I am not a car snob–I’m really not. I am not sure someone could be a car snob with a Chrysler K-car, Ford Tempo and a few Lada Nivas in their ownership history, but I could not drive this Corolla. I tried to make it my winter beater but could not get over the sheer dullness of the overall experience. A crap car with character can be interesting, but without it…
While I had managed commuting just fine on a bicycle in the spring, summer and fall months, I did not relish the idea of winter riding. Temperatures can reach -40 Fahrenheit occasionally, but perhaps more importantly, the snow and ice mean a higher possibility of injury. As I was unwilling to subject my solid Mazda 808 to the ravages of winter driving, a beater of some sort was needed and with very little cash in my pocket, frugality would have to take precedence over curiosity or passion.
I replied to an ad offering a 1987 Toyota Corolla for $150. This was not the cool rear wheel drive AE86 chassis Corolla, but the rather more workmanlike front drive AE82 sedan. It was not a car I had any real interest in, but perhaps I would bond with it like my old Chrysler LeBaron. Failing that, it would at least provide reliable transportation over the winter. The car had rust which was at its worst on the roof, with an additional patch of rust-through behind the left front wheel. The exhaust had rotted through a flex joint and a small rear quarter window was broken. One of the rear tail lights was broken as well, but that was merely an excuse to visit the scrapyard. It ran and drove so I bargained the price down to $80 and took it home.
As I drove home it struck me that this was a gobsmackingly dull car when equipped with the automatic transmission. It seemed to suck half the available engine power: a slushbox indeed. The car competently navigated corners but with absolutely no zest or enthusiasm.
Usually with a scrap value automotive purchase, you are left with a messy car filled with all sorts of strange items. My Scimitar had a vintage radar detector as well as some horse whips. My Lada had some cheap tools and a pair of ladies underwear. Sadly, the Toyota also failed to deliver any character on the found-items front, holding only an empty garbage bag, two bottles of glass cleaner, a half set of brakes pads and the factory tire wrench. The partial set of brake pads immediately got me to check the front brakes, but both sides were decent and equally worn.
The glass cleaner looked a little too suspect to use on actual glass and the engine was filthy, but…
…with some elbow grease and paper towels, the glass cleaner yielded an engine that no longer looked like an environmental disaster. The single over head cam 1.6L allegedly made 90hp but to my butt dyno, it felt more like 70hp at the most (they made 74 horsepower-ED). While still equipped a carburetor and a mass of vacuum lines, the engine actually ran quite well.
A visit to one of the nearby junkyards yielded a 1986 Toyota Corolla sedan that would be my parts donor. It is a bit strange to pull parts out of a much nicer car than your ratty recipient at home. The glass and taillight I needed were in good shape and set me back a grand total of $30. I would have grabbed a front fender but it had enough rust to make me pass (brown paint can hide a multitude of sins). I should have grabbed the exhaust flex joint but had not thought far enough ahead to do so.
The new-to-me bits were quickly installed on the car. I also took the opportunity to weld in a bit of sheet metal to seal up the front fender (parts store rattle can paint matched surprisingly well). A lick of leftover paint on the peeling rims had them looking semi-decent.
At this point, the Corolla was a fully functional but rather ugly vehicle. The exhaust still needed to be sorted, but the proper replacement piece proved to be rather expensive. I planned to take the car to the local muffler shop and get them to bodge something together and that is when it hit me: I did not like this car in any possible way. It was crappy but not in a good, characterful way. I decided that life is too short to drive something like this. If I was going to be limping a beater through the next several months, it should at least be something I care about. With that, I sold the Corolla on for a (very) modest profit and set my sights on a beater with a personality.
Hmmmm….. With cars like this I find the best approach is to switch off any emotion and treat them as any other home appliance (I mean, you don’t get excited about your oven or fridge, do you? Of course they’re boring). I lived with a 1992 Ford Escort CLX diesel (possessing all of 59 hp) for 10 years like that… It’s task was to start and be capable of reliably dealing with journeys within a radius of 100 Km from my place in Vienna, with isolated sorties more distant parts of Austria. That it did (and probably still does for the Romanian gypsy who bought it when getting another “Pickerl” (roadworthy sticker) did not make sense anymore).
Exactly. Even when new, Toyotas are nothing but Point A to Point B appliances and as they get older, that impression intensifies. They really are the choice for people who don’t like cars very much.
Oddly, when Toyota tries to put some appearance ‘pizzazz’ into their cars (such as the latest Corolla), it makes things worse because the dullness of the chassis/drivetrain doesn’t come close to matching the overwrought styling. But then, it’s the sizzle that sells cars. At least with old Toyotas, they look like the refrigerator-as-car that they are.
