to a diesel Mercedes-Benz and a ‘67 Jeepster. He developed a passion for automobiles, like most of us, inspired by our families and pop culture. The British show “Top Gear” and the movie “Cars” played a significant role in Robinson’s life. At around the age of 14, he discovered the Toyota Sera online. “It was just one of those cars you can’t stop thinking about,” he recalled.
The Toyota Sera was produced exclusively for the Japanese market between 1990 and 1995. Its name came from the saying “que sera, sera,” which translates to “whatever will be, will be.” The Sera was marketed as the car of the future, and trust me, it wasn’t just talk. The Sera came with a glass canopy roof, optional ABS brakes, a high-end surround sound system called Super Live Sound, and even an automatic air freshener. According to Robinson, it was designed and marketed towards Japanese businesswomen, being “short, easy to park, and looking awesome doing it.” The Sera came equipped with a 1.5-liter four-cylinder engine, the 5E-FHE, which was a higher-compression version of the 5E-FE motor found in the Toyota Paseo. Even with such a small engine, the Sera is surprisingly quick, weighing just around 2,000 pounds. “It zips around like a go-kart,” he remarked. “You can go thirty miles per hour and it feels like you’re flying.” The Sera also came equipped with front-wheel drive and optioned with either a 4-speed automatic or a 5-speed manual transmission.
Robinson searched for almost a year for the perfect one, but could never find it. “They were all either automatic or junk”, he said. “I really wanted a manual”. Eventually, he found the right one. He and his father flew to Albany, New York, where he purchased the car. After a brief inspection, he took the daunting task of driving the car back to Alabama. However, Tripp’s trip didn’t go as planned. “It blew the head gasket in Virginia,” he said, laughing. “It was pretty bad.”
Afterwards, the car sat for months untouched in his driveway. That is, until his uncle offered to help rebuild it. Every Monday for two years, he and his uncle would work on the car in a friend’s shop. “We’d grab Taco Bell and stay up all night fixing whatever was next,” he said. “It became our thing.” Naturally, finding parts for an imported car is easier said than done. At one point, they waited for half a year for pistons to arrive from Japan, only for them to never come. However, after two years of hard work, they had rebuilt the engine and got the Sera running again. “It was nine at night, pouring rain, some belt was screaming, and there was no hood,” he recalled. “But I couldn’t stop smiling.”
“[The car] means everything to me,” he said. “It brought me closer to God, to my uncle, and to people I never would’ve met otherwise.” Anywhere he travels, people are quick to stare and ask questions. Most have never heard of the car to begin with. Robinson, however, doesn’t mind the attention. “It’s the weird cars that need to be appreciated,” he said. “Cars like the Nissan Pao, Mazda MX-3, and of course, the Sera, they show what could’ve been.”
When he talks about the car, there’s this mix of pride and peace in his voice. What started as a young kid’s dream became something that has shaped his life; a project that’s taken patience, resilience, and has served as a reminder of why he fell in love with cars in the first place. The Toyota Sera may have been designed as the “car of tomorrow”, but for Robinson, tomorrow began when he said yes to a strange little car with butterfly doors.
