Our 1983 Tercel 4WD wagon was this color
When my wife and I decided to return to the U.S. from our temporary stay in England, I began to think about what cars we might buy to replace the Fiat and Mini we’d leave in the UK. Our transportation budget was limited, as houses in New England cost much more than the starter home we had owned outside Atlanta.
Our first car purchase upon our return was for my wife, a 1983 Toyota Tercel 4WD wagon bought with low mileage from the local Toyota dealer. My wife liked the car’s big windows and the higher seating position compared to her Mini, and the four doors that made it easier to put our children in their car seats. We anticipated that four-wheel-drive would make the little Toyota good in snow.
The wagon’s 63HP 1.5L four-cylinder engine was mounted longitudinally, not transversely as in our Strada and Mini. Photos of Tercel 4WD wagons remind me that ours had a 6-speed transmission, however I don’t remember ever using the extra-low gear. I do remember that we weren’t supposed to engage four-wheel-drive on dry roads, as there was no center differential.
The Toyota weighed only about 2,300 lbs, or a thousand pounds less than a small CUV of today, a Corolla Cross for example. To be honest I prefer the extra mass and safety features of modern cars, features like air bags, anti-lock brakes, and back-up cameras. If I compare the Tercel wagon to my wife’s 2021 RAV4 hybrid, the newer car is both quicker and more fuel-efficient. (The RAV4 can accelerate to 60MPH in a little more than 7 seconds, while the Tercel took twice as long, and would have been even slower if it had had an automatic transmission.)
If I adjust for inflation, our RAV4 didn’t cost us much more than the Tercel did 36 years earlier. However, the newer Toyota has more interior space and it also includes technology I couldn’t even imagine in 1984: adaptive cruise control, for example, and Android Auto connectivity to a smartphone for voice-activated navigation. (I plugged in a $20 widget to enable wireless AA.)
I know it’s fashionable to complain about the price of automobiles today (does the average new car really cost $48,000?) but my experience is that I’m getting a better product for my money now than at any time in my half-century of buying cars. This may be due to my New England thriftiness… I typically buy low-end models without every conceivable bell and whistle. For example, the new truck I bought during the pandemic for $22,000 doesn’t have a heated steering wheel or heated seats – it doesn’t even have power mirrors – but that is a story for another day.
Before I went off on a tangent, I was telling you about my 1983 Tercel. Our first Toyota was rather odd-looking, with a posterior that resembled an ATM. It was a very practical car, however, and within a few years my father and my brother had Tercel 4WD wagons, too.
Our Tercel was fairly reliable. One time a speedometer cable seal failed, allowing oil to seep up the cable into the speedometer head. The problem symptom was that the speedometer needle would swing over to its maximum of 85MPH even though we were driving less than half that speed on winding back roads. The movie “Back to the Future” had just arrived in theaters – you’ll remember that the stainless-steel DeLorean with its flux-capacitor began to time-travel when it reached 88MPH, so we were just a few miles per hour short of an exciting adventure.
The Tercel was my wife’s car. I bought for myself a new 1985 Ford Escort wagon, which cost about $6,000 at the time, less than my wife’s Toyota or the other Japanese imports I might have preferred. The little Ford was extremely basic transportation, and it had no options – no a/c, no power windows, no nothing. However I needed a car right away, and the Escort definitely was a car, if not a particularly exciting one.
I’d have liked a European Ford Escort XR3i
I had driven quite a few European Fords while traveling for work in England, France, and Germany, and I’d also driven Vauxhalls and Opels built by GM. I have never understood why small cars in the U.S. are rarely as good as their European equivalents. Inexpensive need not be the same as cheap.
The American Ford Escort wagon I bought instead
As I was writing this post, Car and Driver republished from its archives Patrick Bedard’s review of the first year Escort. (This was from the David E. Davis Jr. years when C&D was still fun to read.) In the Counterpoint section of the review Rich Ceppos wrote: “This is one unhappy little lump of a car. The fit and finish of the interior are below par. The engine drones. The steering is rubbery. The ride is undisciplined. The tall gearing works against the engine. In general, the Escort reminds me of an adolescent, all awkward and self-conscious.”
I would like to say something nice about the Escort… it was colorful? Ford offered a choice of no fewer than sixteen exterior colors and four interior colors: gray, red, blue, or tan. Mine was red. When was the last time you saw a car with a red interior?
