Meeting distant family members can be fascinating… or awkward. Sometimes a long-lost relative can seem like your own sibling, while at other times you quickly calculate just how much DNA you could possibly share with this stranger. These three Toyotas – all from different decades – seemed to be having their own impromptu family reunion. Toyota is a mighty big family, so there must have been a lot of catching up among this trio.
The cars here are a 1985 Corolla, a 2003 Celica and a 2012 Camry – not just three separate decades, but three vastly different types of vehicles. And three different faces of Toyota.
In North America, the 1980s were likely the pinnacle of the Cheap Japanese Car, and the Corolla was on top of its game. This was the go-to car for anyone looking for reliable, fuss-free, affordable transportation. Toyota spent the 1970s cementing a place for the Corolla on buyers’ shopping lists, and when the 5th generation Corolla was introduced for 1984 (the first Corolla with front-wheel drive), it had a head start on the competition.
When I entered my car-buying age, in the early 1990s, these Corollas were ubiquitous among young drivers in my age cohort. They were known as excellent values on the used car market, and the first bit of advice that many first-time used car buyers would receive was something like “You can’t go wrong with a Corolla.”
In contrast to the mid-1980s Corolla, which led a popular market segment, the 7th (and final) generation of Celica found itself in a vastly different predicament. Sports coupes were about a decade past their prime when this model was introduced for 2000, and it would have taken a phenomenal product to bring that market back to life. That the Celica went out with a whimper after this generation isn’t surprising, but it was at least a legitimate effort to stem what was becoming a rather stodgy image for Toyota. This car certainly appealed to a young crowd; if anything, the styling erred at trying too hard to be edgy, and ended up looking immature.
Sales may have been tepid when new, but Celicas such as this continue to be popular with a younger crowd. My guess is that out of our three featured Toyotas, the modified 2003 Celica GTS has the youngest driver.
And finally we have the Camry. For many people, this car comes to mind when they hear the name “Toyota.” Whether that’s a positive or negative association is up for debate, as Camrys epitomize the Modern Antiseptic Car. Uninteresting but successful, about 400,000 Camrys were sold in the US during 2012, when the black SE in the lead photo was produced. And there’s a reason for that success: This car does exactly what it set out to do, which is to provide comfortable and reliable transportation in the shrinking but still significant mid-size sedan market.
I’ve never driven this generation of Camry, though I found the previous generation pleasant enough to consider buying one, and should I need a new car in the next few years, a Camry would almost certainly be on my shopping list. Maybe I’ve become antiseptic too, but comfortable and reliable sound pretty good to me sometimes.
None of these cars alone tell the complex story of Toyota, but that’s part of what is great about large families. These cars are as different as 3rd cousins who sit next to each other at a family reunion. Though if this was a genuine family reunion, one of these cars would be embarrassing the other two. I wonder which one that would be…
Photographed in Annandale, Virginia in March 2019.
I love it. This looks like one of those candid family pictures where Junior, high-stylin with the latest threads and ‘doo is kind of embarrassed by his straight-laced father. His diminutive grandma looks at both of them thinking that things were much simpler in her day.
“You had to go and get the spoiler, didn’t you, Junior? And what have you done with your nose?!
Nice find! Both the Corolla (of that vintage) and Celica are getting rare. It also represents the chronological progression of the brand in the US. The Corolla representing the rise, the Celica the End of the Fun Years, and the Camry the ultimate destination as king of the unremarkable hill. Having slain its opponents and roared in triumph over their smoking ruins, the Camry found itself without goal or clear direction…and kind of let itself go, engaging in little spats with the Accord by growing side skirts and stiffer suspensions.
Poor Celica. If you want a fun Toyota now, you need to be looking at their off-roaders. I’m not sure the dinnertable conversation between the Celica and TRD-Pro would be any less awkward.
This is how I feel at every family gathering.
Toyota’s sporty styling went off a cliff with this Celica and the final MR2, so that certainly didn’t help. Though the 7th gen Celicas were(and largely still are) everywhere, by far the most common in the segment where I grew up and largely in the younger target demographic Scion later failed at attracting(albeit mostly with women, Celicas were perceived as chick cars to many men at this point). I vastly prefer the rounded styling of the previous generation, those still conjour up iconic imagery of rally stages to me from period video games like Gran Turismo
Celicas ‘chick cars’? Dunno about that…Most always these were driven by guys. I assume it was guys who would have been Supra buyers if the Supra had been offered and if they had the means. The tC seems pretty split between women and guys—mostly the tuner crowd of course.
I don’t know if the Celica was perceived as a “chick car” or not, but that reminded me of the pilot episode of Friends. If I’m remembering it correctly Rachel’s father offered to buy her a Celica in exchange for coming home and marrying the man she had left at the altar. That might be one piece of evidence in support of it being a chick car.
