Toyota Corollas are pretty common cars by any measure. First produced in 1966, the Corolla earned the title of best-selling car worldwide by 1974 and continued gathering pace throughout its numerous generations. By 1997 it overtook the Volkswagen Beetle to become the best-selling nameplate in the world, although the Beetle achieved its numbers through a noted lack of change rather than the Corolla’s continual redesigns. By 2016 over 44 million Corollas had found a home and the steamroller continues to advance at a rate of over 1 million additional units per year.
A small few of those Corolla variants are now classic car icons but they are far outnumbered by the forgettable mainstream and the completely obscure. My knowledge of Corollas is probably best described as patchy, but I’d challenge anyone to form a clear visual picture if I stood on a street corner and shouted the model code “E140” at them. I’d be willing to inject an element of competition and offer small prizes if I thought it would make any difference. A bag of crisps for the first person to pick out an E38. For a £10 Book Token, draw an AE101. Accurately describing a TE72 wins you a weekend at the seaside. Don’t write in, to the usual address. However, amongst the sea of confusion there are some gems such as the TE27 Levin from the early seventies, and the drifter’s favourite AE86. But as if Toyota were determined to win the accolade of “world’s favourite nameplate” at all costs, even making twelve generations in all manner of bodystyles didn’t seem to satisfy the insatiable ambition of the boys from Toyota City.
When I stumbled across this week’s Prime Find, my first thought was that it was a strange looking Corolla as there are so many strange looking Corollas, specifically Japanese Domestic Market variants that were never officially exported to the UK and Europe. However, it turned out that my confusion wasn’t completely due to ignorance. Here is a Corolla that isn’t exactly a Corolla. In my mind, a 1989 Toyota Corolla is the sixth-generation model known by the E90 model code. I’m familiar enough with these cars as they used to be everywhere and notably spawned the three door hatch FX / GT-i 16, which was supposedly a pretty good hot hatchback. However, hungry for world domination and keen to confuse the market, Toyota also offered the Corolla II family of cars in parallel to the established range, the Corolla II being a Tercel by another name.
The Tercel family was positioned between the Starlet and the Corolla and its name was apparently derived from the Latin word for “one third”, the car being about 33.33% smaller than a Corolla. Yes, that sounds unlikely to me too but perhaps it is more likely than my previous assumption that the designers just really liked Turtles. Coincidentally quite Turtle-like in shape (in my head) the L30 model hit the market in 1986 and survived for a full four years, a standard life cycle for a company that churns models more often than I change socks, which happens every five years whether needed or not. Front engined and front wheel drive, the L30 generation was the very model of a cookie cutter car with only the 12-valve motor being of note in hindsight. 12 valves were briefly in vogue as a misguided economy-driven stepping stone to full adoption of proper 16 valve engines, so the Tercel was thus equipped, transversely mounted as per the rule book. The engine in question was the entirely forgettable 3E, a 1.5 litre SOHC of distinctly average output which suffered from most un-Toyota-like valve stem oil seal failure and carbon build up, and was hobbled by a rubbish carburettor which generally caused it to run rich. The fuel injected version was presumably slightly less underwhelming and if you really wanted to go mad you could specify a 113bhp turbocharged powerplant. Coupled with conservatively styled bodies in sedan or hatchback shapes, I’ll forgive you if you don’t get too excited about the L30 Tercel.
However, almost as if Toyota were aware of how dull many of their 1980s cars really were, they occasionally allowed themselves to cut loose and be a little bit adventurous with variations on the theme of fitting pop-up headlamps to unsuspecting vehicles. They did a nice line in pop-ups, notably on the MR2 and Supra but also on the Celica and even the AE86 Sprinter Trueno. The addition of retractable lights to the AE86 was a particular masterstroke, turning a reasonably good looking coupé into something really quite dramatic. But as if to prove the point that pop-up lights enhance virtually anything, Toyota also applied the same trick to stodgy hatchbacks as our Prime Find this week neatly demonstrates. Behold the Toyota Corolla II EL31.
If you want a properly obscure but reasonably priced eighties Japanese car that actually looks quite attractive, this is probably it. It couldn’t be more 1980s with its colour coded bodykit, coded aero wheel trims, red performance badging and what appears to be a completely bizarre purple velour sports interior. The transformation from a workaday Tercel is perhaps not completely astonishing but I’ll settle for awarding it a credible merit. I’ll be clear that I like it, largely because it’s proof that you can almost successfully make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. The Mazda 323F pulled off a similar trick and I actually bought one of those. This is the only Corolla II EL31 I can find for sale in the UK or Ireland and that’s not surprising as it was never officially sold over here. However, Ireland has a long and distinguished history of taking bizarre JDM variants as grey imports and I note this one is wearing County Kildare number plates. The seller’s description is a little light but reports a mileage of 110,591 km, with the car being in very good condition and everything working as it should. Although registered in the Republic it’s for sale just over the border in Newry so the seller’s price is in GBP, and only 4,000 of them. Now really, four grand doesn’t get you far in the current overheated market and this is a whole lot of exclusivity for the money. Who cares if it isn’t exactly a drag racer, it looks cool and you won’t find another. We’ve borrowed the seller’s photographs and wish them well with the sale, because I think we could all do with a smile at the moment and this strange little Toyota has given me exactly that.
Should you find yourself heaving for a cheap smile too, you will find the advert for this oddity of an eighties Corolla right here: 1989 Toyota Corolla II
With our Saturday instalment of Prime Find of the Week, we’re offering our services to the classic car community, by passing on our favourite classic car for sale from the week that passed. This top-tip might help a first-time-buyer to own his first classic, or it could even be the perfect motivation for a multiple-classic-car-owner to expand his garage with something different. We’ll let us be inspired by anything from a cheap project to a stunning concours exotic, and hope that you will do the same.
Just remember – Any Classic is Better than No Classic! We obviously invite our readers to help prospective buyers with your views and maybe even experiences of any given model we feature. Further to that, if you stumble across a classic which you feel we ought to feature as Prime Find of the Week, then please send us a link to primefindoftheweek@viaretro.co.uk