Living in semi-rural New England meant that we needed a big snowblower, a woodstove, and a generator for when ice storms took out electric power for a week. I was slow to realize that we needed snow tires, too, especially for my front-wheel-drive Escort. One wintry day I drove home from work before the plows had completed their rounds, and try as I might I could not make it up the hill to our house, even with a good running start. I had decent tires on the car; I just didn’t understand that the “all-season” label actually meant “all seasons except winter.”
Eventually our family of four grew to five, and we wanted at least one vehicle that was bigger than our little wagons. The obvious solution would have been a minivan, but I’ve always been slow to grasp the obvious. Therefore, in the next installment of my “Cars Of A Lifetime” series, I’ll tell you how I converted a new four-wheel-drive SUV to a seven-seater with the help of a JC Whitney catalog and some power tools.
Related CC reading:
Curbside Classic: 1985 Toyota Tercel Wagon – Built For The Really Long Haul
Curbside Outtake: Toyota Tercel Wagon 4WD – Eugene-mobile And Pinkman-mobile
Curbside Classic: 1990 Ford Escort LX Wagon – Ubiquitous Model’s Last Gasp
Excellent article. These Escorts did not have the longevity of some of the other cars of their era. Were they really more unreliable than the other Fords that did stick around like the Rangers that frequently shared their engines? Or were they just so depressing no one wanted them?
All the complaints about the Escort are accurate, but it was better than the X cars and J cars I had been driving. I had underestimated the Escort that replaced both the Citation and the J2000 Sunbird I had. The Escort didn’t quit. It was a refreshing improvement on the Pinto, Gremlin and Vega. It was better than the competition and it was an improvement in countless ways over what preceded it. The wagon was legit.
The european Escort wasn’t a Rolls Royce or Mercedes, but compared to the american Escort, it was spectacular. It’s not that small american cars were ugly, but those from the 1980s in particular were hideous. And the Escort is no exception.
About the Escort…I’ve told this before, but it’s a good time to share it again.
In 1985, my in-laws purchased a new Escort two door. It was tan inside and out, had an automatic, and a/c. That was it. They had a substantial commute, so the miles racked up quickly.
When Mrs. Jason and I met in 1993, the Escort was her car. It had 212,000 miles by that point. Other than some oil leakage, particularly above 65 mph, it was fine.
In 1996, the Escort went back to her parents as Mrs. Jason had just purchased a new Escort for herself. Mrs. Jason’s father then started putting more miles on it.
In July 1998, two week after Mrs. Jason and I married, Mrs. Jason’s father had a new Jeep Cherokee turn left in front of him. This was a rural two-lane highway and he had been able to slow down somewhat with his reaction, but there was no way he was going to stop in the space he had been given. The impact pushed the front axle of the Escort back approximately 18″ and the car was obviously toast. He was banged up pretty good but was not hospitalized.
At the time of its death, that Escort had 259,000 one-owner miles. All it had required was a timing belt or two, a voltage regulator, and he had just replaced the original tie-rods. Were it not for that Jeep, that Escort was headed for 300k, and would have easily made it.
I drove that Escort a time or two. Yes, it was loud, geared badly, and not the most enjoyable ride ever. But it did what it was built to do and it did so with no drama. It was what inspired Mrs. Jason to buy her ’96 Escort – which also hit 200k.
Ford cant give you a European Escort for the same reason a European GM wont be offered, youd stop buying the local product if they are too much better, Usually they just rebadge a Japanese product and lie about its origins
On paper the first US Escort looked pretty good, not to mention the once-iconic name with its history of rear wheel drive rally cars with bulging fender flares, piloted by flying Finns and sideways Scotsmen. Owning a Mk1 Fiesta at the time, which was a sporty but pretty unrefined car, I eagerly went to a dealer and test drove one. What a disappointment. I subsequently had a few as rentals and even went so far as to test drive a 1986 GT, which was much nicer. On the other hand we had a Corolla wagon for 11 years and it was pretty satisfying.
What kind of wimp needs a heated steering wheel? Gloves work just fine.
Why do you need gloves? Rumor has it one’s hands are at 98.6 degrees F; that’s plenty to warm up a wheel.
Your hands might stick on initial contact?
How many times have you had that happen?
It’s intriguing you mention gloves when calling somebody a wimp about wanting to avoid a cold steering wheel.
“Gloves” ! You were lucky ! WE used to dream of having gloves!
They are mandatory if you are riding motorcycles here in Oregon Dec-March
RE : gloves or heated steering wheels .
Any Yankees here (possibly Mid – Westerners, I don’t know) will tell you hat a light pair of cloth gloves is a good thing, they keep your fingers warm when you’re driving in the cold with the driver’s side window open…….