The new Corolla looks like several different cars put together. The back is a copy of a Ford Focus, the middle looks like a Dodge Dart, the front from a Kia Forte. The result is a disjointed Frankenstein of a car. At least the old one made some attempt to be original.
Not all Toyotas have the personality of a small soap dish. In 1988 my roomate bought a supercharged MR2, it was a great deal of fun to drive. A truly affordable pocket rocket.
“Not all Toyotas have the personality of a small soap dish.”
QOTD.
i hope you didn’t take advantage of the zigeuner in that deal
Auto on something like this sucks what little power they have out, I had a Mitsubishi Mirage with the same disease. But it kept going and all the doo dads worked it was just tedious to drive anywhere like your Toyota.
Yep, I had the same Corolla, but with a manual and liftback. Not the most exciting drive, but it got around town well enough, and I don’t remember it being especially dull. I actually enjoyed its basic-ness and simplicity.
…yeaaaah ..about as ‘exciting’ as an Austin Cambridge!! LOL!!!
So how do you folks out there in Alberta manage to plate these vehicles with rust thru and half eaten exhaust systems? Grease a few palms at the local garage? 😉
In Manitoba since 1996 we have provincial safety’s that are required for all used vehicles before you can plate them. That said, one can always find a mechanic that will look at your rust bucket thru rose coloured glasses and sign the papers with a little $ persuasion.
I never did properly plate this one. Just had an old one on to avoid being towed away. Never drove it except to get it home.
Ah…I see. OK.
You can do that over there? Or is that a question I shouldn’t ask?
Maybe the police up there doesn’t have plate recognition cameras like they do down here.
You got the one with the wrong transmission. A manual would have been more interesting.
Mildly.
The 4AC is actually peppy, just not coupled with to an A/T. I’ve driven both.
Wrong rearend too, the hatchback adds interestingness as well as functionality.
For me this car was a 79 Datsun king cab with a flat bed and 5 spd MT. Ugly as could be but never stopped. Put a new set of used tires on the front every 10k mi. Big bash behind the drivers door that I had worked or played at fixing.
The thing is that I had a 100 mile round trip for work 5 days a week. It laughed at that so I laughed with it. Don’t ask about the better looking, wrong wheel drive cars that tried to replace it. Only the 77 Impala wagon could but at a big increase in gas. I actually had both for insurance for about a year. I don’t recall a working radio on either one and I will never get the time back I spent on that soulless freeway. Those are my only regrets.
Moving to a job closer to home for less money gave me a pay raise in several ways. That’s a different story.
A big, old South of the Border salute for you, Mr. Sanders! A man must have some standards. We have all settled for a car from time to time – something that seems sensible, but that simply has no character. Not all of us have the backbone to pull the plug on such a situation so quickly. Bravo!
When one pays $80 total, it becomes MUCH easier to just pull the plug, some of us probably spend that much a month at Starbucks (which is harder to give up). I don’t think I have EVER seen a running Toyota for that little, no matter how much rust…
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a running car of any kind for that little. I consistently marvel at Dave’s ability to get hold of running and driving cars for such small amounts of money! In my part of the country it seems like every yokel with a rusty Escort wants $900 even if its prospects of passing a state inspection are close to nil…
I did sell a running and driving car for $350 once–it badly needed brakes and the engine didn’t exactly run well (and was overmatched for the heavy car even when it did). And I felt I got the short end of that deal, even.
$900??
Escorts didn’t even cost that new…
rather have an old RWD Corolla. LOL
“…life is too short to drive something like this..”
That’s pretty much the way I feel about most Corollas. This brought back memories of carshopping when purchasing my 1986 Excel new. Not only was the Corolla more expensive, but the styling was just so much worse. An awkward, angular box, in contrast to the Guigaro-styled Excel. No doubt the Toyota would have been a better choice but ugh.
It’s true that the Excel looked better to most but the Corolla was a much better car! In 2000, I had to drive my cousin’s second-generation 1991 Excel to the junkyard and when I came back from the junkyard and sat in my 1984 Corolla with more mileage, I thought I had bought the Corolla at about the same time he did for 1/3 of the price he paid for his 1991 Excel in 1997…
So the Corolla was a much better choice (and it lasted 10 more years despite being 7 years older!). My car was a very early model as it was built in September of 1983.
