I really love these things. And before anyone freaks out, just remember the last time someone asked you to fix one. Remember how easy it was? this is the way cars should be built. There is a reason Toyota is the standard other cars are measured against.

(You need to get your web-meister to fix the html Miss Martin. IMG tags not working.)

I think the quadratic formula pooped a little there. It got ate by some...linux or something.

Xoom...

I love this style of Corolla. Easily my favorite. Same chassis basically as the AE86 so all the goodies swap over reasonably well. I've been casually looking for one to buy - they are around but almost never for sale.

If I needed another daily driver, I'd be looking for a RWD Corolla. Amazingly, I still see some of these in Quebec and that's despite the salt on the roads in the winter.

I disagree. This era car was the advent of the auto as an appliance, like a fridge or a dishwasher. This is when people started buying cars for the warranty and the financing instead of the car itself. I agree with FLB, I would have one of these as a driver, but only if I had a REAL car in my garage that had character and performance.

Reliability is good, but it isn't interesting.

This car's a lot better looking than Adam Corolla.

This car is a bit bland, actually; but its absence of gimmicks makes it sort of Shakerish in its simplicity. For the other side of the coin, the Subaru XT that came a bit later in the eighties was a stone freak by comparison.

@Dr.Danger: I was wondering why my head was a broken JPEG.

Also, this is what the Scion TC should be.

The good old days, when you could work on a car, ad owning a Corolla didn't mean you have no personality.

@DoctorNine: HTML fixed. This time it was my fault (extra < symbol), not the Gawker IT heroes.

I sure liked my '81 fastback Corolla. I don't think I ever treated another car of mine so bad, but it refused to break. It was red and had a tach, a stick and RWD, so once I wore out the crap tires it came with and replaced them with decent ones and fixed the horribly-wrong-from-the-factory alignment, it was a lot more fun through the curves than you'd probably imagine a Corolla would be. The interior was full of nice well-built details, too. And if you had a bunch of rope and folded down the rear seats and left the hatch open you could transport lawn mowers, refrigerators, couches, wide-format plotters, etc.

Crushed after 300,000 miles? Easy solve. Jam a Toyota ZZ series engine (preferrably one breathed on by Lotus for their cars) under the bonnet, fiddle with the suspension and brakes to update it, add new tyres and you're done.

lovely. RWD Toyotas FTW.

I'm doing my part by keeping our 84 Van (5MT) running to ensure there bland toyotas don't have the roads to themselves. Up here in salt country (cleveland), it's almost impossible to find any toyota more than 16-20 years old now

These where great college cars. I had a 78 Corolla in 1990. It had over 155k miles on it, ran well, was easy to work on. It was a great beater car that no one bothered to steal or break in. It had decent gas mileage too. I drove it until the window gears wouldn't keep the window up all the way, the clutch slipped so bad that it couldn't go above 55 MPH and it starting leaking oil almost as fast as I could pour it in. Oddly enough, I've never owned another Toyota since. It was still better than my 95 Sunfire, the worse piece of crap I've ever owned.

@lemondriver: Have you ever driven one? I had one as my daily driver for about 2 years. It is still one of the best cars I have ever driven (current car is a 335 and last car was a RX-8). Extreme super hoonage potential w/ good balance, RWD, 5-spd and no nannies. This car is not an appliance. You're thinking of the Corolla that comes two generations later. This car is 80% of a Celica with a bit more practicality.

Man, do I miss it. Every now and then (like today) I'll try to find one to wrench on. They are very rare here in NY.

A lady friend of mine had one of these (an SR-5) she bought brand new. The first winter she took it up north rallying through the cottage roads and she lost control and fortunately landed in a field of soft snow on her roof. With a long walk back to the cottage and a return to the scene with a few extra hands and a 4X4, she got it upright, back on the trail, and drove it home. She still says it was the best car she has ever hooned!

how has nearly every 26 year old car that is not a hobby-driver not hit 300k miles? that's not a mark of reliability, that's grandma who drives 3 miles a day to play canasta.

15-18 year old cars should be zooming in on the 300k mark.

Love those wheels...

My family had one of these several years back, a hand-me-down from my grandmother. My dad sold it for $500 at a garage sale and I've never quite forgiven him for dooming me to drive a land-yacht Towncar for most of high school instead of a Corolla.

