Junkyard Find: Manny, Moe, and Jack Edition 1991 Toyota Tercel Coupe
A couple of years have passed since the last Manny, Moe, and Jack Edition Junkyard Find, so we’re due for another car that was customized with every manner of stick-on hood scoop, property-value-lowering vinyl decal, and brightly-colored interior-trim piece that can be had at your local auto-parts chain store. Here’s a fourth-gen Toyota Tercel done up as a shoestring-budget Fast-n-Furious-type machine.
Even though this car has the 94-horsepower 3E-E engine and automatic transmission, its last owner wanted it to look a bit faster than stock.
I hate to criticize this sort of thing too hard, because a garishly modified Tercel is still better than the dreadful tedium of a stock Tercel.
That’s because the Tercel was the car for drivers who thought the Corolla was too much of a high-performance luxury car.
Not even 100,000 miles. I suspect a broken odometer here.
Some of the details make this car more of a 100-footer than a 50-footer.
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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- Mister It wasn't helped any by the horrible fuel economy for what it was... something like 22mpg city, iirc.
- Lorenzo I shop for all-season tires that have good wet and dry pavement grip and use them year-round. Nothing works on black ice, and I stopped driving in snow long ago - I'll wait until the streets and highways are plowed, when all-seasons are good enough. After all, I don't live in Canada or deep in the snow zone.
- FormerFF I’m in Atlanta. The summers go on in April and come off in October. I have a Cayman that stays on summer tires year round and gets driven on winter days when the temperature gets above 45 F and it’s dry, which is usually at least once a week.
- Kwik_Shift_Pro4X I've never driven anything that would justify having summer tires.
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@ Shaker ; Just so . I have a broken skull , back and neck , the Dr's keep trying to get me to take that oxy crap , I hate it and won't touch it . They call it " Hillbilly Heroin " with good reason ~ a good friend of mine who's also disabled , moved to Tenn. so as to afford living , his Daughter fell in with a local white trash boy who was on oxycontin and of course , as soon as she popped out his son , got her hooked on it and in time , the needle too , she died this year leaving another innocent Child Motherless . The hillbilly white trash boy doesn't seem to care and in fact , says loudly that America deserves to support him . That anyone who's not in terrible pain would even try this crap astounds me . -Nate
Haha! The internet is a small place, I pulled the brake booster and master cylinder out of this EXACT car last weekend, then I found the article today. Sweet! Every hose and electrical sheathing was painted, dyed or replaced with a blue version as well. Hella FnF. The brake booster is happily living in my 1982 RWD Corolla now. (The old booster was leaking vacuum)