I’d seen this very clean Corona wagon before in town, on the go. But I finally stumbled into where it lives, and it appears that it has a stablemate, parked in the apartment space behind it and that tree. The odds of them not being co-owned are just too large. Ten years ago, it could have easily been coincidence; not in 2017.
This generation Corona (T130) was the last to be sold in the US. More specifically, this 1982 model was the very last year for US-bound Coronas, replaced in 1983 with the all-new FWD Camry. It was quite akin to GM venerable RWD B/C Body being replaced with new FWD cars, given how the Corona had once been Toyota’s bread-and-butter car in the US, and was once its best seller. But the Corona’s best days were behind it by this time; it was getting a bit stale and staid.
That’s not to say the Corona didn’t have a loyal following right to the end. It may have been stodgy, but it was absolutely impeccable when it came to the traditional Toyota qualities of quality build, reliability and durability. All the components of these RWD cars were by then very mature, and for those looking for a very safe bet, one couldn’t do better than one of these, or its smaller stablemate, the last of the RWD Corollas. Well, or any Toyota at the time.
Power came from the 2.2L 20R SOHC four, as also used in the Celica and Pickup. There’s still quite a few 20R-powered pickups at work here, even if the RWD Celica and Corona have become quite rare now.
In the parking spot sits a 1986 Cressida wagon, the next notch up in the Toyota hierarchy at the time, and one that would stay faithful to RWD until it was effectively replaced by the new Lexus line as Toyota’s top offering. And of course it too had a loyal following, thanks to all of the same qualities as well as a few more, including its powerful DOHC 2.8 L fuel injected six.
One of the distinctive features of these wagons, along with the short-lived Camry wagon, are the twin rear wipers. It’s the kind of thing one would expect to see on a Mercedes of the times. But then Toyota shared more than a few qualities with Mercedes back then, in terms of fastidious engineering, even if it raised costs. Which it did.
Toyota’s larger cars were never cheap, which explains why Toyota never really competed with any significant volume against mid-sized American cars. It may have built cheap small cars, but the Cressida was in the Volvo-Peugeot-Mercedes league, in terms of features, quality and even price, although not with the Mercedes.
Cressidas had a particularly loyal following in Eugene; in neighborhoods where one might assume that University professors would likely live, Cressidas could be seen in multiples, until quite recently. But even their time has come, but at least this one has found a safe second home with this Toyota RWD wagon lover.
The Cressida even looks a little Peugeot 505-like round the rear windows, while the rather square Corona is as conservative as the contempory Datsun/Nissan Bluebird.
I like wagons and wish there were recent choices in the US for Toyotas like these.
Here on the East-Coast, road salt put the kiss-of-death on most of them.
I’d have to keep a pristine ’82 Corona in a garage and limit it’s use.
Currently, a ’96 Tacoma pickup, with cap, is my substitute for a Corona wagon, including the RWD and a twin-cam update of the Corona’s 4-cylinder engine.
Happy Motoring, Mark
That Cressida is a long way from home. The fish sticker on the back window is a membership sticker from the North Carolina State Aquariums. Cool car.
The ’82 Corona appears to be wearing the alloys from its main competitor, the ’82 Nissan Maxima! It completely threw me at first.
I love the Cressida wagon. Mid ’80’s Toyota, the whole lineup was great.
Yeah, those Nissan rims had me confused for a moment, but the Nissan was perhaps slightly longer than the Corona. The Cressida is still one of my favorite Toyotas of all time (probably because my Dad’s RX60 sedan was my first car).
That generation of Corona is pretty awful dynamically, and in Aus they were made miserable by a 1.9 litre iron pushrod four of monumental awfulness. It wasn’t Toyotas, but 3/4 of a Holden six (an engine released in ’64 itself) forced upon it by local content requirements. Thus the sogginess, poor steering and underdamped bumpy ride were not even saved by Toyotas properly legendary build quality.
We got the next gen Corona till about ’87, and with rack steering, coils and a 1st gen Camry OHC engine, they were quite acceptable. In fact, you could get 4-wheel discs, alloys, IRS and a 2.4 injected 5 speed model which was actually fun, if not exactly Euro standard. Most of all, it was as unkillable as you’d expect.
Cressidas were an old persons car here. By the ’86 generation, again with rack and also IRS, and that lovely crackerjack six, they were also becoming really good cars.