He sold it to a guy with two others, one daily driver and one parts car. He brought it by a year later to say hi; as far as I know, it could still be tooling around mid-Missouri today.

The ones I know has been dehooned. Alternaly with BMW turbo conversions or Volvo B230FT swap. I can't recall when I saw a standard rwd Corolla.

@selfhatingotaku: You could probably shoehorn a Mopar 318 in there:

[www.allpar.com]

Yeah, it's a Celica, but you could probably make it work in a RWD Corolla.

A friend of mine had an almost identical Corolla, which I'm sure was also an '82, but it didn't have as many roof pillars. Corollas are complicated.

Looks like the Dirty Drifters' LeMons Corolla. Are you saying they used a rare car?

@BlackIce_GTS: Yeah, they had a lot of variations back then.

I missed the boat on these. The only Toyotas I ever drove in my youth up were a Tercel SR-5 wagon (awesome), later Tercel EX (awful), a Chevy Nova (boring), and an '85 4Runner (great truck). I later got an MR2 and discovered some of the magic.

Not all later Toyotas were boring. The MR2 and Supra kept going and the Previa was a good idea despite having no crumple zone. But enough ugly understeering Camrys and Siennas later, you begin to forget they once tried interesting.

Why, why, why can't we have small RWD cars like this today? Psst. GM. Take that Solstice/Sky platform and give it a nice 3 door/5 door cousin. They teased us with that Nomad concept a couple of years ago. It'd be great if they could make something like that a reality.

@LTDScott: Weird- my mom's last car ('99) was an '81 Corolla wagon, and it looked nothing like this. It had quad round lights in the front and was a lot curvier. Fun little car, she really liked that thing.

I read PaulN's essay thanks to Murilee's link to it above:
"...The Corolla SR-5 was the perfect antidote to seventies malaise."

Murilee's apt description of "malaise-era" autos has sure caught on in the world of auto journalism. Maybe he needs to take out a copyright for it..."malaise era ©"

@charles_barrett: Malaise Era™ is my gift to the world!

I had a 79 base model 2 door with the 1.2 engine and a manual choke. It was industructible- whenever it got stuck in snow I could get it into R or 1st, pull the choke out and wedge a nickel behind it to keep the revs up, then get out and push. Yes I had to chase it down more than a few times.

I love the 80's Toyotas. I used to have the 88 Celica, and I still think that it's one of the sexiest shapes around. I wish I had a mint AWD model in my garage next to my WRX.

Looks like the owner did some work in '97, when he slapped a WILD 94.9 bumpersticker over the old one--after they moved the party.

Thats a Toyota I would own. Seriously, what ever happened to all the bad ass Toyota's? After the early-to-mid 1980's, all imports (especially 'Yota) became... Lame.

@Ford Tempo Fanatic: My Camry's bad ass--a 98 with the rear wing BUT mising a huge chunk out of the right front, sort of like that Lark from yesterday...which exposes a lot of the wiper fluid box, which looks like a huge tooth in a busted lip...assorted dings and pings and mismatched junk. You can take the lamers and make them winners!

@drewheyman: 15-18 years to hit 300k? Feh! I say! I've got a '99 Dodge with 260k & an '01 Dodge with 172K.

Of course, my minimal driving is 80 miles/day, 7 days/week.

I got to drive a 1983 2-door sedan the other day. Sloppy clutch 4 speed manual, under inflated tires BRE wheels and an oil smoking 3TC. Fantastic. My mom owned an 81, same body style as pictured above, we have NONE of them in Canada. Poor things. Since, I've owned 4 ae86's and a 77 Corolla. I love all old skool RWD rolla's.

@Novaload:

No, really, its not. Bad ass is a 1992 Ford Tempo GLS Coupe with a MTX-IV five speed manual, a turbocharged 3.0L Vulcan V6, and a rear wheel drive conversion. Bad ass is not a '98 Camry.

@Sth002000: If only they had kept the original "Wild 107.7" sticker...
@Ford Tempo Fanatic: I think he was referring to the "busted lip" look rather than the car's essential Camryness. And the only reason a warmed-up Tempo makes a cool sleeper is because everyone dislikes them so much.