(first posted 8/23/2018) If it weren’t for the all-new Accord that arrived at the same time as this Corolla SR-5 Liftback, it would have likely made a bigger impression. It was another well thought-out extension of the increasingly popular Corolla line, offering up a body style that was really best described as a shooting brake, given its low headroom and quite modest back seat.
Having had a bit of seat time in one of these as well as an early Accord, the Honda’s packaging was drastically better. As R&T pointed out: if you were 6′ or under, it was reasonably comfortable. I’m not. It was like riding in a…Volvo 1800ES sportswagon. Cramped, but all the solid and proven Corolla elements were there, along with the slickest-shifting 5 speed in the world at the time and pretty decent handling.
My brother in law picked up a used yellow one of these, the color some 80% seemed to be. He had it seemingly forever, as he kept it as a DD because he didn’t want to put too much wear on the newer Jetta he also had. he was anal about washing it, and it looked like new by the time it was almost 15 years old. Of course this was in the Bay Area, where rust wasn’t an issue.
There’s still one or two of these around here, although I haven’t run into one lately. I’m a big fan of RWD Corollas of this vintage and the next generation, but I’ll pass on the chop-top Liftback, thank you. Make mine a two-door sedan or wagon.
R&T noted that Toyota was increasingly tailoring their cars for the American market, and it showed in a number of ways including softening the SR-5 suspension. It didn’t hurt handling; it actually improved it somewhat. Toyota’s efforts to please Americans was just getting underway, and the rest is history.
I wonder in 1976 when Toyota was making High quality reliable cars like this and cars like Celica and coronas what was coming out of the big three?my dad Remembers in early 80s American cars were so bad that people used to say GM stands for Garbage Motors.
Early 80s were not good for GM. Transition fo FWD was tough
I would say a 1975-76 GM car (except for the Vega) was pretty good quality. At least our 1975 was.
Our 1980 Fairmont was decent, and didn’t rust like some Hondas. Not trouble-free, but decent.
Also, keep in mind, that Corolla didn’t have the complexity of power steering, or automatic, or A/C. All these things could break down. American cars had them (and needed them due to size), Japanese did not. And those things cluttered up the engine compartment, making service harder.
I worked at a Chevy dealership during this time. For me wife’s DD, we had an Accord and then three Subarus. Probably says it all right there. I always drove a Caprice or a Malibu as a company car. GM always did a great full and mid size car. Further down the model line… not so much.
*BTW, Toyota and Honda most certainly did have Air Conditioning available across the product line. And it worked well- which was not a given in imports at that time.
Thank you for posting this- it’s a perfect bookend to the Accord. Both cars sold extremely well when new, but for different reasons. Those reasons gave a glimpse into the future Corporate philosophy of Honda and Toyota. The Accord was a much more entertaining car to drive, while the Corolla LB offered what was already known as a durable, reliable mechanical package in a stylish new wrapper.
I seriously considered one of these before I bought my VW Rabbit early in 1978. The one I drove was lightly used (8k miles, I think) and was, of course, yellow. Given the passage of time I’m not sure why I decided on the Rabbit instead of the Corolla Liftback. I suspect that it had to do with me perceiving that the VW would be more reliable in the long run than the Toyota. As it turned out I did get many years (and 117k miles) of good service from the Rabbit but this was probably more my good luck than anything else. In any event it would be 15 more years before I purchased my first Toyota. The RAV4 that is my wife’s driver is our 7th Toyota and we have good results from all of them. None of them have been really exciting to drive but there is much to be said about reliability.
A dear friend of mine had one of these back in 1978 and for some years after grad school. She had a 5 spd and it was dark blue. Really the first Japanese car I ever rode in and I was impressed by the car. In 1980 it was hello my first Japanese car, a 1980 Civic wagon 5 spd.
$3978 in 1976 for the SR5 Liftback. I think a Mustang II was $3500 MSRP, $3700 for the hatchback.
The Mustang had a nice interior, IMO.
A little less room.
But the Toyota was just a more “livable’ car.
The Mustang was heavy and sluggish compared to the Corolla. Power Steering helped. There was another $120 or so, and now we have price parity.
The Mustang’s 2.3 sounded decent to about 4000 rpm, but when you needed more power, it sounded like it would fall apart, so rough. It could’ve used that 5th gear that the Japanese offered.
The Mustang, like many American cars, promised “more” but delivered “less”. And that is before reliability.
In my experience, not many small Japanese cars had A/C in the 70s. I only recall US cars with it–but that’s just me.
I do recall car magazines derided the weak A/C of most imports. As late as 1987, C&D or Automobile derided the Acura Integra A/C as being OK as long as it was 80 degrees or less. Conversely, C&D praised the 85 Golf’s A/C as being as good as an AMerican car–and I can vouch for that, mine could liquefy air! It was one more pleasant, unexpected surprise with that car.
