There’s no way I’m leading a post with a picture of a Toyota Camry exterior, I unashamedly need the clicks too badly. So how did we get here? Well, no sooner had the pixels dried on last week’s examination of a 422,755 mile 1986 Saab 900S than this Toyota Camry apparently said “Hold my Asahi Super Dry” and called out to me in the junkyard yesterday. Camrys are of course no stranger to the junkyard due to the sheer numbers that have been sold, but the first generation ones are getting scarcer. Hence they are worth a look inside even if the outside looks like the typical circa 150k-200k miler. But not this one! In one fell swoop, it knocked the Saab off its perch while being from the exact same model year and, theoretically at least, in the same size class while unlikely to actually be cross-shopped when new by the same consumer.
As with the Saab from last week, there is nothing on the outside that hints at the fact that the mileage on this car is greater than a round trip to the moon and back. A bone stock, metallic brown and beige two-tone with a pin stripe and not even the alloy wheel option to hold the 185/70R13 tires. This being a 1986 puts it in the last year of this generation, and it had received a slight facelift recently with the aero (or “euro-styled” per the brochure) headlights replacing the old quad sealed beams that it debuted with for 1983 in the United States, when it replaced the Corona and was positioned between the Corolla and Cressida.
This is pretty much the view you’d ever more often see in your rear view mirror as you were waiting at a traffic light for it to change in the 1980s. Just there, every year a little greater in numbers, who’d have guessed at the time that it would become the de facto default midsize sedan in the U.S.. Remember, when it debuted the Chevy Citation was still a big deal but the Chevy’s position was ever wobblier as it all-too quickly offended many of its hosts, no small number of which no doubt checked out the Japanese competition when they’d finally had enough.
Power? The Camry had two options for 1986, in this case (well, in most cases) a SOHC 2.0liter 4-cylinder (just like the Saab, eh?) producing 95hp and 118lb-ft of torque. There was also a turbo-diesel available but that was rarely seen beyond the brochure. Installed transversely and mated to either a 4speed automatic or a 5speed manual, the standard engine did the job and by most accounts did it well.
Circling around back, the clearcoat’s failing on the starboard side, a not uncommon occurrence here in Colorado where we are a mile or more closer to the sun than many of the flatlanders. There’s nothing too exciting going on as far as styling is concerned, just a very conservative and straight-laced (and straight-lined) body. For those that really wanted to let their hair down, a 5-door liftback was also available. While the prior Corona had the same, it likely was kept on for the Camry due to the Citation having that be a fairly popular bodystyle. In practice though the Camry seemed much more popular in sedan form.
In 1986 Toyota moved over 151,000 Camry units, which was more than the year before even though at the end of its cycle and showed its growing popularity with many owners simply swapping one out for another every few years, generally because they could or wanted to, rarely because they needed to. It however still played second (or third) fiddle to the Ford Taurus and Honda Accord for another decade though, until 1997 when it took the passenger car sales crown and pretty much held on to it with an iron grip, selling upwards of 400,000 annually in many of those years.
I can’t recall seeing a trailer hitch on many Camrys over the years but this one has one. I have no idea what it towed but am guessing it did it satisfactorily enough. I’ve frankly not given Camrys enough credit over my lifetime, they’ve mostly been too “boring”, but I’ve been coming around on them in a big way over the last few years as an “exciting” car usually means more exciting repair bills, more exciting insurance bills, more exciting fuel costs, more exciting maintenance costs, etc. As I grow older I’m just less interested in spending money on something that I usually end up sitting in traffic in which, frankly, isn’t very exciting at all.
A surprisingly high liftover sill leads the eye into a fairly rectangular trunk that looks well-trimmed and clearly capable of holding the luggage or the groceries. The spare (full-size or as “full-size” as a 185/70-13 can be…) is under the floor and there aren’t any nooks and crannies that would hide an errant can of soup or quart of creamer. A three-rectangle box on the outside is composed of rectangular spaces inside, whodathink it.
