Junkyard Find: 1980 Toyota Corona Liftback Sedan
I have an extensive formative history with the 1965-70 (third-generation) Toyota Corona, and so I photograph them whenever I find them in junkyards. So far in this series, prior to today, we’ve seen this ’66 sedan, this ’68 sedan, this ’70 sedan, and this ’70 coupe. Much harder to find in the United States is the 1979-83 Corona, which was replaced by the Camry in the U.S. market for the 1983 model year.
Here’s an extremely rare 1980 Corona liftback that I spotted in Denver last month.
By this time, American Coronas had graduated from the clattery pushrod versions of Toyota’s legendary R engine to the same rugged SOHC 20R version that powered Mujahideen-driven Hilux trucks during the Soviet-Afghan War.
It was sold new in Pueblo, about 100 miles south of Denver. Was it driven all over the country during the 36 years since, or did it spend its entire life within Colorado state lines?
The cloth interior contains every color on the beige spectrum.
Coronas in Japan were much more interesting than the ones we got over here, and Japanese Corona ads (featuring glorious screaming-rubber and whooshing-turbo sounds) were so much better than any American-market Toyota ads. I can’t even bring myself to look at a single “Oh, what a feeling!” Toyota ad right now.
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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Man, Murilee, you must have already had this queued up when I asked about this model in your last post. This really brings back memories. We had a sedan one of these in this color combo as a loaner car my Dad's repair shop between maybe 1986 and 1990. Those seats were comfortable!
I owned this car's successor, a 1984 Toyota Camry liftback. I will never understand why liftbacks went out of fashion. I love them. The Camry wasn't exciting, but it was wholly competent and a perfect car for the college student that I was.