The Excel had suddenly started to drink an incredible quantity of oil and one time, he didn’t check it soon enough… It was still running after that event but the engine was incredibly weak and the car was barely driveable! The engine was still strong in my Corolla when it’s last owner finally sent to the junkyard (because of an attempt at stealing it which resulted in a few dents, broken glass and steering column!) in November of 2010 at age 27!
I find it impossible to read about the Corolla’s appliance-like qualities without thinking of this movie scene:
http://youtu.be/pJ7l7E1DqA4
Age old decision indeed 🙂
Haha there’s even a Jayne Mansfield reference in it that I get now.
I understand what you’re saying—and I think with a manual this thing would be a lot more fun & interesting—but that aside, isn’t there something special about how utilitarian these things were designed? All straight lines, hard edges, flat everything, easy to see out of. For me, I’d rather be in this thing than let myself get soft riding around in a brand-new, air-sealed coffin on wheels. Deadly accident in new car? No problem. Have new car towed directly into the grave. Embalming done onsite. Sure storing the formaldehyde adds weight & bulk, but isn’t it convenient?
P.S. The Corolla hatchbacks of that era were slightly more attractive.
You reminded me of what Jay Leno said about his ’56 Buick – “Get in a crash, they wipe you off the dashboard and sell the car to the next sucker!”
And ?
Did you drive or did you walk ?
Rode the bike through the early winter before finding something else. To be reveled next Sunday!
That was not too many winters ago. You still had the Quest in the driveway.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/cars-of-a-lifetime-2004-nissan-quest/
There, Jim Klein commented:
“It’s the trips we take in any car that are what make the car itself memorable, not the daily slog in it.”
So, what trips could you have taken to make it a memorable experience?
With a hitch how many non running CC’s could you have pulled home?
Go ice fishing with the kids or go ice racing on a frozen lake?
With front wheel drive it is particular fun to power slide in reverse gear on snow and ice. That would have made the kids giggle.
I generally try to keep my sub-$500 beaters to city only cars. That way if they break down I call the scrapyard, unscrew the license plate and walk home.
I later had a Mercedes 220D which I tried to do everything with – auto-x, road trip, car show, daily driver, etc.
In any case, David, I rate this story as a success story because it is the first junker you bought and sold running for a profit. The first such story I remember, anyway.
Have you eternalized the 220D in a CC write up? You made me curious.
Made a profit on the Tempo too. The LeBaron I’d count as a profit too. Not to worry I loss big time on the next one! 🙂
No proper write up on the Benz yet as I’m going in order but a few tidbits on it:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/racing-and-racing-cars/auto-xing-a-big-blue-benz-diesel-too/
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/rolling-classic/cruising-curbside-classic-style/
Pizza driver’s delight. I have a friend who has a stable of about four of these things, any one of which is fully operational. They helped him deliver his way into home ownership.
Wow! That shows the true value and meaning of the econo boxes.
YO
That’s awesome!!
Should I be on the lookout for this car? Is it in Bloomington?
Walking can be approached a few ways. There’s walking a new trail in the woods, which is always interesting with new things to examine while looking for mint sprigs or mushrooms. Walking with a new girlfriend at the park is always a delight. Then there’s walking a familiar route to wait on the bus and doing it in a zen mindfullness way. That’s okay and can liven up your morning commute. Walking has lots of mental and physical health benefits, I agree. But for the most part…walking sucks. Walking in Southern heat and humidity. Sucks. Walking down the hall to the principals office. Sucks. Walking to school where you knew you’d get beaten up again. That sucked really bad. As a kid walking behind a parent at the grocery store. I decided walking sucked the big one.
At some points in my life, I would have welcomed this Toyota.
You agree with my late dad. He used to say: “A bad ride is always better than a good walk!”
Understood 1,000 % ! .
When I met SWMBO she had a 10,000 mile ’97 Corolla four door , I hated it from the first time I drove it and to make matters worse it flat refused to break , rattle , squeak , leak etc.
It used two batteries and one starter before I re painted it and replaced the timing belt , shocks , windshield etc. and gave it to her Grand Daughter as a College car .
Sadly the head gasket blew recently as I was driving it home to replace a leaking power steering hose , I consider my self *very* lucky to have found a sucker who’ll give me $250 for it , ice cold AC , new tires and all .
Good riddance , it was a faultless and soulless thing I won’t miss .
-Nate
We were luckier with my wife’s Geo Prizm then. It served her for about seven years and gave us an excuse to sell when the radiator sprang a leak. It needed brakes too. Along the way it needed a new distributor, quoted at $400 but sourced at $250. Also an inner door latch for the driver’s door. The wipers never parked correctly and it would have taken another $400 for a fix that would have been temporary at best. We sold it for less than the cost of the last repairs (I forgot the details) and replaced it with a used Ford Contour which she is still driving and at a lower expense than any other car for that purpose: about 5K miles per year in town.
