The Toyota Corona was the breakthrough car for the firm as well as the whole Japanese car industry hoping to capitalize on the huge American market. It offered a combination of features that simply weren’t available elsewhere and that made it highly compelling: a practical and roomy boxy body with an unusually large 1.9 L engine, making it eminently suitable for American driving styles and patterns. Its high quality build and pleasant interior accommodations were icing on the cake.
Styling certainly was not the Corona sedan’s outstanding feature, looking a bit dull and slightly dated already by the time it was really coming into its own in the US. Toyota decided to spiff up its image some with a coupe version, and R&T put it through its paces; a Toyoglide equipped version at that.
It offers an interesting counterpoint to the Fiat 124 that R&T tested in the same issue: whereas the Fiat’s buzzy little 1.2 four revved its heart out, the Corona’s “tractor engine” 1.9 L four was much better suited to American driving styles, allowing relaxed cruising at 65-75 mph. A shift point too high on the Toyoglide resulted in a slower 0-60 time than would be expected, which was more like 17 seconds.
The Corona coupe had a pretty strong front-weight bias, of some 59%. That did nothing to improve its inherently unambitious handling, but it was adequate. The drum brakes were also in that category.
The quality of its build, materials and fit and finish were very good, accentualting the rep Toyota was quickly building for itself. And of course reliability and durability would soon prove to also be a strong suit of the Corona.
As to the styling of its new hardtop roof, it certainly added some flair, although this generation of Corona would never be held up as a genuine looker.
That 1.9 litre engine was used in light trucks like the Stout and I’m fairly certain it was not offered in RT40 series Coronas in any other market. .No wonder it had a 59% front end bias. Granted it was torquey, but the 1600S sold elsewhere was quicker, and lighter whilst still having decent torque avd drivability
I saw a Stout yesterday. Haven’t seen one of these Corona’s (or a Mk II) in a very long time.
I think the pushrod R-Series engines in these were essentially all the same; just different bore and stroke. The 1.9 wasn’t heavier.
The coupe body was lighter at the rear, because of the short roof; that made the front weight bias worse.
I’m pretty sure styling is what led to the ’69-72 Corona Mark II, which, as pointed out in previous write ups, was the precurser to Lexus. I had a ’70 Mark II hardtop coupe; It was light years ahead of the Corona in terms of luxury/creature comforts. Not to mention the wonderful 8R-C OHC engine, and standard front disc brakes.
And the Corona Mark II was available with a 3 speed Toyoglide transmission, to compliment that silky smooth 8R-C engine, Americanizing it even further.
Always rare during my lifetime, I haven’t seen a Corolla this old in decades. As with the Rambler article a couple of days ago, a sensible car. But in this case fit and finish were very good and only getting better. Subsequently Toyota is now the world’s largest automaker, while almost nobody remembers AMC.
What’s really interesting are the photos for this article. I think in the 2nd photo the nurse has left to go find a hat to replace the paper boat she was wearing in the 1st photo!
I remember these and except for the fact that they were too damn narrow – this was an all-around excellent car. I especially liked its acceleration, economy and rattle-free body. This was a tight nice vehicle.
Someone dun goofed providing a Toyoglide version to Road and Track. The big news was that the hardtop came standard with a 4spd floorshift while the manual sedan had been a column 3spd and would be until the midcycle facelift a year later. And R&T’s readership likely would be more interested in the manual model.
Japan’s home market favored column shifts, but US-spec Datsuns had all been 4-speed for a few years by then. I suspect Mr. K’s influence there – letting the home office know that Americans thought of “three-on-the-tree” as for cheapskates and “four-on-the-floor” as sporty and a bit upscale which, since Europeans simply expected the latter, meant the company could just as well skip the cost of a left-hand drive column linkage. It took Toyota another few years to get that message.
What’s with the nurse pics?
She’s wearing a crown, appropriately enough. (“corona” = “crown” in Latin)
I remember these and love the conservative styling .
-Nate
I don’t quite get the deal the author discusses regarding the left-hand, right-hand turn signal levers, unless they sent LHD cars to the U.S. with RHD steering columns. The horn ring solution seems novel. However, I do vaguely remember some weird noise on my folks’ ’71 Corona when you hit the turn signals.
A couple of years after this my uncle had a BMW Bavaria which I got to drive once. It was great but I do remember that the turn signal was on the right of the steering column. On the left there was a stalk that controlled the wipers. I found it very confusing, but I am sure you would get used to it. I am guessing that the previous Toyota models might also have had this arrangement. I remember seeing a turn signal switch (not a ring) on the horn button of an English car. I think it was a Morris Minor, but I might be wrong.
You do. I go from the RHD Holden with column stalks & T bar to the LHD Skylark with out bother. Never walked up to the ‘wrong’ driver’s door. Yet.
