OPPO SENIOR WEEK: Toyota Coaster a review from Afghanistan

"Viggen" (viggen37) 04/10/2014 at 06:17 • Filed to: Afghanistan, Busyeah, Toyota, Kandahar, junk

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(EDIT: August 10, 2016: This post is about two and a half years old now and was my first post and indeed first review. My opinion of the vehicle has not changed.)

A little background first. I’m an American Soldier deployed to Kandahar Air Field (KAF) in Afghanistan. I’ve wanted to write this my whole deployment, which is nearly over now, but I’ve either been too tired at the end of the day or too lazy.

Until mid-December my company had two Toyota Coaster buses at our disposal. We used them to get to and from work. I had the opportunity, or perhaps misfortune, to drive them out here about a dozen times. Of all the vehicles on base it had to be these. If this review sounds cynical and sarcastic, it’s because it is. I’m also using the basic Jalopnik format for this review.

Just a minor note, I’m a helicopter mechanic. Chinooks to be exact, so if I mention anything that sounds more at home on a helicopter or replace car terms with aircraft terms that’s why. Let’s just say I’ve turned more wrenches on the helicopter than I have on cars.

EXTERIOR:

There isn’t much to say about the exterior. A bus is a bus. There’s three color options for the Coaster on KAF. There’s the maroon with tan and white trim option or white with either blue or green trim options. Ours featured black steel wheels and an impressive amount of dents and paint fade. I think all the mirrors were still on them.

These have a driver door and an outward sliding passenger door, which if you’re lucky will close the first time you slam it. Oh! Our maintenance platoon’s bus had a folding awning over the number one side. Don’t know if it worked. All it did was slam against the side when we went over bumps.

INTERIOR:

‘90s American cars don’t come close to this level of crap. If it can fall off, it does. Perhaps it’s not fair to complain about that since these are in Afghanistan, but Ima do it anyway. The padding above the driver and passenger seats was long gone. It collapsed on our other bus in November and was shoddily reinstalled with deck screws. The passenger seat on one bus had become disconnected and would tilt back under acceleration.

Having been sat upon by hundreds of soldiers and who knows who else in its prior life, the cloth seat cushions sink down pretty far, which is nice until you ride over a bump. I imagine the seats were originally brown. I can’t be sure; sun, sand, and sweat faded them fairly well. There’s little leg room in these. At 5' 10" my knees were about an inch from touching the seat in front. Individual room per seat was moderate at best. When wearing body armor (standard issue IOTVs) the ride was unbearable. Thankfully that wasn’t often.

The gauges were unreadable. Fuel was out of the question and the speedometer was a case of “I think I’m going 40 kph?”

This brings me to the driver’s seat. At the end of driving one of these, my right foot was aching from the gas pedal. The angle it’s set at is terrible.

ACCELERATION:

Well it’s an old diesel automatic bus in the desert. The top speed on KAF is only 40 kph, or about 26 mph. This is a good thing since I don’t think they could get above 50 kph. Acceleration to 40 kph is good. I could pass a person on a bicycle with ease. Never did try to over take another vehicle. Glad I didn’t. I should mention this is the second diesel I’ve driven, the other being a Humvee. The tired Detroit Diesel in that had a lot more grunt.

BRAKING:

They were spongy at best. I’d have hated trying to stop in the rain. It was bad enough our road rides along the wire, which is electric and goes into an old Soviet minefield.

RIDE:

It depended on where you sat. If you were above a wheel your spine was dust. I suppose it came down to how hard you tried to drive over the gravel surfaces too. My inner wannabe rally driver came in when I did.

HANDLING:

It’s a bus. It doesn’t. What were you expecting? McLaren style handling?

Actually I can provide some input here. The steering was very numb and you had to wiggle the wheel back and forth to keep the vehicle going straight.This can be very scary when a big Mercedes bus or worse an MRAP is sharing the same road with you.

GEARBOX:

As far as automatics go, it’s not that bad. Of course having not used the vehicle’s full potential I don’t know how well it shifts into fourth.

TOYS:

Shops Platoon bus had a fridge.

AUDIO:

The radios were broken. And missing.

VALUE:

It makes perfect sense to me why the bean counters decided that it was an easy way to save money if we stopped using these buses. These pieces of shit made me miss my beater Crown Vic Police Interceptor more than they should have.

HammerheadFistpunch > Viggen 08/10/2016 at 15:49

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fun fact (on this old story) - the coaster uses the same 4 speed as the 80 series land cruisers.

Viggen > HammerheadFistpunch 08/10/2016 at 15:52

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>Wants an 80 Series

>Hates Coasters

>Shares xmsns....

HammerheadFistpunch > Viggen 08/10/2016 at 15:54

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It may make you happy to know it’s only the early 80 series that share, and the later 80s don't