My son bought a 1993 Camry (LE). There’s a little red light, to the left of the dashboard, that is always on (except once when it was blinking).
Anyone know what it is?
Thanks.
I’m going to guess that it’s either part of the car’s alarm system, or it’s an LED to simulate an alarm system.
Ninja’d.
Look under the hood–see any large bullhorn looking thingies? Or wires coming from the positive battery terminal that look vaguely like an afterthought?
I’m thinking it’s an indicator light for an aftermarket alarm system, not factory installed.
It shows you where Paradise is.
Nice.
Although OEM alarm systems were pretty common as dealer add-ons back then. The car would come pre-wired for them, and if the buyer sprung for it all the dealer had to do was install the little computer box and blinky light.
Not only back then. I bought a Honda Fit almost five years ago. I declined the offer of a dealer installed alarm system so they removed the little chip that would activate it. (The reason I declined the alarm system is that I detest noisy car alarms and this way I know that at least my car isn’t the cause of that infernal racket.)
Hilariously, I just saw this news item on Facebook yesterday.
Any chance it’s an indicator light telling you that the mirror-adjust switch to the left is not in the neutral position? Or that the dashboard brightness knob to the right is at full?
I’ve never heard of either of those, although “mirror adjust neutral position sensor indicator” does have a nice ring to it.
That is the “replace car” light, as noted in the recall link above.
$90 to diagnose, $45 to fix, and we’ll have you out of here within the hour.
Nailed it.
Aftermarket alarm, not factory.
Back in my not-too-distant youth I drove a spiffy Nissan NX2000 sport hatchback that had an unused, blank dash socket. I didn’t really like alarms nor did I want to pay to have one installed, so one night while bored at work I drew up a simply little schematic for a relay (power with the ignition off & vice versa) and bought the parts for it and a blinking red LED at Radio Shack just to have a fake one of those!
When I would teach electrical fault tracing and I got to normally closed relays, I would draw this circuit on the whiteboard as the world’s best $5 alarm system, as the blinking LED is the only thing that keeps the bad guy from breaking into your car.
Away back in the old days when I designed vehicle security systems… no, wait, it was later. I got the breathless promo material for a new alarm that required no installation. All you had to do was set it on your dash (like a radar detector) and plug it into the cig lighter socket. If any of its thirty-leven sophisticated sensors detected a break-in, it would flash a 1-by-4 inch panel that read ALARM and squawk.
The drawbacks will be left as an exercise for the student. Those who believed The Club was a great anti-theft device probably won’t succeed. 
Thanks, everyone. So it’s an after-market alarm, or a fake one.
If the car only came with a key, I guess the anti-theft system (if there is one) is always off these days.
It means the self-destruct sequence is initiated.
Hope you wrote down the abort code somewhere.