I can picture the Celica, particularly the rounded 1990s ones, as a car a young, single woman would drive. A “secetary’s sports car”, if you will.
Based on my area, yes, these were the posterchild for chick cars in the 00s before the crossover epoch hit. Previous generations seemed more evenly split but these final Celicas got a little too cute.
Did anyone else misread “LE Sedan” in the Corolla ad as a French word, ie. “Le Sedan”? For a second there I thought Toyota was borrowing a page from the Le Car playbook for some reason.
Le Good Car
It was a sneaky effort to get the 0.05% of the subcompact car market who bought Le Cars to switch to Toyota instead of springing for a new Renault Alliance.
Perfect example of everything I see wrong with Toyota for some time. They do a great job of making the boring frumpy reliable cars many need but no one really ‘wants’. Let’s face it, the everyday homely bread n butter cars have to be there, they just won’t be sexxy. Kind of like the matronly cleaning lady at the office—you’re glad she’s there doing her job but you’re also not making excuses to chat her up and ask her out for drinks after work either.
That generation of Celica though. In top GTS 6-spd form it looks great (immature? Bah! Maturity is for old farts!!) and is a pretty good performer. The less said about the completely inadequate GT trim, the better. Toyota was 100% capable of declaring war on the contemporary Mitsubishi Evo and Subaru WRX/STI by offering a turbo and AWD in this car. For someone who wants the level of performance offered by a street able rally car but repulsed by the dumpy 4-door sedans, Toyota COULD have won over buyers let down by what the 3/4 gen Eclipse had downgraded into vs the 1/ 2 gens. But Toyota being Toyota, they played it conservative and those who AREN’T frugal and practical above all mostly stayed away. The Scion tC and Toyobaru twins have largely made the same mistake. You just can’t be timid if you’re going to field a coupe. They’re cars for people who WANT them, who are passionate about them and are looking for cheap thrills. The level of power/performance that’s plenty competent for a humble nondescript family sedan is the absolutel minimum a coupe should offer in its most stripped down fashion statement version. If it’s to have any street cred, that coupe has to at least offer real performance. Toyota is fully able to do so and offer quality too. They’re choosing not to, which I think is unacceptable.
Yeah, the Celica was a nice car; problem was that the sports coupe market segment was shrinking. They moved 52,000 units in 2000, which dropped to 14,000 or so in 2003, and 3,113 in 2005, when it was discontinued.
Not quite the same thing but in the mid 70s my father (who was in his 50s at the time) first met an older sister he had no idea even existed. Yet, to see her next to her brother and sister you could see a similar appearance in everything about her…but hair color. And yet, she was just enough older that she could have been an aunt or at least a cousin.
Of the Toyotas here, I passed on a Corolla in 1982 because even Chevrolet had a FWD small car by then. And I told myself that the “more advanced” Chevy shouldn’t be penalized for it’s antiquated feeling OHV engine. If I had not been so anti-Japanese I probably would have been converted into the Toyota family instead of finally succumbing to Honda when my J2000 started falling apart.
It’s interesting to speculate what a return to RWD might have done for the Celica. But since it was outsold (or was it?) by the Mustang, maybe it was just as well that Toyota gave the world the little rocket ship that was the final generation.
I have to admit that some of the generations of Camry have interested me, but the models produced in the last 15-20 years have bounced between boring and bizarre. I like the 2016-17 model, but I would only buy one as a hybrid since the Prius is downright weird looking….IMHO.
Looking for a metaphor, I tried…
The Three Little Pigs. No, all of these are well built like the brick house.
The Poky Little Puppy, because the Corolla is so slow, and would never get home in time for supper.
Cinderella? The Corolla has to watch it’s stepsisters go to the ball? No, only the Celica is dressed for that.
Goldilocks! The first one is too cold, the second too hot and the third one just right.
For some reason the four-window AE81 Corolla sedan never made as big an impression on me as its’ six-window brethren, both the Nova sedan and the hatchback versions of both.
Makes you wonder how a Corvette feels when it’s parked next to a Spark or a Sonic.
I don’t know. The corolla reminds me of that maiden aunt that always sat off to the corner with her pursed lips for all the newest generation to be paraded in front of her so she can do her inquisition and decide what ruin the family is becoming.
Not every Corolla went fwd in ’84. Late ’84 brought us (me) the 1985 Corolla GT-S. Ooh, baby, that was a wonderful car. Polar opposite of the sedan. It would burn the rear wheels off, if so inclined. I was, just once, because of dreadful wheel-hop. Thought I’d torn it up, but no, it was a Toyota. Tough little guy. Wait..Annandale? Did you run into Donald Fagen and Rikki?