The ‘80s are not my favourite decade of the last centrury, nor are Toyotas my number one automotive fantasy, but one should take a moment (and a few snaps) when faced with the last generation of RWD Corollas. This 1981 wagon is a particularly tasty example, as it is light beige, a colour that does more to date cars than virtually any other. And it’s a three-door wagon, a body style not offered in the US. The few chrome touches here and there are a nice reminder that this Corolla’s roots are still firmly planted in the ‘70s.
This car was at Lumphini Park in central Bangkok. Obviously, some youngster had found the well-kept Corolla too neat and cheap to resist and had enough change to get some flashier wheels and a crummy-looking tiny sports steering wheel. But other than that, this is a very original 36-year-old car (that could have used a left windshield wiper). This car was likely built in Thailand and kept the chrome bumpers that were by then fast disappearing on most cars.
Toyota really got rolling in the US in 1967, when it became the #3 import brand. The Corolla was an instant hit in the US, and became the #3 selling import model in 1969. And by 1975, Toyota was the #1 import brand in the US. But Toyota had already conquered much of Asia by 1970, and the Corolla was the 32 selling car globally in 1970.
Thailand is a classic example: Toyota set up a sales office in Bangkok in 1957. By 1964, they had an assembly plant going churning out CKD Tiaras. By 1969, they were also making Hino trucks and Corollas, and Toyota has the largest market share. I’m not 100% sure that they kept the largest share ever since, but it would not surprise me if they did. From 1978 on, Toyota of Thailand was producing its own bodies. Thailand became Toyota’s second non-domestic market in terms of volume behind the US for a good while.
This specific fourth generation of Corollas, the E70, was launched in 1979. These cars hold a place in my memory for having been our family’s ride in the late ‘80s. We had a second-hand 1980 Corolla five-door wagon, in the obligatory beige (plus plastic wood), which had the same tail as our feature Capsule but quad headlamps like the sedan above.
Then came the 1981-only square lamps as on our feature car, followed by a more extensive facelift for 1982-83. Apparently, this generation of Corollas were given a completely new rear suspension, complete with coil springs and Panhard rod. In spite of this, I distinctly recall my mother describing the handling as terrible, especially on snow. The E70 wagon outlasted the other body styles by four years, soldiering on until 1987. Also, the millionth Corolla was an E70 built in February 1983.
I also vividly recall the cheap yet relatively durable interior, the crank windows and five-speed manual gearbox, which our feature car had too. I completely screwed up the interior pics on this one though, so here’s one from David Saunder’s CC of one (this one obviously an automatic and LHD, unlike the feature car).
The three-door wagon (as distinct from the shooting brake) was a fairly uncommon body style by the time the E70 came out, and had not been available in the US since two generations earlier. Nissan, Mitsubishi, Alfa Romeo, Opel, Austin, Ford and several others stuck to this body style for many years. But by the late ‘70s, the five-door variant was becoming the very definition of a “station wagon”. The E70 Corolla was the last of the Corolla three-door wagons, a tradition that went all the way back to 1966 to the very first generation Corolla, which was only available as a three-door.
But the E70 Corolla went out with a flurry of three-door wagons, primarily in Asian markets. You could choose so many variations: blanked out windows, blanked out middle windows, blanked out rear windows, or all-windows as on today’s example. Plus you could order a raised roof version of these four – making eight versions in total, plus two flavours of the five-door (low or raised roof).
Added to that was the coupé-derived “Liftback”, which is more of a shooting brake and also therefore a three-door wagon. In total, there were 20 different body styles (sedan, two-door sedan, sports sedan, a US-only convertible, coupés, three- and five-door wagons) offered on the E70 Corolla, to be mated with seven different engines. Toyota obviously favoured an all-out blitzing strategy for both their competitors and clientele.
A beige, chrome bumper, manual transmission RWD three-door wagon – how many boxes does that tick? That is the question…
I didn’t realize there was a convertible variant! I had a 1981.5 Cirolla coupe – beautiful lines.
“a US-only convertible”
“I didn’t realize there was a convertible variant! ”
I don’t think there was a Corolla convertible in this generation (or any generation, for that matter). Maybe the contemporary Celica is what was in mind?