The “LE” model was the upper trim line, with the “Deluxe” the base trim. Both were decently well equipped (and with the same standard powertrain) but some items were still surprisingly on the options list for 1986. This one originally hails from Cheyenne, Wyoming, about 100 miles north of this Denver junkyard. That Toyota dealer is no longer there (or not with that name anyway) but it’s nice to see that there is no rust forming around the holes they punched into the trunk lid for their little plaque.
The alloy wheels that this one doesn’t have is one of the options that could have been selected. You did get color-keyed bumpers with the LE and two-tone paint was also an option that the Deluxe didn’t offer. You however had to stick to the Deluxe if you wanted TurboDiesel power, the LE was apparently deemed too fancy for it.
October 1985 makes it a relatively early 1986 for Toyota and notably it already has its center high mounted stop light – one month after the installation became mandatory (Sept. 1, 1985). For 1980s-era car spotters this quickly became the easy tell for pre- vs post-1986 models.
Camrys have been built in the U.S. for so long it’s hard to remember a time when that was not the case. Not until May of 1988 would the Camry be built in Kentucky, in that case the first one apparently being a white Camry LE. Our example was most likely built in Toyota’s Tsutsumi plant, which is about 150 miles south of Tokyo, closer to Nagoya.
Much like last week’s Saab, the interior here has held up exceptionally well. You’ll have to believe me when I tell you that I regularly see cars that are absolutely trashed inside with far less then six digits on the odometer. And while the majority of Camrys that I see have around 200,000 miles on them, they generally look it as well, nothing like this one which you could imagine only having a little over 100k on it with the driver door panel being the main issue. However it’s also 40 years old and could have cracked just by sitting still.
I won’t get into too many junkyard cars, especially ones with absorbent materials, but this one I’d do if pressed (or paid?). That seat looks in excellent condition, I have to believe the driver didn’t weigh very much and had an office job while practicing very good personal hygiene. This car’s from back when the term “color-keyed” wasn’t kidding, instead of just something like a single gray-colored insert in the black door panel that matched the gray seats in an otherwise black interior.
The back seat looks plenty plush as well, the “LE” really meant something I guess. Even the front seatbacks are clad in the same soft velour-ish material. Again, no cupholders in the rear armrest though but the door panel looks nicely styled and possessing a good contrast of color and even a chrome strip. This is obviously the beige interior, although gray was also offered as was blue. But no red this year!
Peering over the driver’s shoulder area, the front comes into view and displays a fairly low and non-intrusive dashboard, especially for the passenger. High air vents and likely a good view out both things that help in driving comfort, while the stick shift reveals itself here as well.
The only “option” I see here is the air conditioning. Note that the radio (with FIVE speakers in the LE!) doesn’t even have a cassette player, it’s quite surprising that it’s still the original unit in here after all this time and more importantly, all these miles. The shift knob is worn but not as much as many I’ve seen, this car most likely was driven longer distances and less in town which could easily be the case with a Cheyenne dealer/residence and perhaps a Colorado employer. Shift a few times to get to the freeway and let ‘er rip in fifth!
The clear gauge package consists of the essentials, and also includes a quartz clock as opposed to the apparently analog unit in the Deluxe. Fuel economy was rated (in 1986) as 28city/34hwy for the manual (and a couple less for the automatic) according to the brochure. The diesel achieved 30/36 for what it’s worth and was automatic only (Note that the EPA has changed its testing parameters since 1986, a 30mpg result then is not equal to 30mpg today).
Here’s the big number again, 516,675 miles, and really that comes out to 13,000 miles per year if evenly distributed, which is actually below average for this area at least. What’d this thing cost, you ask? Well, the base price for a 1986 Camry LE sedan was apparently $11,448 according to more sources than some of the other figures bandied about which makes it almost $5,000 (in 1986 dollars) cheaper than last week’s Saab which was real money in 1986 when the minimum wage was still just over $3 an hour. Barring everything but the base price itself, that comes out to 2.2 cents per mile driven and also translates to right around an equivalent price of $34,000 today. (A 2026 base model Camry LE that is “better” in basically every way than this car currently starts at US$29,100).