” Conversely, C&D praised the 85 Golf’s A/C as being as good as an AMerican car–and I can vouch for that, mine could liquefy air!”
Funny, I was a little disappointed in mine. My car was black (which didn’t help) but I was perplexed that I would be required to keep the system on recirc for the coldest air. The big American systems I had grown accustomed to (like in my 77 New Yorker that was traded on the GTI) never showed a difference in air temperature between recirc/max and fresh/normal settings. My fiancee/wife’s 88 Accord had a better system than my 85 GTI had.
Maybe your car was off, or your standards are higher.
Prior to 1985, my family had never owned an air conditioned car–and by then I was pretty much out of the house.
However, we did take a road trip in my dad’s new, air conditioned LTD (Fox) in the summer of 85, and the car was cool to cold.
My perception at the time was that that Detroit did air conditioners (and automatics) “well”, imports did not.
When I bought my first new car a year later, the air conditioned GTI, I thought it was cold. A couple of years later, a colleague and I took it for a work trip, Viriginia to South Carolina in July, and every so often she would ask if we could turn down the A/C (which I did).
I didn’t buy the car for the A/C, but was pleasantly surprised by it. I worked well for about 8 years, 120k. Then not so well, I had the O-ring replaced, got 2 summers more out of it. Then, when it stopped working well, I never bothered with it.
The AC in my ’86 Jetta works well. I lived in SoCal and it did well even in August traffic jams. I did have to replace the receiver drier shortly after I bought it in ’91, and it was ice cold after that.
I know this is an old post, but as another data point, an ’86 GTi was my first air conditioned car, and I currently own a ’00 Golf (bought new).
Both of them are/were silver (almost as good as white in warm climate) but neither really had super cold air conditioning….but as I live/lived in central Texas the duration of owning both, maybe our demands are great for quick cooling…car would get cool but it would take awhile, and neither is as cold as say an American car A/C would have been…the ’86 still used R12, but the ’00 has R134A which might not be as efficient.
The American cars would be my late Father’s (he lives in same city as I) like an ’86 Dodge 600, a trio of Mercury Sables (’89, ’92, and ’96) plus 2 Chevy Impalas (’01 and ’06).
My AC quit on the ’00 Golf a couple months back, but it was a quick fix…there’s a fan module under the radiator that sometimes goes bad, it controls the electric fans behind the radiator (2 of them) which need to go on to to draw air past the evaporator…if they don’t come on, the clutch on the compressor won’t come on either so you stay un-airconditioned. I’ve owned the Golf since new, so I’ve replaced the fan module at least once, but this time it was one of the fuses feeding it from the fuse block on top of the battery (a crummy place to put fuses, but that’s where they’re at). Maybe I need to replace the electric fans or investigate why the fuse blew, but since the fans are original to the car, I wouldn’t be too surprised if they’re drawing more current as they aged.
The fans also keep air flowing into the radiator of course, which is also necessary especially in stop and go traffic in the summer in my city, so you wouldn’t want to let them unrepaired long, even if you don’t mind driving without A/C (when I first moved to Texas some 41 years ago I brought my unairconditioned car with me from up North, never retrofitted A/C just lived with the heat until I bought my ’86 GTi which came with A/C…but nowdays the population of my city is probably 4-5 times what it was 41 years ago, even with more roads built there’s very frequent stop and go traffic routinely that was rare 41 years ago, when I could rely on flow of air through the windows most of the time to keep me cool. When my car AC compressor died, I almost did too, or it seemed like it due to the heat and only sporatic breezes I could sometimes count on
Good friend of my father had this model in Hong Kong, he drove me around when I left mainland China, this was his first Japanese car convinceby his children to buy. Previously, he owned Himmer and Austin.
Toyota is always focusing on reliability, its products are perfectly adequate engineered and produced. This formula servs Toyota well. It can combine the good components with good system performance very well. If you look at its products, it never uses very advanced technology but mature and reliable technology. Its production methods are also second to none. Now it totally owns the market of middle class of American.
Middle class America’s favorite vehicles are the Ford F150 and Chevrolet Silverado. The Toyota Tundra isn’t even on their radar.
My family got a California-sourced mustard yellow ’77 Corolla 2 door sedan by way of my dad’s coworker for $1 in the early-mid 90s. The coworker relocated from sunny CA to road-salt ridden Ithaca NY. The Corolla had been exposed to a decade’s worth of road salt by the time it came into our possession, hence the $1 price. It was a second car, my dad’s daily driver to work as my mom got her license and took the wheel of our ’90 Civic Wagon. We had owned a string of progressively less-used up Civics by that point, starting with an ’82 5spd Wagon (critically rusty, bought then sold for $750), then an ’85 sedan (rear ended and totaled). The Corolla was a base model with a 4spd and manual steering. Compared to the “sporty” Hondas, the Toyota felt like the more familiar Soviet iron of the old country, but obviously better built. We had that Corolla for a few years before it got too rusty to pass inspection, it started to bend in half on our mechanic’s lift. Sold it to him for $1, he in turn sold it to a local farmkid as a field car for $50.