“The E70 wagon outlasted the other body styles by four years, soldiering on until 1987”
The following generation of Corolla (E80) apparently was never made as a wagon, which explains why Toyota kept the E70 version in production. I don’t think the E70 wagon was sold in the U.S. beyond 1983, though (just making note of this; the article doesn’t claim that it was). During the period when the E80 Corolla was sold in the U.S. (1984 through 1987 model years), there was no Corolla wagon here. From an American perspective, the Tercel essentially took over the “small wagon” role in Toyota’s U.S. lineup from the Corolla, then the following generation of Corolla (E90) took it back.
I don’t recall a Corolla convertible either; Celicas & Paseos, yes. Maybe there are a few custom jobs out there somewhere, but nothing factory-built that springs to mind.
There were some 80-83 Corolla Hardtop models that were made into convertibles. This wasn’t done by Toyota, it was handled by an outside contractor and sold as Special Editions by the Dealerships…
I had an 80 liftback, great car. Beige, but the PO had painted the low half dark brown, which broke it up a bit.
Shifter was too long so I twisted the outer part off the rubber mounts and mounted a knob from an LBC on the stub, perfect. I used to pass by Octagon Spares, so got a shopworn knob out of the distressed bin for a few bucks.
I did go back to a 79 wagon, had been through several and had more spares. Young man I sold it to got lots of miles out of it. Would recommend one of these to anyone looking for a little RWD car with some hauling capacity. 2TC and 3TC are easy to work on and durable if taken care of.
What a cute little Automobilette ! .
.
-Nate
Had the wagon as a radio station news vehicle in 1981. Great car. Owned a ’78 (previous generation) SR5 Liftback as my personal car at the time. So different from each other, but both brilliant little cars for the time.
There was a five-door wagon of the second generation, it just wasn’t sold widely outside Japan for whatever reasons.
Right you are. Text amended.
Five door wagons were also assembled in OZ.
It’s too beige for me. I never really understood the appeal of 2-dr wagons, so impractical. But I’m really liking the 4-dr red wagon in the fifth pic.
“The Corolla was an instant hit in the US, and became the #2 selling import model in 1969.”
While the Corolla was unquestionably a big hit for Toyota in the U.S., I’m curious if anyone has any data to show that it was the #2 selling import model in 1969.
According to Wikipedia, imports of the Corolla to the U.S. began in March 1968, so 1969 would have been its first full model year, which would make its ascendancy to #2 remarkable (but not impossible), especially given that it had to get past Toyota’s own better-established Corona first:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Corolla_(E10)
Another recent article here on CC stated that the Corolla was the #3 selling import model in the U.S. in 1969:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-asian/curbside-classic-1969-toyota-corona-it-all-started-here/
If the model-by-model totals in the document at the link below are accurate[*], the Corona outsold the Corolla by a wide margin in 1969. I assume that the Volkswagen Beetle was the #1 selling import, so the Corona couldn’t have been any higher than #2, and the Corolla therefore couldn’t have been any higher than #3. I’d actually be surprised if the Corolla total shown (27K) would have even been high enough for #3 – what kind of sales were Opel’s or Datsun’s best-selling models generating at this time?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EFmfFTv-pDkdUuxJ_Ga20nglbcYZqefJklW72ZUeCKA/pub
I’m not sure if these numbers are MY or CY. If they are MY1969, it’s possible that CY1969 Corolla sales could have been higher, given the significant increase shown for 1970 (when the chart shows the Corolla overtaking the Corona). That would make the notion of the Corolla being #2 for CY1969 more plausible, but I think we’d still be looking at something no higher than about 50K – I’d be mildly surprised if even that was even high enough for #2.
[*]The overall totals clearly aren’t, as they multiple count models that are given multiple rows in the spreadsheet (like Corollas and pickups). The model-by-model totals also seem to exclude Hawaii, with a grand total for Hawaii provided at the bottom. But including Hawaii in the figures shouldn’t increase the Corolla’s numbers for 1969 by any more than a few thousand units at most.
I added that to the article, as the author had no context about the Corolla’s rapid rise in the US, and rather assumed it was not that popular until 1980. I have written it both ways in the past, as the Corolla being #2 and being #3 import model in the US in 1969. I can’t readily find the sources of that just yet, but I’m inclined to take your word! I’ll amend the article.