Reative to the Saab, with the 1986 Camry you got a little less power (but it also weighed several hundred pounds less so perhaps more even than expected), a newer model name, similar standard features, same size engine, also front wheel drive, also a 5speed manual, and they were both 4-door sedans sedans as it turned out. I guess part of the choice depends on how much value you placed on a European name plate. The commentary on the Saab seemed to (surprisingly to me, anyway) point to Saab’s manual transmission as a major weak point, which is likely not to have been the case with the Camry.
Today, I can’t really find fault with the Toyota Camry as a car and frankly, as a great value. True then, true today. But I don’t think I could do 516,675 miles with only AM/FM radio…
Other High-Mileage Heroes:
The 392,509 Mile 1984 Mercedes 300CD
The 422,755 Mile 1986 Saab 900S
The 440,960 Mile 1992 Toyota Corolla
The 556,016 Mile 1992 Saturn SL1
I like the clever scaling of the fuel gauge
I think the only person I ever knew with one of these owned the diesel version. Briefly, because he had a lot of trouble with it from the start. It’s been a long time, but I think Toyota bought it back from him and he got something else. One of an extremely small number of “bad Toyota” stories from that era.
I was in the cohort of people buying cars of this class for their first new cars, but these were not a popular choice in my circle. Accords, Mazdas and Volvos seemed to be more coveted in my small sample.
But I don’t doubt that mileage for a moment.
Yet another car where it would be fascinating to know its actual story. Unlike the Saab, I think that it was a quite reasonable thing for someone to let this car go at this mileage. Unless one is a collector (and does anyone collect Camrys?), there’s just not much reason to hold on to something with 500K+ miles. I know…heresy….and I can’t believe that I’m saying that. Still, someone kept this in good shape and probably was driving it regularly until close to its end. I don’t see any rodent nests in this one.
I’m thinking about 1986 and what people I knew were buying as new cars back then, and like JP, I didn’t know many (any?) who bought these “big” Toyotas. My first new car – bought around then – was a VW. I knew quite a few new Hondas, Datsun/Nissans, and small Toyotas. The closest I knew to a Camry was a colleague’s wife who had a fancy corporate software sales job (we all thought that was a weird job) and her company let her lease an equally fancy Nissan Maxima. We thought it was a wacky car because it kept talking and trying to tell us that “a door was a jar”. Which made nearly as much sense as selling “software” for a living.
My cousin in Lexington Mass had a then-husband who drove a Camry in the mid-’80s, he had started selling software when in his early 20s for a little-known company called Microsoft in 1981. I think he retired by around age 32. A weird but nice job he had, and somehow I have a feeling that he bought no Camrys thereafter.
Toyota should race to buy that car for their museum!
If my dealer screwed on his “marketing badge” (with wood screws no less)…I’d walk away and tell them to get me another one that had not been molested. Pet peeve of mine….
As someone who grew up at a time when these metal badges were the norm, I was going to say “at least they used screws with exposed heads” instead of rivets, which were equally common. 🙂
Great write up, nice to see the examples where good maintenance and a caring owner got their money’s worth out of their car purchase. Somewhere I have the article on the Pontiac Iron Duke engine GM car found at a self serve yard with 450 thousand on the odometer
This car looks like it shouldn’t be there. Kind of clean yet. A good detail would do wonders outside of the clear coat missing.
My dad’s last ride was an 85 Camry deluxe. It had A/C, automatic, cruise, cassette and a right hand mirror.
At the time of purchase, his minimum daily drive to work was 110 miles round trip! His job was managing 7 shopping malls/strip malls from North Palm Beach down as far as Coral Gables.
