Toyota’s Corolla Levin / Sprinter Trueno coupés shone brightly, but not for all that long. Today, let’s look at the last generation of this family of sporty, affordable two-doors – a type of car that is barely made any more, be it in Japan or anywhere else. Why did Toyota’s cheap coupés die out, merely a few years after their heyday?
Back in 1971, the Corolla Sprinter, hitherto a sporty Corolla-based coupé, became a full range in itself. The Corolla / Sprinter duo (same car, different dealer network, minor trim differences) was born, spawning their own two-door variants in the Levin and Trueno, respectively. The cheap and cheerful twosome grew in the ‘70s, triumphed in the ‘80s and died out in the ‘90s — just like most low-end saloon-based coupés around the world, really.
The Corolla is still with us today, as strong as ever, but when looking at Toyota’s current range, the only sporty two-door available are higher-end propositions, most with a Lexus badge. Sporty Corollas still exist, and as a matter of fact the Levin name is still used for them (albeit only for the Chinese market), but they are all hatchback saloons, not distinctive-looking coupés.
Japanese sources claim that the buying public fell out of love for the Levin / Trueno in the ‘90s due to the AE100/101 (i.e. the 6th generation, 1991-95) being too heavy and big for its own good, and this AE110/111 generation being too tame and cheap, especially inside. The AE110/111 was designed at a time when the full brunt of the economic downturn had been internalized by Toyota product planners, so the car was built to a price. This was acceptable (even an asset) for Corolla saloons and wagons, but less so for the Levin, which was supposed to inject a bit of glamour into the range. This BZ-G trim is supposed to be the high end / deluxe version of the model, and it does look pretty uninspiring…
After the legendary AE86 (1983-87), the Corolla / Sprinter coupés followed the platform’s general direction and switched to FWD. But this did not adversely impact sales, as long as the hot versions were still available. However, the disappearance of supercharged engines for this AE110/111 generation, along with the cheapening of the interior, meant that sales were lackluster. Base models (AE110) got a 100hp DOHC 16-valve 1.5; higher-end cars like our CC (AE111) got the DOHC 20-valve 1.6 litre “black top” good for 165hp – close, but not quite equal to the supercharged previous generation’s 170hp.
But the death of the cheap coupé was a broader global trend that affected other cars than just the Levin / Trueno. A healthy chunk of sales for these cars used to be female buyers, but the advent of the CUV made much of that demographic switch to taller vehicles. At the turn of the Millennium, the only escape route for lower-end sedan-derived coupés were gimmicks like retractable tops (e.g. Peugeot), but many carmakers just didn’t want to bother anymore and just axed the whole concept from their range.
That’s exactly what happened 20 to 25 years ago to the Corona coupé and its sort-of Curren follow-up, to the Honda Prelude, the Nissan Silvia, the Mitsubishi Lancer and many others, including the Corolla Levin / Sprinter Trueno. After those died out in 2000, Toyota tried to consolidate all their coupé-loving clientele into the Celica, but that failed rather miserably and that nameplate was retired in 2006. Some carmakers have tried to reverse this process (e.g. VW Scirocco), but globally and with few exceptions, the cheap and cheerful coupé is no more.
In the US, we got the AT10 and AT20 compact hatchbacks, badged as Scion tC – but I think those might be a size larger than these? They lasted past the introduction of the 86, all the way to the death of the Scion sub-brand. There are so few small coupes left,
Yes, the tC was based on the Avensis, which was the successor to the Carina as Toyota’s D-segment sedan. The tC could be regarded as the replacement for the Celica, but was theoretically a class up from the Corolla/Sprinter coupes.
The tC was sold in a couple markets, like Chile, as a Toyota, by the way.
It’s s clean-looking car, perfectly adequate for someone who wants something a little sporty, but also needs their car for daily duties. It’s a shame really. I know automakers build what the public wants, and they have to make a profit. It’s just too bad that there is a part of the demographic, however small, that will be forced to look at the used market to find something they enjoy driving. I’m glad for the likes of the FR-S/GT-86 and BRZ, but even they may disappear before too long.
Actually I think it’s quite a gorgeous design with a resemblance of Caria ED, Mazda 323 Astina sedan and Xedos 6. Probably the high prices for what they offered were the main cause for lower sales numbers. Unfortunately Japanese carmakers turned to the extreme opposite way in design from 1998 onwards. I particularly think both Camry and Corolla from that time look like something from the late 80’s.
The market certainly shifted by the end of the 1990’s, but Toyota pretty much decimated what demand there was for their sporty coupes like these all on their own with new in-house products that came to redefine what buyers wanted across the industry, not just Toyota. The RAV4 came in April 1994 and was a smash from day one; the 5-door wasn’t even part of the lineup until late 1995 so the ball got rolling against the likes of this Levin with the 3-door, which was actually a very prescient move in that the hype for the RAV4 only intensified after the staggered model launch was complete. Toyota likely saw this shift in preference with coupe buyers in real time because by late 1996 they had introduced 3S-GE powered RAV4’s to cater even farther into sporty car territory and were actively promoted as such. The death blow came with the Harrier (the first Lexus RX), however, in December 1997. Sales eclipsed even the RAV’s debut, and in short order the Harrier was selling well more than double the units of all of Toyota’s sporty specialty passenger cars combined (Supra, Soarer, Celica/Curren, MR2, Levin/Trueno, Cynos). Between those two, and because the Harrier was more accessible to Japanese buyers than here in the US with lower cost four cylinder models, the entry point from the cheapest RAV to the most expensive Harrier covered nearly the same spread the coupes did barring low end Cynos’ and high-end Soarers, and those two what we now call CUV’s were very much the white-hot thing to be seen in. Toyota kept moving with the market and never looked back.