My wife had an ’83 Corona. At the time I had a ’74 Cortina. (Gem, can you see where this is going?) The car magazines hadn’t been impressed by this model, so I was dubious from the start. But I loved Jane. Could I love her car?
In short, no. I don’t think you can love a Toyota.
When I drove it, I was astounded. In the ’83 T140 Corona, Toyota had made a car that was bigger than my ten-year-old Cortina on the outside, but smaller than the Cortina inside! Huh? Performance was woeful – despite being a five-speed, you had to just about wring its neck to get the performance my automatic two-litre Cortina managed without complaint. It used more fuel than the Cortina, and in corners it felt like it was on stilts, a really weird sensation, as though you were sitting outside the tyres’ contact patch. In short, an old Ford Cortina, the generally-unloved Mark 3 at that, was a better car. But the Toyota was beautifully built and finished, except for The Flaw.
It came with the 2S-C engine. Now I don’t know whether you ever saw this disaster in the States, it was a carby-fed version of the first Camry engine. Early ones like Jane’s had this weird oil-pressure sender design that had a large “head” outside the block. Apparently vibration made the sender crack on the underside of where it fitted into the block, causing a random loss of oil pressure. We didn’t know this at the time, just noticed that the oil pressure light was flickering when hot. Mechanics couldn’t find the problem, until the sender cracked off on the road, causing catastrophic loss of oil pressure. Needed a new engine at 80,000km.
Good riddance. Goodbye Toyota, Hello, Mitsubishi and Mazda!!
To be fair, I’ve driven Toyotas since, but have never been impressed. They just come across as generic basic transportation modules, for people who don’t bother to look for something better. The Aldi of the automotive world.
There are vehilces that could easily make me love a Toyota. Most of them in particular have Supra or MR2 badges, but I think I could also bond with an older Cressida, a RWD or All-Trac Celica, any of several RWD Corollas.
I think the only FWD Corolla that would have any chance at my heart would be one of the AE92 GT-S coupes. Other than that, no. And as for their current lineup? There hasn’t been an interesting Toyota sold in years.
If you compare these Corollas with offerings from other manufacturers from that time, you’ll see it’s not that bad! Compare it with a 1987 Sentra or worse, a 1987 Colt 100… Now that was pretty bad!
I bought a 1984 Corolla from someone I know who bought it new back in 1997 to have a “newer” car and save some fuel. Kept the car 6 years and actually enjoyed it. I gave it to a friend when I didn’t need it anymore and bought it back from him to give it back to my uncle who drove it until 2010! By then, it was pretty tired but he still liked it!
The LE version was also a nice little car, still a boring FWD vehicle (unlike the two-door model) but the seats were almost as nice as those in a Cressida and the overdrive transmission was also a good thing!
Before I had my Corolla, I had a friend who used to buy GM vehicles (just like myself!) and when he got the 1986 Chevrolet Nova version of the Corolla, he liked so much that he kept buying Toyota vehicles after. He did have a Ford F-100 that he didn’t buy (it was given to him) but he didn’t keep it long! He replaced it with a 1993 T-100 that he still has.
Here’s the Corolla in 2009
The AE82 has the making of being an interesting car, in terms of its quality, purposeful looks and engineering substance. But they hobbled it with 155-width tires and that 8-valve droner under the hood. A contemporary Civic felt a bit brittle, but more lively, same with a 323. The Corolla of that era DID have an uncommonly soft ride for such a light car of the era, though. The Ae92 which came later had the same problem, but at least its 16-valver, esp once fuel injection was added, had what it took to entertain an impatient driver. Same insanely soft suspension tuning, of course.
This car is a 4A-GE away from fun (with firmer suspension, of course). Well, except for that automatic.
The thought crossed my mind at the time but really this particular example wasn’t worthy of an engine swap.
Oh totally understand. Here are two road test of the good ones:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/triggerscarstuff/4077835967/in/set-72157622616393393/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/triggerscarstuff/3490546047/in/set-72157617460100467/
Factoid: the next gen got front AND rear subframes.
The AE82 can be found with a 4AG engine down here. Also as a small 5 dr hatch. In that particular form, it hauls.
This is the same car that Jeff Goldblum drove in “Into the Night” along with a young Michelle Pfeiffer. Except his was beige. The perfect car to complement his character in the movie. Good movie.
