Junkyard Find: 1977 Toyota Corolla Two-door Sedan
August 28th, 2017 7:35 AM
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The third-generation Toyota Corolla, still on a rear-wheel-drive chassis, was a tremendous sales success in California. The cheapest model was the two-door post sedan, and these reliable commuters were seen everywhere in the Golden State well into the 1990s.Nearly all are gone, but this ’77 stayed on its own four tires until age 40, finally wrapping up its long career in this San Francisco Bay Area self-service wrecking yard.
1975-1979 Corollas still show up in California wrecking yards now and then, though not as often as their Honda Civic contemporaries. So far in this series, we have seen just this ’75 and this ’78 prior to today’s ’77.
During the 1980s, I had a couple of girlfriends who drove 1975-79 Corolla two-doors (along with the Dodge Colt, Ford Pinto, and Chevy Vega, this generation of Corolla was an incredibly popular parental hand-me-down car in the ’80s). One got tired of her car’s boring gray color and took it to Earl Scheib for The Very Cheapest™ paint job. This involved coating the body, tires, seat belts, door handles, and muffler with a thick, orange-peely coat of “Sun Yellow” paint, but at least the glass remained (mostly) paint-free.
An optional five-speed was available, but those mostly went to the high rollers and their spendthrift Corolla hardtops and wagons. This car has the very affordable four-speed.
The 1,588cc 2T-C pushrod straight-four engine didn’t make much power — 75 horsepower — but it was efficient and nearly impossible to kill.
Toyota went to six-digit odometers soon after this. Is this 151,584… or 651,584? The worn-out interior suggests many years of hard use.
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What kind of car can four starving interns afford? This one!
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In Japan, the Sprinter version of this car got semi-cloying ads.
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A car of my youth. My dad had a black on black example of this car. I remember it revving super high to get to "freeway speed" which my dad would go 70 in this height of the malaise era compact death trap. I was often scared by how fast my dad drove and his aggressive shifting of the 4 speed manual. This was back when my dad was a drinker so he would often be blaring Pat Benatar at unreasonably loud levels through the 8 track tape deck that he installed from CMC car stereo. This unit was his second one as he happened to let the smoke out of the first one whist "bench testing" it. My last memory of this vehicle is a private sale through the Houston Chronicle classified ads section. A group of people came and test drove the vehicle and promptly said the car was worth 500 dollars. I think my parents agreed and took this as a down payment on their brand new for '84 Plymouth Voyager minivan.
Ugh. We had the Datsun 210s as Driver's Ed cars in 1992ish. Yes, competent and reliable, but designed without a whit of style, luxury, fashion, or desireability. Ugly toad shaped proletariat tin cans filled with cheap plastic. Designed to be supremely functional, like an orthopedic shoe, and not one tiny bit better. By the way, we also had a coeval Malibu of the same generation as a driver's ed car and it was an infinitely better driving car, smooth and velvety, with some verve and style. I can understand why GM thought the Japanese didn't pose a real threat; sure the Vega was awful, but for not much more you could get a Malibu/Impala which was infinitely better than anything the Japanese were making.