Junkyard Find: 1987 Toyota Corolla GT-S FX16
Rear-wheel-drive AE86 Corolla GT-Ss are worth bucks these days, and you won’t see them in low-priced self-serve wrecking yards. The AE82 front-wheel-drive Corolla GT-S hasn’t held its value so well, and so examples do show up on The Crusher’s doorstep. We saw this white ’87 in California last year, and now I’ve found this silver ’87 in Colorado.
I’ve never owned an FX16, but it’s one of those classic 80s cars that I keep meaning to shop for.
Built at the NUMMI plant in Fremont, California, the FX16 was a worthy competitor to the Civic Si and VW GTI.
It was more awkward-looking than the VW and the Honda, what with its Toyota-stolid angular lines, but the 4A engine (shared with the MR2 as well as the AE86) made up for the already-dated-looking-in-’87 lines.
So, another FX16 GT-S about to leave the planet. I’m hoping a few solid examples will still be around when I decide to buy.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Ahhh. It does my heart good to see this version of my old car. I bought my red '87 in 1997 off of the original (female) owner for $1300. I knew it needed a clutch (and had 170K on the odo) but otherwise it ran great. It was pretty impressive when the 2nd set of intake runners opened up @4700 rpm IIRC. That car was absolutely unfazed by a dozen-or-so redline runs every day, for the 2 years I had it. Great seats. Look closely and you see a subtle styling detail hidden among the boy-racer body kit pieces...a small power dome on the passenger side of the hood. I originally thought it was to clear the intake, but nope.
At the editor when u write these articles about these cars you find can you put the junkyards name where you find them in . Cuz I could sure use some parts off either 1 of theses to FX 16's . I owne A 87 FX 16 GTS just like the white 1 in this article and im in a FX 16 group thats always looking for parts for these . Thanks