I was visiting the self-service wrecking yard that brought us such Field Expedient Engineering gems as the hasp-and-padlock Cadillac Security System, the Renault Alliance Urine Sample Shift Knob, and the Lord Humungus Body Kit Oldsmobile when I came across this early-80s Toyota Corolla Tercel (how's that for confusing branding?) with a really innovative driver's-side window. It appears that the Toyota's previous owner got tired of the lack of side glass in his or her ride, and (not willing and/or able to come up with $15 for a junkyard replacement window) did a pretty fair fabrication job on a piece of clear acrylic. So far so good…
Rather than enabling the old up-down by rigging the window up to the regulator mechanism in the door, the creator of this window decided to rig up some brackets to affix the window in place, then drilled hundreds of holes to provide incessant, maddening whistling ventilation at speed. Note how each hole is angled to point at the driver. Brilliant!

Most are from North America, but Japan and Australia are represented as well. Naturally, the "Oh What A Feeling" era dominates our list. Enjoy!

1963 Crown	1979 Tercel	1980 Cresta	1981 Tercel
1981 SR5 Pickup	1981 Starlet	1981 All Models	1982 Corona
1982 Celica	1982 Celica	1983 Tercel 4WD	1983 Diesel Pickup
1984 Corolla	1984 All Models	1985 Tercel 4WD	1985 Trucks
1987 Celica	1987 Corolla FX	1987 Supra	1997 All Models

The crazy thing about these cars was that the funky drivetrain setup actually worked pretty well. You had a longitudinally-mounted engine sending its two-digit horsepower back to a weirdo V-drive-style transmission, with a little tiny differential under the engine oil pan and a driveshaft going back to the rear axle (the 2WD cars seemed to have the same transmission with the rear output shaft deleted). The front and rear axles are locked together in 4WD mode, so you'd better be driving on dirt or snow (and have four tires with the same circumference) when you pop that little lever into the 4WD setting.


Honda's 4WD Civic of the same era was never able to compete with its Tercel counterpart. The Tercel was simpler and tougher (although the Civic was way quicker, more comfortable, and handled better). And while the Tercel's computer feedback carb can be a headache to get past a smog test, it's not in the same league as the ungodly complicated CVCC setup from carbureted Hondas of the same era.


Cargo capacity is just amazing in these things, rivaling far bigger vehicles; the cargo area is very tall and the car shrugs off massive loads. I once hauled 1200 pounds of concrete several miles in a total beater Tercel 2WD wagon, and it dealt with it just fine.

These cars are perfectly suited for the hippie lifestyle; you can, like, totally space on all maintenance for years and it will keep going. The VW Transporter could sort of do that, but its primary appeal was that it could still function when running like crap (which, given the air-cooled motor's constant need for valve adjustments, it always did); the Tercel would keep running just fine even after years of fearful neglect. It's a safe assumption that this Tercel finally succumbed to the wear and tear caused by 50,000-mile oil and/or total inability to pass the smog check. But maybe the mirror charm bought it an extra 10,000 miles!


Even a decade after Jerry's death, you still see all the rose/skull/bear iconography on these cars. But, whether owned by hippie or solid citizen, most cars have a date with the cold jaws of The Crusher... someday.

Here's a situation I'm sure a goodly portion of the Jalopnik readership has experienced. You have a friend who has a bunch of redeeming qualities but couldn't pour piss from a boot, much less scrape up the green to buy a decent car or spin a wrench to maintain a shaky one, and of course this friend calls you (the Guy Who Knows Car Stuff) with a question: "Hey, I got $1300 from a [tax refund / insurance settlement / dead relative / dope deal] and now I wanna get a car! Whaddya think I should get?"

Naturally, by this time they've already found a couple of "cool" vintage cars in their price range (because this type of person usually has hipster pretensions and, like, old cars rule) and they're all geared up to buy a 4-door '74 Dart with a rod knock, or maybe a Super Beetle with all the windows broken out. Now, last time this happened I gave some really useful advice, but my friend went ahead and bought a beater X-1/9, with laws-of-physics-predictable results. But what the hell, I do my best to give non-horseshit advice even if it won't be taken, and I always recommend the same three cars, in the following order:
1. 2nd-gen Nissan Sentra. You can get a running '87-90 Sentra for peanuts, they're well-made and reliable, they usually pass CA smog, they're not big blowers of head gaskets, and they have a timing chain instead of a belt. Plus they're fairly speedy, though they handle like crap and ride like oxcarts.
2. 3rd-gen Toyota Tercel. You can get an ugly '87-90 Tercel pretty cheap (but priced higher than a Sentra because Everyone Knows Toyotas Are Good), they've got that bulletproof Toyota quality, and they're dull but not unpleasant drivers. They've got timing belts, but the noninterference engine means your flaky friend won't die after the 150,000-mile timing belt snaps.
3. 3rd-gen Honda Civic. By far the quickest and most fun to drive of the three, the '84-87 Civic is reliable but has some weaknesses. First, it's hard as hell to get a non-Si model to pass CA smog. Second, your flaky friend will fail to check the coolant, overheat, and thus blow the fragile head gasket. Third, your flaky friend will fail to replace the old timing belt and it will snap, bombing the interference engine and locking up the wheels on the highway. Fourth, a CV joint will fail after your flaky friend cranks up the stereo to avoid hearing that increasingly nasty clackety-clack sound for month after month, stranding him or her on a desolate goat trail in the Mojave in August with no provisions save a can of Clamato.