That next-gen Corona was certainly not unkillable, at least not the early ones. As originally designed, the oil pressure sending unit of the 2S-C had a nasty habit of cracking just level with the block where you couldn’t see it. In the workshop you couldn’t find the leak, but when the engine warmed up the crack opened up and oil pressure dropped. Most mechanics couldn’t find it – you had to know of the problem to look for it. All the driver had to go by was a randomly flickering oil pressure light. This cycle of opening up and closing continued until the sending unit would eventually snap off, resulting in a catastrophic loss of oil pressure with obvious consequences.
My wife’s ’84 only lasted 80,000km before it shat its big ends. At the time there was reputedly one Toyota mechanic in Melbourne who specialised in drilling out the remains of the sending unit so the motor could be rebuilt.
We traded. Toyotas may be reliable, but the customer only gets a sample of one. We haven’t bought one since.
That’s indeed a serious fault, which I’d never heard of. (And surely, the most ironical of ones – the device installed to save the engine kills it).
And for complete contrariness, the Holden-engined Corona wagon like this that I drove quite a bit had about 330,000 k’s on it, running pretty much like new. Meaning ‘orridly ofcourse, but still going.
Australia continued to get RWD Coronas untill 86 when that badge was retired for that market NZ got the FWD Coronas from the get go and they sold in large numbers well into the late 90s, the locally assembled cars having galvanised bodies and revised suspensions to suit local conditions.
I get a big kick when ever I see a station wagon which is very rare today.
I spent many a day in the back of my Dad’s Chevy Impala wagon with lumber for the summer house or trips to Grand Isle to go crabbing or fishing.
Darn those mini-vans=;-}
We had the Cressidas in Germany too, back in the 70s and 80s. And they belonged to the blandest cars on the road back then. No one would give them a second glance, which is probably why hey have all disappeared by now.
The interesting difference though is, that our Cressidas were totally mundane. Basic trim, four cylinder engines and rather cheap.
And then you have the US Cressidas with crushed velours or cushy leather seats and smooth 6 cylinder engines.
One of those seems to have made its way to Holland:
https://suchen.mobile.de/fahrzeuge/details.html?id=231556141&damageUnrepaired=NO_DAMAGE_UNREPAIRED&isSearchRequest=true&makeModelVariant1.makeId=24100&makeModelVariant1.modelId=10&pageNumber=1&scopeId=C
The Cressida was built with MB w123 in mind. The Datsun Maxima wagon then was its direct competitor. About 15 years ago, I often saw the Cressida sedans mostly running around in New York area, the owners were mostly immigramts from the Caribbean islands. I did also notice its engine often burning oil with light blue smoke, that were rather unusual for the morden engine.
A bit of a coincidence, the other site has a 1983 single rear wiper Cressida wagon starring in its Junkyard Find series.
Speaking of the Corona’s 20R, my sister had a 1979 Celica hatchback with the 2.2 L 20R engine and I drove it when the 1978 280Z did not have enough seats for family trips to the beach. It was a delightfully solid driver with good performance, build quality, and living room quality seat upholstery. I really liked it.
I can not imagine being confronted wit a choice of a Volvo 240 wagon, a Peugeot 505 wagon, and a Cressida and picking the Cressida. It’s a nice car, granted, but compared to the luxury truck nature of the Pug and the safety and comfort of the everlasting Volvo (and my willingness to properly maintain European cars) it really is out of its league.
I think the overall personality of the Cressida was different from these two. Volvo owners often just wouldn’t have anything but a Volvo, so I think there was actually fairly little cross-shopping between those and Cressidas. Maybe the 740 would have been a more likely competitor.
The Peugeot 505 may have had some cross shoppers, but it had nowhere near the reliability or build quality of the Cressida, especially for the generation shown here. After all, these were the cars which, more than any other, were the build-up to Lexus. At that time, very few cars at the same price point offered their level of quality and engineering.
I love wagons and I really like both of these. Man, the rear end of that Corona is loooong! But Toyota manages to make it look elegant, there’s just enough slope to the tailgate and the slight uptick in the side glass elevates it above boxiness.
My current ride is a 2007 Focus wagon which I love. It’s rust-free and I have it rust-checked annually. I’m keeping it as long as I can because I have no idea what I’d replace it with, I hate most SUVs/CUVs. I mourn the demise of the proper station wagon in NA.
A Ford Flex might be a worthy replacement.
Just plain cool… I love RWD Toyotas…
These last-series Coronas were not common even when new (particularly the ’81-’82 slantnose models). The best-looking ones to me were the liftbacks. The Cressida wagon is really nice and also rare.
