Brakes on a Toyota Carina '97 2.0l 3SFE

[ganda1f]

My first impression is that the brakes are kind of weak on this car. The brake pedal can travel quite a bit before it gives noticeable resistance. When I brake hard with my Corolla, it is braking hard right from the start. But on the Carina it feels as if I was pushing the brake pedal slower. I thought that perhaps ABS was somehow smoothing out the rather quick application of the brakes, although I could not feel any pulsation in
the pedal. I could basically push the pedal as hard as I could, with ABS pretty much not engaging.

Then I disabled ABS (pulled the fuse) and tried again. Without ABS it was possible to lock up the brakes, well of course, but to do this, the pedal had to be pushed much further than on my Corolla. It was way easier to lock up the brakes on the Corolla, which actually has better tires than the Carina.
Carina is heavier, but not that much, about 250 kilograms. Brake pads in the front are fine. Sliding pins in the calipers move without problems. Brake shoes in the rear are fine as well. With engine off and vacuum in the brake booster released, the pedal feels firm right from the start, so I don't think there is any air trapped in the system.

I am not sure whether this actually is a problem or simply that the brakes on this car have somewhat different feeling than what I am used to.

Can this difference be explained by the fact that the Carina has ABS and the Corolla does not? Could it be faulty master cylinder, even though the pedal feels solid when pushed hard?

I have driven my Corolla fully loaded with stuff and people and of course the stopping distance would increase, but the brakes did not feel weaker because of the extra weight.

I have driven other cars with ABS and as far as I can remember it was not necessary
to push the brakes insanely hard before the ABS would kick in.

There are no upgrades or mods on the brakes on either car and the tires are nothing extraordinary either.
Should I diagnose this further? How? Or is everything fine just as it is?

I did a search for weak brakes and ABS. A thread came up where a pressure drop after the ABS modulator caused problems. But those were way more severe, like failure to stop in time.

Can the ABS modulator also be my problem? Does the modulator always cause some pressure drop, because of how it is designed or whatever? After all, it is supposed to lower the pressure if it detects locked up brakes. Leaking valves in the modulator?

Thanks for your patience to read this rather long post.