Beauty is relative. Compared to most (but not all) ‘70s wagons I can think of, this Corona is really nothing special, looks-wise. A previous CC writer – William Stopford, to be precise – called it mediocre, and I think that’s a fair assessment. But with a few detail changes, which this JDM car has, one might be able to polish this big old King Charles (ah, Cockney rhyming slang, you save us again!) from “mediocre” to “passable” – “decent,” even.
I’ve seen this Corona riding about a few times, always in the same area of Central Tokyo. It may have made an appearance in one of my regular T87 Singles Collection series – in fact, I’m sure it has, but I can’t be bothered to sift through all those posts. This may be a rather plain nondescript in the absolute, but it still sticks out of modern traffic like a guy with bell bottoms and an afro would of the crowd.
But although it looks cool and retro now, the T130 Corona was a remarkably plain design when it premiered in late 1978. Not fugly and odd like contemporary Renaults, Austins or Nissans, not daring and futuristic like Citroëns, Lancias or Hondas, and not pleasantly conservative like Mercedes-Benzes, Volvos or Mitsubishis. Just tame and underwhelming.
M-m-m-meh Coronas — above: notchback saloon; below: liftback saloon & hardtop coupé
Well, let me qualify that. Most JDM T130 Coronas were rather yawn-inducing. The two saloons, as well as the coupé, just look like a generic store-brand car. I guess the coupé is a little less bland by virtue of its pillarless nature, but it’s still rather uninteresting, especially that front end. Coupés used to have a more unique front end, in previous Coronas. Not this one, unfortunately.
And I’m not throwing shade at Toyota per se, just that generation of Corona. Take a look at other family-oriented Toyotas available in 1979. Most Corollas were also pretty boring, but at least there was the Liftback (top left) and the coupé. The Carinas (top right) were rather neat, the whole Mark II / Chaser range (a.k.a Cressida, bottom left) had a real personality and the S110 Crowns (bottom right), though far more restrained than their predecessors, still had some flavour left.
Having seen a few T130 Coronas in my time, I knew this already. But I hadn’t seen a JDM wagon – sorry, “Van” as they called it. And the funny thing is, I mistook it for its predecessor.
Here’s what the T100 Corona wagon looks like. Aside from the bumpers, which were of the bigger rubber sort in certain trim levels anyway, the two cars look remarkably similar. The rear lights are virtually identical and I’m 99% sure that the rear hatch was carried over without any change whatsoever. Although the T100 has a very slight kick in the beltline compared to the straighter T130, it really helps to have both photos near each other to be able to tell the difference.
The front end is where I started having doubts, really. Something didn’t add up, even when considering the late-model T100s with their revised snout.
Those post-facelift T100s looked very close to what I had found (and managed to track down to its domicile, might I add), but that big grille really did not feature in the brown “van” that was before me at all.
On the other hand, the early T130 had square quad headlights, so that didn’t really work either. And later ones, after the mid-1980 facelift, had larger rectangular units like the Ozzie-market one above, plus a reworked grille. Or so I thought.
But for the JDM (and only for the JDM, as far as I know), Toyota put round quads on the T130 wagon/van. I had completely neglected to consider this, and it really threw me off, both when I found the car and when doing the research for this piece. Vans and other lowly blue-collar vehicles are not suited to wear the same eyes as their more upmarket stablemates, you see. Toyota played the same trick with the Crown for several generations. I should have guessed they played this game down range as well…
Anyway, this example is a 1.6 litre GL (i.e. higher trim) with a 4-speed manual, so it’s about as good as a domestic T130 Corona van can get. Sure, you could go even higher with a 1800 GL, but the risk would then be to end up with an automatic. And no matter what the engine or transmission, the wagons were all stuck with the older leaf spring rear suspension, unlike the saloons and coupé.
And finding one in decent nick is the greater challenge anyway. This specific car has been featured in a couple of Japanese website stories, and I can report it’s all original and only had 25,000km on the odometer when the current owner snapped it up. When you find a 40-plus year-old Corona van in this condition, if you happen to be interested, it’s best to sign the cheque before someone else does.
The round quads, the fender mirrors, the less prominent partially-chromed bumpers and the original wheels, all wrapped up in a deliciously period-perfect shade of metallic brown – this all helps push this particular T130 Corona from the land of indifference up into the realm of the interesting. Not by a lot, but sufficiently to warrant a full-blown CC post.
Related posts:
CC Capsule: 1979-83 Toyota Corona (T130) Wagon – Mint Mediocrity, by William Stopford
CC Outtake: 1982 Corona and 1986 Cressida Wagons – A Toyota RWD Wagon Lover Lives Here, by PN
CC Capsule: 1979 Toyota Corona – When RWD Still Ruled, by Matt Spencer
Driveway Outtakes: 1978-83 T130 Corona Liftback – Upstaging The Neighbours, by Don Andreina
CC Twofer: 1979 Toyota Corona T130 Sedan & Liftback – Forty Years Young, Forty Years Old, by T87
Vintage Review: Toyota Corona and Honda Accord – Two Road Tests, 1979, by Yohai71
I love it. And the owner resisted the temptation to sprinkle glitter on it.