A while back I came across a document online with some Toyota U.S. sales figures, and was surprised to see what a slow seller the Corona was in its later years. Corona sales were 35K in 1980, 22K in 1981, and 3K in 1982. I assume these figures are calendar year, and the 1982 figure represents something much less than a full 12 months’ worth of sales, but still, 22K in its last full year.
This was especially surprising to me given how popular the Corona’s replacement in the U.S. lineup was right out of the gate. In its first year on the U.S. market (1983), Camry sales were 52K, a figure the Corona hadn’t seen since 1974. By its second year, the Camry was at 93K, a figure the Corona had never hit. And it just kept going up from there.
As Paul noted in the article, the Corona was Toyota’s top seller in the U.S. in the late ’60s, when Toyota first began to make a splash in the U.S. market. Its sales subsequently stagnated, then began to decline, as the Corolla took over the role of the “cheap small car” and the Corona became a bit larger and more upscale. The Corona’s all-time peak was 79K in 1969, although it was at 67K as late as ’71 and at 60K as late as ’73; the Corolla passed it in 1970 and was enjoying double the Corona’s sales by 1972.
By the late ’70s, I assume that the Corona ended up with the same problem as the Cressida, just to a lesser degree: its price did not jibe with the mainstream American market’s perception of what a car this size should cost (it was probably in American midsize price territory, but was a much smaller car than a typical American midsize); at the same time, it didn’t have the cachet of premium European brands that were starting to convince some Americans to pay that kind of money for a car this size. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, I assume that the Corona and Cressida sold mainly to Toyota loyalists who had outgrown their Corollas and wanted something nicer, but had drunk the Toyota Kool-Aid so thoroughly that they just wouldn’t drive anything other than a Toyota.
My cousin had a lift back corona for years. She loved it. But she gave up on it when it broke down one too many times with the baby in the car. (Pre cell phone days in the 90’s).
It was never a major repair just too much of a hassle
In My Neck Of Woods,Coronas Came With 22R After 1981.
That Corona wagon is a real rare bird, in mint condition, too!
In the 1980s there were a lot of trade disputes between Japan and the US – a lot of it over motor vehicles and electronics. There was a “voluntary restraint agreement” (VRA) that the Japanese automakers had to agree to in terms of limiting the volume of cars exported to the US, something like 1.68 million units. I think it went into effect in 1981 or 1982.
Naturally, it makes sense for Toyota (and others) to send their high-value, higher priced cars to the US. Hence the Cressida replacing the Corona. And of course, spurring on local manufacturing in North America by the Japanese automakers. I think today I’d bet more than 80% of their cars sold in North America are built in North America – if you include Mexico, too (under NAFTA).
It feels like every time I see some boxy 1970s or 80s sedan or wagon off in the distance here in Brisbane, I get all excited. “Could it be a Mitsubishi Sigma in the distance? An early Holden Commodore? Something else?” And then when I finally get closer, it’s always a damn Corona.
I’m sick of Coronas. And the one you’ve spotted is remarkably clean, but so are most of the Coronas here.
Why do they remain so frustratingly common? Well, they were slavishly reliable and well-built, of course. Likely more so than the contemporary Nissan Bluebird. But they also seem to have been more popular with older buyers than the Mitsubishi Sigma, a car that vastly outsold the Corona during the 1980s. These three cars, as I’ve written about before, were hugely popular at the time especially among fleets. And these Japanese automakers persisted with RWD longer in Australia than in other markets.
The Sigma is vaguely interesting. The Bluebird and Corona were stone-cold boring. And now that I’ve realised how common they are, I won’t stop to photograph Coronas anymore. What’s the point? It feels like they’ll never be extinct.
Very true William – many more Coronas survive than Bluebirds or Sigmas. The only way the Sigma was more interesting is the styling had different angles than 90° though.
We had a 1979 Corona Wagon from 1982 to 1987. We purchased it from an oil company employee that was transferred out of the country. At the time of purchase it had less than 10k miles on it and it was perfect. After we test drove the car and were ready to start negotiations another family showed up to see the car. That put an end to any thought of negotiation and paid the full asking price $5k.
In the years we had it a few things did go wrong:
Power steering pump started leaking. Replaced it with one from the junk yard. Then the lift gate struts went out. The dealer wanted $190 per strut which I thought was crazy so we used a broomstick prop rod. When the a/c on/off switch went out and the dealer’s price was outrageous I paid a visit to Radio Shack and found a similar switch for a few bucks. It worked great and looked like it belonged there. The last thing was that rust had started rusting through the roof were the roof rack was attached. At that point the family was growing and we needed a bigger car so I sold it. Other than these minor issues I had no complaints except for Toyota parts prices.