Junkyard Find: 1989 Toyota Corolla GT-S
Published: March 19th, 2018
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The Corolla was the first Toyota car to be a smash sales hit in the United States (I’d like to say it was the Corona, for obvious reasons, but that car’s sales figures were merely respectable for a then-obscure brand), but we didn’t think of the sensible little econoboxes as fast until the legendary AE86 Corolla GT-S in 1983. Then came the front-wheel-drive FX16 GT-S, a worthy competitor to European hot hatches.The AE92 GT-S never gained the cult following of the earlier GT-S cars, and so you won’t see many on the street today. Here’s an ’89, spotted in an Oakland, California, self-service wrecking yard.
I see a few of these cars each year in wrecking yards, but the last time one made this series was all the way back in 2012.
It came close to 200,000 miles during its 29-year career, but couldn’t quite get over the top.
The engine, which was yanked before I arrived, would have been a 4A-GE 1.6-liter four-cylinder, rated at 115 horsepower. MR2s, Geo Prizms, and earlier Corollas had 4A-GE power; the Prizm GSi was the GM-badged counterpart to the Corolla GT-S, though the Corolla coupe had the Sprinter Trueno body while the Prizm was based on the Sprinter sedan.
Appropriately enough for a car found in a wrecking yard within sight of the Oakland Coliseum, stickers for the Oakland Athletics, Oakland Raiders, and San Jose Sharks adorn its rear side glass.
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The Japanese-market version didn’t get the popup headlights, but it was available with a 165-horse supercharged engine.
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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is this car still available to be parted out?
Is it still available for parting out after few years? If so what is the address of this junkyard please, thanks