A Toyota Reiz sedan, seen in the central south of China’s capital Beijing in 2013, not far from where I spotted a Ford Focus sedan with a body kit on that very same day.
In the background on the right: my wife’s Changan-Suzuki Swift. A truly brilliant car. In the almost ten years she owned it, it never refused to start and never broke down. I used it a lot too, especially when my Jeep had one of its many days off.
Back to the Toyota! It was wrapped in a bright orange wrap and further dressed up with darkened windows. The gray twin-five spoke alloy wheels were factory standard. The wrap appeared to be of medium quality and was applied body-only, leaving the door handles, door strips, and window frames in their original chrome color.
The Toyota Reiz is the Chinese version of the Toyota Mark X, manufactured by the Tianjin FAW Toyota Motor (TFTM) joint venture, better known as FAW-Toyota. The first generation (X120) Reiz, like our orange car, was made in China from 2005 until 2009. It was available with two V6 motors: a 193 hp 2.5 and a 227 hp 3.0.
Uniquely, for the segment, the Reiz sedan was a rear-wheel drive car. Price in 2006 started at 216.000 yuan. It was a popular car among Japanese car enthusiasts, yes, there are a lot of those in China, but overall sales were sadly a little slow. Still, FAW-Toyota continued with the X130 in 2010, but production was terminated in 2017.
Happily, the Reiz proved to be a strong sedan, and even today there are still many examples around, but I bet only one is orange.