I like those El – Cheapo Chinesium Cotton onw with the plastic traction dots glued to the palms and inside fingers .
-Nate
My hands are arthritic and I take medication that makes my hands and feet cold. This wimp loves a heated steering wheel. If heated floor mats were available I’d have them too.
I always liked these Tercel wagons. Essentially bulletproof, and simple to work on. You can pop the engine out and replace the clutch in a afternoon
I, too, do not understand why we got Escorts inferior to the European version. I guess Ford thought very little about the American car buying public that they could sell us dregs.
Nice article. I always liked the Tercel 4WD wagons.
My horror story Escort ownership tale is here…
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-qotd-1986-ford-escort-gt-what-is-your-worst-new-car-horror-story/
YIKES ! . sorry Jim .
I guess I was lucky my ex G.F.’s 1982 Escort GL two door was a total stripper .
It had been beaten like a rented, red haired mule but was in fact a reliable car .
-Nate
In the late eighties, I worked with a guy who lived in Denver. We lived in Toronto and we planned a week trip to Denver and Santa Fe. My friends invited us to stay with them for the first weekend. We had rented a car to drive to Santa Fe, but my friend offered us the use of his Tercel wagon. It must have been tough, because it certainly was not pampered. I checked the oil before we left and it was not even on the dipstick. I added enough to get it to show and then had the oil changed, because it was black and thick. It got us to Santa Fe and back, through a real blizzard. I was used to bad snow storms, but in Ontario we use lots of salt. It seemed in Colorado that no salt was used, but the snow was melting on the road, only to freeze in the wheel wells. When we got to Santa Fe there was so much ice in the fenders that there was effectively no suspension travel. We also had star shaped icicles on the hub caps. It was a memorable trip. It took most of the trip back to Denver for the ice to clear from the wheel wells. I tried a car wash in Santa Fe, but it had no effect on the ice.
About your comment about being slow to realize that you needed snow tires, I was also guilty of this. I grew up in Toronto, a city with lots of snow, and my dad always put snow tires on our cars as far back as I can remember, which is our 53 Ford. When I got my first car, a 1965 Austin 1800, I got 4 snows for it because it was FWD. my next 2 cars were RWD, so I just got 2 snows for the rear. When we got a 1985 Honda Civic wagon, for some reason I did think that we needed snows. I don’t understand my thinking. I never got snows for it, but 15 years later we got a Subaru Impreza wagon and it had really good snows all around.
“…my next two cars were RWD, so I just got two snow tires for the rear.”
In the land where I live, this so-called “mixed tire setup” is not permitted.
“To be honest I prefer the extra mass and safety features of modern cars, features like air bags, anti-lock brakes, and back-up cameras”.
So do I. A car is an absurdly dangerous way to move about, mostly because we’re taking a spin on the roulette wheel of genetics, and it’s clear there’s a lot of folk out there who’ve not inherited much since our time as newts at the bottom of the swamp. (Most of the rest are just hugely distracted, bored, too young or too old. Some of those categories may, at times, include me). Trams, trains, buses, planes are all immensely safer. Who really wants it, unwritten, on their gravestone, “He Died Because He Need Some Milk”?
The crash safety engineering – bags, belts, brakes but especially, structural – of the (very boring) modern car is close to miraculous, and does its level best to try and save us. An airy, glassy, quirkily-good-looking old Tercel just can’t.
Here in California these 4WD Tercel wagons began littering my local junkyards in the early 2000’s ~ I could vever understand why anyone would summarily scrap a rust free, un – dented good upholstery etc. vehicle .
I’d thought there would be a cottage industry buying and re selling them in snow country were an affordable 4X4 was always in demand in my long ago youth .
I said the tailgate looked like and ATM from the jump, everyone said I was crazy, no resemblance whatsoever, now it’s commonly noted .
I know there’s serious hate for the cheap U.S.A. spec. Ford Escorts, I had the duty of keeping a battered one going through the 1990’s, yes it was cheap (horn push on the turn signal stalk ? SHAME ON YOU FoMoCo) but it was also dead simple to maintain / repair, a fun driver and dirt cheap to buy own and maintain .
I can dig your being “Yankee Thrifty”, being born and raised a (damn)Yankee I still maintain those values and make no excuses for them .
“all-season” tires in my experience usually means low co$t and nothing more .
A small (even mini) SUV is in fact a great idea, my son bought one a few years back and tired of it, I am loving it and expect it to be my very last car .
-Nate