I really like the looks of this 3-door wagon variant and had wondered why we didn’t get it Stateside…until I saw that even better-looking 3-door Liftback and remembered.
By the time this generation was introduced, 2-door wagons were just commercially dead in the U.S. That was true in compact and larger size classes by the late ’60s. Subcompact 2-door wagons survived a little longer, if for no other reason than that American carbuyers in that era had no expectation that cars this small would come with four doors, regardless of body style. Once the Japanese showed that a roomy, practical 4-door subcompact wagon could be done, however, in any setting where a 4-door wagon was an option, sales gravitated there.
Ford was still selling the Pinto (and Bobcat) as a 2-door wagon in 1980, and GM had been selling the Monza (and Sunbird) as a 2-door wagon as recently as 1979. But by 1979 or 1980, these designs were hopelessly outdated, and had been thoroughly exposed as having been designed by companies that just didn’t take building small cars seriously in the first place – in part due to the lack of 4-door body styles. GM and Ford both had new small cars under development that they hoped would bring them up to speed in this market segment, and both would offer wagons in 4-door form only.
Was there was one generation of Corolla that was sold as both a 2- and 4-door wagon in the U.S.? I assume the 4-door outsold the 2-door by a wide enough margin that Toyota saw no point in continuing to import the 2-door version. If not, and Toyota made a clean break from 2-doors only to 4-doors only, I guess they just saw the writing on the wall. Either way, I think it was the lack of a market for 2-door wagons in the U.S. that prompted Toyota to stop importing them, rather than a sense that the Liftback had that angle covered. As this was the last generation of Corolla to come as a 2-door wagon anywhere, it seems like other countries Toyota did business in were heading in that direction as well.
Yep, understand all that. I guess my point was (and without cargo-hauling dimensions of both bodystyles at my fingertips) that there probably wasn’t that big of an increase in utility in the 2-door wagon than the Liftback, acknowledging the latter’s sloped rear backlight. Just my initial impression looking at photos of both cars.
I have never seen a 2-door Corolla wagon in the US, and I was a minor-league collector/user of them for years. I had an 80 liftback and went back to a 79 wagon because the rear doors were useful for loading, which I did a lot every day, being a messenger. The 79 got a Weber carb and taller rear from an auto Corolla and would make time without fuss. It was essentially invisible, dark grey economy car with grey painted steelies and a few dents, very useful for expediting freight without causing notice. Side by side with a Mercedes going too fast, the merc got pulled over every time. :^)
Same here. I’ve always liked 3-door wagons though, for whatever reason…too bad the only one sold after ’80 in the US (that I can think of, anyway) was the VW Fox.
I drove an 82 Corolla sedan in 1999-2000. The only pictures I have of this car are these videos… The Corolla wasn’t the most exciting car to drive, but it sure could take an endless amount of abuse
https://youtu.be/FpiYK2owu4A
https://youtu.be/xXyfeI-WFzM
I saw a 5-door version a few weeks ago, but it was too dark to get reasonable photos. It may have been a one-owner vehicle. Quite a useful runabout, and IMO easier to run than a fwd (easier maintenance and no CV joints).
Apparently the 3-door wagon was dropped in Australia when the 5-door became available, although it was still sold in van form so they are around in a way.
Forgot to add the photo…
Fascinating story. I’ve never seen a 1981 Toyota Corolla wagon with only 3 doors. I had a neighbour when I was a boy who had an early 70s Toyota Corolla. But nothing later than that.
I contracted Buyer’s Remorse when I rented an E70 2-door for a post-graduation job interview in 1983. It felt solidly built compared to my more “technically sophisticated” Escort.
Not the best quality shot but here’s a Corolla convertible from this generation.
I’m assuming that was a third-party conversion by an outfit like ASC (much like the earlier Celica Sunchaser). But if it was sold through dealers, does it figure in the model count?
Too many windows, Too few doors I’d say, at least for aesthetics 🙂
I currently have a 1981 wagon. I believe Toyota made the 8x convertible the reason I remember I had one in the late 90’s and I remember seen a convertible one here in California.