So, that's my own personal curmudgeonly advice. How about you, dear readers? Remember, the flakazoid friend won't have any money for maintenance and can't fix anything, and they'll probably try to hit you up for free repair help on anything that breaks. What do you say? – Murilee Martin

[The Jalopnik Question of the Day has been pried from Señor Lieberman's fingers for a couple days. Do you have a question you want answered? Email it to tips@jalopnik.com with the subject line "QOTD"]

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Question of the Day: Worst Car Hack You've Ever Seen?; Question of the Day: What's In Your Painful Reality Garage? [internal]

Over the weekend I got a call from a friend who'd just bought a slightly funky early-90s Tercel for cheap. "It's a nice car, only something's wrong with the radio. Can you take a look?" I have a stash of a few factory Toyota cassette decks sitting around- the remnants of my City Tow buy/fix/sell Tercel period- and Toyota was considerate enough to use a slick 4-screw mounting setup for their radio mounts during this era, so what the hell. "Sure, bring it over," I told her. "Probably take ten minutes to get it right." Famous Last Words...

I knew I was in trouble when I saw the upholstery tape used as trim around the fritzy JVC deck, but even then I was unprepared for the ensuing Rube Goldberg nightmare that followed when I pulled off the bezel; it was like opening your fridge to grab a beer and finding a rotting raccoon carcass crawling with maggots in the crisper drawer. Plywood. Lots of plywood. Plumber's tape. Scotch tape used for insulation. Drywall screws galore, including several 2-inchers screwed through the body and into the guts of the stereo. It goes without saying that the whole mess was powered by a lead running straight to the battery (unfused), with the original factory harness slashed randomly and dangling in the midst of the mess, its own hot wires straining eagerly for the nearest ground. The factory speakers were bypassed and about 50 feet of new wires run a complicated path under the carpeting to speakers wedged behind the back seat cushions. So then I had to shoot several precious weekend hours through the head, tearing out Rube's handiwork, fixing the factory wiring, etc, because the car's owner was a friend who'd done me a lot of favors over the years, plus now the Car Gods wanted to punish me for thinking all Toyota stereo installations are easy. And you can't blow off the punishments of the Car Gods.

All in all, not that bad a previous-owner car hack job, certainly seen worse (e.g., gas tank replaced with 5-gallon can belted into back seat, tiny space-saver spares on all four corners of a car driven that way from Seattle to San Francisco, etc.), but it got me to thinking about the whole genre of dangerous/stupid car hacks (distinct from yet related to stupid/dangerous house hacks). The evil beauty, their insights into the fallibility of the human intellect, the rage you feel when you realize you've almost been offed by one.

So now it's time for you, faithful readers, to share your no-doubt-amazing wealth of car-hack stories. Maybe they're hacks you inherited from a previous owner, maybe they're hacks you ran across in the vehicles of others, or maybe they're hacks you perpetrated yourself and now have the ferrous nodules to share with us. Bonus points for anything involving Warsaw Pact vehicles, of course. – Murilee Martin

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As soon as "Ballroom Blitz" starts playing and we see that one "Boner Jones" is involved, it's clear that a Tercel is gonna take some punishment here. And these hoons don't disappoint. First they pound the tar out of it for a while, then they run it into stuff. Lots of stuff. But wait, there's more...

The Tercel is still running after all that, so they proceed to administer yet more beatings and collisions. This one gets docked 10 points for excessive slickness and irritatingly hyperkinetic editing (it would have been 15, but they were good about keeping the camera focused and aimed at the action, which is rare for the genre) and another penalty of 5 points for website pimping during the course of the videos. 5 bonus points for writing the word "Hoon" on the car and another 5 for the high-speed "Ghost Driver" reverse crashing. Hoon-O-Meter reading: 31 points. We'll see how Boner and his crew fare in tomorrow's Hoon of the Week voting. – Murilee Martin

Related:
Who's the Hoon of the Week? You Decide! [internal]

A few years ago I sold an ugly-but-running '86 Tercel wagon to a friend. She's a single mother on a tight budget, so the car worked out great for her. Her little girl named it the "Rockin' Supercar" and much Tercel-enabled happiness ensued... until the fateful day when the oil ran out and a rod was thrown. Here's the heartbreaking video of the car being towed away to The Crusher and its poor sad 6-year-old friend running after the tow truck. The Rockin' Supercar is in heaven now, kid. – Murilee Martin

Related:
French Muddin' in a Tercel 4WD! [internal]

It's got gams on the roof and a donations box stuck to the hood. It's beflowered, be-beaded and bedazzled. It's this wee Toyota we spotted yesterday in San Francisco while hanging out with Friend o' tha Jalop Suzanne. Oddly enough, we didn't notice it until her son Troy pointed it out. Such is the vibrancy of the City that things that would seem completely wacked-out elsewhere become mere curiosities in San Francisco. – Davey G. Johnson

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We admit that this vid runs a little long and features some repetitive feats of mudding skill, but nevertheless, it's pretty entertaining to watch what these French off-roaders pull off in their 2nd Gen Tercel 4WD wagon, which only seems to be equipped with a snorkel. And presumably the optional extra-low 1st ratio. – Davey G. Johnson

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