When he bought the car, he figured out that the mileage checks he got would cover the fuel, payment and half of his insurance.
When he passed in 92, the car had 150,000 miles. We sold it to a friend who drove it to 299,000 miles when the automatic transmission started to go bad.
These were great cars.
Certainly less surprising than the high-mileage Saab. It just goes to show how modern engines last so much longer than they once did. And it reinforces my attitude about very frequent oil changes: unless you’re planning to keep your car for 500k miles, why be so persnickety about that? The odds that internal engine damage is going to waylay your car is low; most likely it will be something else, like not wanting to drive the same car for 40 years.
As to your changing attitude about low maintenance, high durability cars, welcome to the club! I got there a while back. I do not foresee replacing my xB unless something tragic happens to it or something extremely compelling lures me away.
My very bright tv engineer friend in LA was a very early adopter to Camrys and bought one of this generation, trading in his trusty slant six Duster. He knew a reliable car when he saw it.
I agree about maintenance. Being as so much has changed in my own life (being 10-12 hours away from death changes a person) I don’t want nor plan to buy any more cars. I hopefully made my last purchase in order to give our Mercury to our son. I wanted a Toyota, and the dealer had a nice 15 Forerunner. But when I compared it to a 17 Ford Explorer with 80,000 less miles, I could not justify the other $9000 that the dealer wanted for the Toyota.
So I’ll just keep this maintained and drive it.
As for my dad’s last car, he wanted me to have it. Mom said no. She said it would be too painful for her to see it so often.
We were probably at a similar age when we made that determination. I think I’d be pretty happy with a current Camry if it was available in wagon form the way I use my main vehicle currently. (Although the trunks have been very spacious since at least the 2002 generation…) I do quite like the Crown Signia (wagon) quite a bit but it starts at about $10k more than a Camry LE Wagon would properly be priced at with effectively the same hybrid powertrain and very similar size.
Toyota was and is plenty smart. They probably sacrificed a lot of profit on this generation of Camry to deliver extra good quality material and assembly and become well established in the market. It sure paid off. I’ll bet a huge percentage of people who bought Camry bought several more Toyotas and told their friends how wonderful Toyota was.
My 2016 Corolla is up over 535,000…
Interesting. I saw the hatchback version of this car the other day, presumably with fewer miles on it.
My dad traded in a very tired and rusty AMC Sportabout for an 84 Camry and, despite a couple of Hyundais he leased, came back to own several other Camrys. I remember the 84 model was what I took my license exam on the day after a Cleveland snowstorm. Boring? Yeah, but the thing just kept going. I think he had it close to 10 years until my sister wrecked it.
Back in the 1990s, I knew a guy who ran what I’d call the ultimate Dodge Dart website. His name was Joey Newhouse. I think he passed away some time ago, and the site is probably long gone (I’ve found references to it, but can’t actually find the site itself). I had a ’68 Dart 270 hardtop coupe at the time. He was fairly local, so we met up one day. However, the car he showed up in, was a 1985-86 Camry, with a 5-speed! He said that in his opinion, it was basically the modern day equivalent of a Dart…sturdy, hardworking, humble, and honest, basically. And, I’d tend to agree. His parents had a Dart sedan, I want to say a ’73-74. It was a manual, but oddly, a 3-on-the-floor, but rather on the tree.
I’m guessing there’s zero sales market for a beater like this ? .
I think it hardly looks used up, maybe a junkyard engine or tranny and a $500 respray she’s good to go, non ? .
Those seats look nice and comfy .
-Nate
Does this place sell complete cars ?
Yes but not once they are placed in the yard at which time the title gets sent back to the state and is no longer transferable. They will though take cars they think they can sell and put them out front and sell them to you with a transfer of title but (sometimes) not an emissions check certificate. It’s a U-pull-and-pay (that’s the name) yard and you can look at their website and see what’s being offered. A lot of the cars have mechanical issues, obviously. There are locations in various cities around the U.S.