Junkyard Find: 1990 Toyota Corolla GT-S

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin

You’re not going to find a rear-wheel-drive AE86-platform Corolla GT-S in a low-priced self-service wrecking yard, not these days. The later front-wheel-drive Corolla GT-S FX16 shows up in such yards every now and then, but the AE92 version of the GT-S that followed isn’t seen quite as often. Here’s one that I found in the San Francisco Bay Area last month.

The 4A-GE engine was up to 115 horsepower by this time. These cars were quick for their time.

The Geo Storm GSi had 15 more horsepower and weighed about the same as the Corolla, but there’s the whole Isuzu-versus-Toyota build-quality thing to consider there.

In Japan, where this car was known as the Sprinter Trueno, the marketing seems to have been focused on, what, ballroom dancing?





Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

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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  • Genetxs Genetxs on Oct 12, 2012

    I have a 1990 gts "red top". I picked it up for $500, put a new clutch in, installed timing belt, and put new brakes on it.I have been driving it every day for 2 years now. It will do 100mph in third gear, not bad for a 32 mpg car. Mine also red lines around 8500.

  • Power6 Power6 on Oct 15, 2012

    I was a big fan of the AE92 GT-S. I even tried to locate one years ago and even then they were rare to find used, good luck finding the later 130HP version. I ended up with an MX-6 GT Turbo. This car, like another of my favorites, the late 2.0L Sunbird or Skyhawk Turbo, were slow sellers when new, impossible to find now because they were never worth preserving.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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