Junkyard Find: 1986 Toyota Camry
The Camry first appeared in North America for the 1983 model year and gathered sales momentum in a gradual manner. By 1986, Camrys were not uncommon, but it seemed as though you saw 20 Tauruses and 15 Accords for every example of Toyota’s front-drive sedan. It was the next generation of Camry (starting in 1988) that unleashed the armies of unkillable, bland Toyota midsize sedans that conquered the country. First-gen Camrys are still out there, but sightings are increasingly rare. Here’s one I spotted last week in a Denver junkyard.
Like just about all cars, the Camry got bigger with every generation. The ’86 isn’t much bigger than the current Corolla, but still had room for a rock group or a group of rocks.
221,890 miles on the clock. Even Neons manage figures like this nowadays, but not many mid-80s cars ever saw 200,000 miles.
Toyota kept this overdrive button on the gearshift well into the current century.
You have to love the dated look of the Econo A/C button. Americans don’t want Econo anything when it comes to comfort, a lesson Toyota figured out years later.
Subsequent Camrys had all the quirky Japanese styling eliminated by endless focus groups, but the first-gen still had this goofy rear quarter window.
It was no Cressida, but it also wasn’t anywhere near as expensive as a Cressida.
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.
More by Murilee Martin
Comments
Join the conversation
Had an '84 as my first car, and my brother had an '86. '84 being the family wagon, I remember that 'ECONO' button, quite well. Nothing like sitting in the back-seat crawling up I-95 with the sun on your back on a 100 degree day with your pops insisting that it needed to be on ECONO. Backsweat. At one rest-stop we staged a coup, got him to ride in the back seat when we changed drivers. Curiously, he ceded the whole 'lets keep it in ECONO mode' for the remainder of the trip.
I had a more-or-less identical '85 Camry LE. It was pretty slow. By the time I traded it in at only 96K miles the front suspension was shot, the brakes were always awful, and the transmission was beginning to slip. It had been my mom's and was always well maintained and no, I didn't hoon it which was more or less impossible thanks to that wheezy 2.0, crappy mushbox and flodgy suspension. A serious junkyard find would be the turbo-diesel Camry which I think was only sold in 85-86 model year and not in California.