I have owned several Toyotas over the years but never a Corolla, unless you want to count the Celica as at least partially derived from the Corolla. I have driven this style of Corolla a couple of times as rental cars and they were perfectly acceptable transportation modules, but nothing more. We had one on a two week vacation in San Francisco that we took on day trips to Lake Tahoe and Monterrey, among other destinations. I won’t say that it struggled going uphill in the Sierras but there was certainly no reserve power if you wanted to pass a truck. Of course coming back down the hill we got about 45 mpg as we didn’t really use the gas pedal at all. I have ridden in new Corollas and it is very similar to these; reliable transportation but nothing special.
Crappy as that car was, if it was -40 I would rather drive the crap box then freeze my own craphole shut. Looking forward to the story on what you replaced it with, David.
QOTD
“…freeze my own craphole shut.”
Epic and gross at the same time. LMAO
I’m just surprised you could find a car that cheap. According to Autotrader, in all of metro Detroit, in a 25 mile radius of my home, there were exactly 20 vehicles under $1,000, with the cheapest being $300 for a “fixer-upper” 96 Saturn with 145,000 miles.
Michigan doesn’t have safety, emissions or rust inspections, like some states. But the insurance requirements are so steep that by the time you paid for a plate and a winter’s worth of insurance, you spent more than the car is worth.
Apples to oranges here, but my 87 Corolla FX is a ****ing blast. The autos back then really did suck a lot of hooning life out of Toyotas.
Depends on the use, if it is to drive to the local train station and leave in the car park then you want something you really don’t care about, this car looks perfect for that.
Bingo!
Kind of a lemon, so unremarkable it deserves a place in history, perhaps.
The did rust over here in the most terminal way. Paper thin panels, seats fell to bits and neither fast nor safe. Pretty tragic in an accident but then most Jap cars of the day were about as safe as a Fiat 500. Not much to recommend with them except they were reliable. There will be some who will restore them for some reason. My view, a waste of paint!
Actually, if I have a winter beater, I prefer something I really don’t care about. It gets covered with salt, mud, schmutz, who cares? I don’t like it anyway. I have from time to time looked for a Toyota Echo for that very reason.
I saw one long long time ago…as a badge engineered Chevrolet NOVA…
The Corolla-based Nova, unlike the later Prizm that we never had in Canada, did look a bit better than the Corolla sedan. Here’s a picture showing a part the 1986 Nova that belonged to a friend of mine. It was almost the same color as my 1984 Corolla but in my opinion, the quad headlights and grille looked better than those on the Corolla (both the 1984-85 with the single sealed beam units and the 1986-87 with the revised grille and composite headlights). The Nova also had large windows behind the rear doors, a longer back glass and better-looking taillights.
The Nova also used seat fabric from other Chevrolet models but the seat frames remained Toyota. The dashboard was quite similar from the one the Corolla used but it had a GM radio and a different radio bezel. The rear side markers were identical to those of the Corolla and were even stamped “Toyota”
They shared most of their mechanical components but if I recall correctly, they had a Harrison radiator.
My friend who had the Nova had to replace the radio bezel with one from a Corolla like mine to fit a double-din aftermarket radio in his car.
His Nova had a decent sound system with amps and a large sub in the trunk but no signs from outside to show that except maybe for tinted windows that were hiding the 6X9 speakers at the back!
My friend was living in a large apartment building in Town Mont Royal and he had one of the cheapest cars in the garage which was mostly filled with luxury cars. One night, while the car was parked in it’s spot, the whole sound system was stolen. To get everything, the thieves broke the side glass, the dashboard, and the non-folding rear seat to get in the trunk (there was no remote to open it either!) and they cut the battery cable under the hood so the alarm system would shut off… The same night, the other cheap car in the garage (a mid-eighties Pontiac 6000) was also damaged so the thieves would get the plastic trim over both rear wheels in the cargo area. The more expensive cars were left intact!
LOVE both of my RWD Corollas, not only are they fun…
they actually get more “thumbs-ups” than my Fox Mustang notch 5.0 and Monte Carlo SS combined. lol
*Of course, when the Corolla went FWD… it became a dull appliance and the fun went out the window.
Rear shot
Nice cars! I wish Toyota still made cars like these!
Thanks, Phil…
So do I, my friend, so do I.
Alotta people mistake them for E30 BMWs… the only things they do have in common are RWD, fun to drive, great reliability and both make awesome platforms to enter drifting/autocross/rally racing.
Although, BMW still makes fun to drive cars… Toyota, nowadays, not so much. 🙁
i have one also but i dont now its fuel millage per a liter , would u telll me (corolla 1988 4a )