I could never really understand why Americans believed that Japanese cars like these were designed to be anything but adequate. Sure there was a few sporty cars, but the vast majority of Japanese cars were merely adequate at a time when American cars weren’t.
This is not a society of extroverts. We’ve been taught to judge a car by its cover, and by the time the imported car invasion occurs, the cars were laughable styling-wise. We’re tooling around in finned beasts and muscle cars and Toyota arrives with a Corolla, a Corona, and Nissan arrives with a 510. Japanese cars were adequate while Pintos and Vegas weren’t.
That was their strength. One of the reasons that Detroit didn’t take Japan seriously is because Japan didn’t take styling as seriously as Detroit. Detroit thought there was no way that those little adequate cars could sell to a market that thrilled over 440 Magnum Road Runners and Camaros. Why buy a Corolla when you can have a Pinto Cruising Wagon with that awesome porthole?
What Detroit ignored was adequacy. That is what Japanese cars had. When your neighbor replaced their AMC Rebel wagon with a Corona wagon it was noticeable. That Japanese Corona didn’t look like the latest thing out of Detroit. It looked like a step down, didn’t it? Who’d drive something that looked like that unless they had a reason? Upon asking, neighborhoods discovered that Japanese cars were adequate. It spread from there.
Soon, Japan found their American style. That meant Detroit had to battle against adequate cars that no longer looked Japanese. The inflitration was complete.
So – no, these cars weren’t lookers. They were Detroit-beaters instead.
I had a 1979 Toyota Corona LE Liftback, which is among the best cars I have ever owned! I sold it when it had over 370,000 miles and it was running stong at that time, and still in immaculate condition, albeit the wine/burgandy interior looked like a bordello! I had no idea it was called a T100, which made my day as I currently own a 1996 Toyota T100 pickup with only 32k miles on it as my summer car.
I have looked everywhere hoping to find a 1979 Corna Liftback like mine, but none were to be found. Someday, it’ll come out somewhere…hopefully, someone will let me know of it!
Happy Motoring!
Dan
A friend had a Corona wagon and it was roomy enough in back to swallow his racing go-kart. I was impressed. And like Daniel Mix who commented above, I had no idea of the T100 or 130 designations; in fact I am ignorant of most Toyota passenger car designations except AE86. But I also owned a T100 truck and urban legend has it that the Tundra was originally going to be the T150 but Ford protested as it was too close to F150.
If it were my own I think it would smell rather good. This particular one is perfectly emblematic of its time, especially due to its color. While the other default of the time/era (metallic blue) would perhaps be more en vogue today, the brown here is, well, what else could it be?
I don’t believe we got this version of the wagon in the states, the T100 was the last one, and then bracketed by Corolla and Cressida afterward. Buy you’re right, with the round quads this T130 sure looks older.
You do have the Knack for the puns though, my friend, the My Sharona reference especially had me cackling. And snorting my cuppa Joe.
Here’s a 1982 T130 wagon I shot in Eugene. Admittedly they were pretty uncommon.
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-outtake/cc-outtake-1982-corona-and-1986-cressida-wagons-a-toyota-rwd-wagon-lover-lives-here/
Oh, well blow me down! I even commented on that find and noted the same thing there that I noted again immediately on opening your link – the alloys that apparently seem to be from a Nissan Maxima. Thanks!
In 1997, I worked for an English school in Yamanashi prefecture, Japan. Most of the teaching was at companies, especially Tokyo Electron. This involved driving all over the Japanese countryside. My vehicle was a Toyota Corona Van, just like the one featured in this article. The one I drove was diesel and four on the floor. It didn’t have a lot of power and to make any headway, I had to rev the living daylights out it.
That is all I really remember of. The rest of the car was mediocre but like any Toyota of the era, it was very reliable.
The headlights. They threw me off too.
Next reaction: Oh, it’s THAT model Corona…
This generation got eaten alive in the Aussie marketplace, as the competition from both Nissan and especially Mitsubishi was just so much better. High fuel prices meant big sixes were beginning to fall from favour, but this model Corona had the terrible early-sixties designed Holden pushrod four foisted on it to help meet local content regulations (Supposedly coded NA-1L, so the joke went). We did get the liftback in fully imported form as a range-topper, with the proper 18R-C engine – and Toyota acted surprised when they sold far more of them than they expected. Lesson learned: no more component sharing, certainly nothing as character-defining as engines.
Back to this wagon. If I’d had the chance to drive a properly-engined T130, I might be able to view them in a positive light. But it’s certainly a unicorn.
I always thought our T-130 wagon Unflushables were entirely the 1974 body from the a-pillars back, but you prove me wrong. More of a why’d-they-bother re-skin, it seems.
My sister’s ex had a bright yellow Unflushable, poor man, which I accidentally sat in once (poor me). It certainly had the runs on the board as effectively as it provided same to any half-sentient occupant – 350K k’s of them – but as it inepted its ways around the road as miserably as it first had 40 years prior, its Holden Bushfire Four running as poorly as new, it still stunk.