I get that people don’t always like what I like, but I still cannot fathem how far the the pendulum swung for demand (even by single people) from small cheap sporty two doors like the Levin to CUVs or even SUVs that were anything but sporty.
At least they offer the FT86 but that is a bit more expensive.
I had a AE111 BZR with 6 speed manual the Superstrut suspension and it was the most fun car I ever owned. It was a grey market import as it was never sold new here. I thought it was a cracker of a car and thought to myself, oh well, another example of an interesting model that Toyota Australia in their infinite wisdom with held from us, whist foisting rubbish on us like the Paseo and the 3 door Prado which hardly sold.
My current car, a Golf R is of course more powerful and faster and more solid, but I wish it looked like the AE111 and had some of its chuckable cheeky character, whilst maintaining the Golf’s many positive attributes.
All my BZR needed was a bit more torque (a1800cc 7AGE 20 valve blacktop), a bit nicer trim inside, and some more sound insulation.
I never saw any of these while in Aussie but they were everywhere in NZ when we moved back every sporty Japanese model had been brought in by somebody and even now they pop up on marketplace or trademe for sale for stupid money, asking prices for old Japanese cars have gone crazy recently even for cars that werent much good new, but the junky ones are also the rarest.
I imagine it didn’t help that the FWD Corolla coupe failed to find a market in the U.S., which otherwise bought an awful lot of Corollas. The AE90 coupe was actually dropped in the U.S. midway through the run. I couldn’t find sales figures for it, so I don’t know if it just sold dismally or if Toyota started panicking about whether it was going to undermine sales of the T180 Celica, which was a bunch more expensive. (I’m pretty sure that’s why Toyota didn’t offer the supercharged 4A-GZE in the North American Corolla, although they did federalize that engine for the MR2.) I assume the conclusion was that it was better to steer people who wanted a two-door commuter coupe toward the Paseo and people who wanted something more boy racerish to the Celica.
At the end of the E90 coupe’s run in 1991, an SR5 started at $11,693 while a Celica ST was $12,793 and uncomfortably close in pricing. At the beginning of the E90’s run the gap was much wider and even a GT-S was less than a Celica ST. The Paseo debuted at $9,988, so it certainly gave breathing room and a much more realistic entry point to a sporty two door Toyota. As much as I like the E90 coupes, I’d prefer the ST every time once the 180 series Celica is part of the equation, and I really feel that generation made the E90 coupe’s styling DOA overnight.
Toyota Australia has long been good at selling what the local market would buy (tame four door sedans) while at the same time being utterly clueless when it came to having anything aspirational in their lineup (like this). Ever since the old Celica, Supra and MR2 died Toyota has been seen as an old man’s car, the Camry company – heck, I’m 65 and I wouldn’t buy a Toyota, but now it’s the repellent styling as much as anything that keeps me away!
Would it have really hurt the balance sheet that much to divert a small run of AE111s to these shores? Just to let us know that Toyota really could still build interesting.
There’s just an across-the-board element of “We sell a lot of vanilla, so why even bother with the other flavors?”
Might the first sign of trouble with this be Jeep shuttering/idling the Cherokee plant? The Cherokee, Compass and Renegade are SO CLOSE to one another – at least back in the day I got the difference between a Supra, Celica, Corolla GT-S and MR2.
At some point, someone’s bound to stick their neck out and “go where the competition isn’t” and come out with something in this segment with two doors, a swoopy back window and a rear seat sized for humans. By then will the market be sick of ‘the box it came in’?
I never did understand why Honda and Toyota got so far away from the sedan styling with the Accord and Solar coupes. The more volume pieces you can use, the fewer the costs for unique tooling you have to incur. Why not a Camry TRD coupe using the same front clip, trunk lid, bumper, etc. from the sedan – in addition to the obvious carry-over like the dash, drivetrain, suspension, etc.? Re-use as much as possible.
Why was it called LEVIN? I understand Camry because it is based on camera or an effort to mean roomy. But, Levin?
Nothing to do with cameras; “Camry” is an Anglicised version of kanmuri, which is Japanese for Crown. It was part of Toyota’s longrunning crown-based naming scheme: Crown, Corona, Corolla, Camry.
Levin: no idea; I just chalk it down as one of the many bizarre auto model names to be found in the Japanese market.
Levin means lightning (in archaic British English); the sister car Sprinter “Trueno” means thunder (in Spanish).
As for Camry, it comes from the Japanese word for crown, “kanmuri”.
Levin/Trueno: thanks! Today I learnt.
CC effect, albeit 22 years ago. The featured Levin is practically identical to one my sister bought back in 2000 and owned for a couple of years. Hers didn’t have the aftermarket steering wheel or driver’s seat, but it was the same year, same colour, also manual and wore exactly the same white wheels. It was a fresh import to NZ and she was the first NZ owner – it replaced her 1980 MkII Ford Escort. I remember driving it – the ride quality was too hard for me, but it certainly felt like a good sporty car for a young single person.