We get the reverse. RHD cars with LHD columns. Even down to the gear shift in some column shift automatic conversions.
My Mom had a 1970 Corona sedan, with the Toyoglide. It was bought used in 1973, when my family relocated to Montreal. For some reason, my mom insisted she have a car. She never needed one in Hull but our banishment to Montreal affected her pretty badly, although not as bad as our subsequent expulsion.
What impressed me about that car was the quality of, well, everything. The body panels all lined up. The interior was of very high quality materials. The best feature was the heated rear window, about which we had no prior knowledge.
My older brother turned 16 in 1974 and got the Corona to drive around. He ran the bag off of it. He destroyed the motor in mysterious circumstances, while on a trip back to Hull. It came back with a bad knock. My mom and dad went out one evening and dad said, “I forbid you to drive that car, it isn’t running right.” My dear brother then took the car and rear ended a car because he was following too close behind it.
With no Corona for the time being, dear brother got to drive the 1970 Pontiac Stratochief. One evening, he and his beta buddies piled in the car in the carport of our house. Dear brother stomped it before beta-buddy go the passenger door shut. The door went into a pillar, destroying said door and much of the pillar. He’d now wrecked two family cars. Dad found a used door at the junkyard and installed it, but the colour, although close, wasn’t a match.
It sat for a while and dad then got a used engine, which he installed. We packed the front end with bondo and brother was driving again. This was the summer of 1975 and when we left for British Columbia, the Corona was totally thrashed. Mom found someone to buy it for $100 and dear brother was literally in tears that he couldn’t drive it across Canada.
The 4 door version of this was my first experience with a Japanese car. My best friend’s father bought one around 1967. He had previously always driven Impalas and then this shows up. I just remember being surprised by it. Thinking back I now wonder if all the Chevys were company cars and not really his style. My friend’s mother drove a Morris Minor which was a bit unusual. A few years later several of my friends bought Corollas but this was the first Japanese car owned by anyone I knew.
I remember rebuilding an engine on a friend’s sedan in the early 70’s. It was utterly conventional, and if you didn’t know it, you’d swear that the mechanicals were just 2/3rds of a mid 60’s Chevy II – right down to the 3 speed column shift and drum brakes. The difference was that it didn’t feel cheap like an American penalty box. It wasn’t a sporting drive, but it was reliable and non-fussy. It also seemed like these had room for real people as well.
These were the Camry’s of their time and were an exception to the “weird furrin’ cars” from VW, Renault and Fiat.
The first line talks about Toyota pushing towards 4th place in the US import market, so at the time they would have been 5th. With VW 1st, who was 2-4?
I know Opel was #2. I will make a guess about #3 and #4: Renault and Datsun. But I might be wrong.
One of my best friends had a 1967 Corona sedan as a first car back in about 1993-94. I do remember the combination horn ring/turn signal switch, as well as the “tick-bzzzzt” sound the flasher made before commencing flashing the turn signals. Also remembered were the dual horns proudly labeled “Toyota Elephant Horn” on their outer shells… They made a typical American car “HONK” as opposed to the gimpy “meep” of cheezier sounding disc horns.
As stated in the article, the brakes were pretty meh, and somewhat prone to locking up when trying to haul the car down from speed. But the car’s weakest link was the Toyoglide 2 speed automatic, which had an old school PNDLR pattern on the column. The engine didn’t have quite enough beans to provide the poke expected by teenage boys, sometimes going from screaming in low gear to bogging after shifting to high. This sometimes led to manual downshifts in search of acceleration that was not there… on one memorable occasion, my friend was in the process of executing one of these downshifts at 45-50mph when he hit a hump in the road… the lever bypassed “L” and went into “R”, locking the rear wheels up and skidding us to a stop. The Corona met its fate on a trip to Seattle, as it was hunting between gears while climbing a steep grade. The engine threw a connecting rod through the block somewhere short of the summit, and the decision was made not to fix it.
Now that I’m a little more grown up and have mellowed a bit, I do wonder if said Corona would be more okay if not being hooned by 16 year old boys… The automatic still seems a bit dubious, but I think a 4 speed might not be too shabby.
The sedan version was very common when I was growing up near Vancouver in the 1960s and 70s, but I had no idea there was a coupe until I saw a photo some decades later – I can only imagine it wasn’t offered on the Canadian market.
I clearly remember the sedans, they sold a ton of them with very, very few left today, but the coupe? Aside from it looking like a bad Photoshop job, I just draw a blank.
Surely emasculated by the 2 speed auto, the performance numbers are awfully slow even by the era. Like VW Bug slow. 90HP gross is 75 net, but take another 10 off as Japanese cars are always a bit overrated and you have 65. But a fat torque number and to be fair they probably didn’t feel as slow driving as the numbers would indicate.