I remember reading this article when it first came out… yes, I feel old.
Me too. And I remember the 1976 Accord cover story in R&T as well. We’re not old … we just have good memories.
I quite liked these Corollas when they were out. I had occasion to drive one about weekly for about 6 months, using the back to transport E size engineering schematics to a supplier. The car was quite roomy, it handled the drawings easily, and the ride was sporty in my view. I enjoyed the 5 speed shifter and the cornering was good compared to some of the American cars I had driven at the time. By contrast, I also had occasion to drive a Renault Le Car of that vintage as well, and I felt lucky to get from point A to B and back in one piece.
I took a very hard look at an SR5 Liftback, new, in 78. (the one I drove was sliver) As you say, headroom was an issue, especially as I have relatively short legs and sit tall in the saddle for someone only 6′. I managed to get the seat leaned back far enough to clear the roof, and proceeded with the test drive.
Loved the engine, which had an interesting, smooth, whirr to it. The forward gears may have been slick, but reverse was a beast. Reverse was to the right and down. Thing was, it had a lockout on it. To get past the lockout, you had to simultaneously pull the shifter up and to the right. That move would be a piece of cake in a JDM right hand drive car as the driver would be pulling the shifter directly toward himself. On a left hand drive car, it took a double jointed move that gave me fits.
The first gen Accord was no bargain. One coworker had 5″ diameter rust through patches on the tops of both front fenders by 1980. With only 50K on the clock, his Accord also burned a quart of oil about every 500 miles. Another coworker had an early Accord in the less car hostile environment in Delaware. His big gripe was the “semi-automatic” choke, in conjunction with the car being very cold blooded. The choke had to be pulled out by hand, but would retract as the car warmed up. Thing was, the choke always came off way too fast, so he would be turning a corner and be simultaneously cranking the wheel, rowing the trans, and desperately trying to pull the choke back into operation so the car would not stumble or die in the middle of traffic.
So, I passed on the Corolla due to cramped accommodations and the reverse lockout. Never really considered the Accord, though I think the Honda bike dealer in Kalamazoo had started carrying the cars by 78. Ended up going back to Ford, for the POS Zephyr, which is another story.
“At a time when some Japanese designers seem to be penning cars for cartoons…” Hmmm… What would the author have to say about some current Japanese designs? My mother-in-law won’t replace her 12 year old Lexus because of the grilles on the latest RX. Someone, a few years back, referenced Nissan’s “angry alien” styling. I think it’s also apropos to recent Toyotas/Lexuses.
I thought the Corolla Liftback was a much better-looking car than the Accord coupe, which struck me as a little confused style-wise and slightly on the wimpy side. The Corolla looked faster and tougher, a more muscular (American?) take on that other ‘looker’ of the 1970s, the Euro-style Vega. This is the car GM coulda/shoulda built.
Interesting perspective, and with 40 years hindsight, I agree. The Accord was both historically and technically more significant, but the Corolla was a looker. Not QUITE as nice as a Vega, but close 🙂
A co-worker had one of these things “back in the day”. He was one of the ‘Yota tribe nattering constantly about “reliability”. The rear axle/differential had to be replaced under warranty. Sure, tell me again how reliable it is.
Typo in the calculated data. 3200 mph at 1000 rpm?!?! 18.8 engine refs at 60 mph. LOL. Obviously backwards.
My impression with these early Japanese cars was that they revved too high at highway speeds. They were great up to 50 mph.
The Corolla Liftback really wasn’t intended to be a wagon — it was based on the Corolla coupe shell, so it was supposed to be a sporty shooting brake.
The comparison to the Accord is an interesting reminder of how far Honda pushed the Accord up the ladder in size and price. The earliest Accord hatchback was a little bigger than the E50 Corolla Liftback, but only just. The sedan edged into the Carina/Corona class, although it wasn’t really until the CA Accord in 1985 that Honda went head to head with rivals in that class.
One interesting point: In Japan, the Liftback was initially used to showcase the new 12T engine, which had the same bottom end as the 2T-C used on U.S. cars, but had a lean-burn (TTC-L) head, made under license from — Honda! It was not made by Honda, but it used the same CVCC technology.
At the time, this was a pretty terrific car – if you weren’t over 6′ 180 pounds. Toyota was still using narrower bodies with high belt lines and those cars using started rusting in Chicago before the payment book was empty.
What was terrific was that it started when you turned the ignition key. It had the new hatchback design that turned it from a two door coupe, into a pretty efficient hauler. It got good gas mileage, comparably to the Detroit vehicles of the era.
Now – before we get all bashing over Detroit, please recall that by 1978, Dearborn amazed with its Volvo-esque Fairmont. Chrysler had a real contender with the Omnirizon. Then within a generation, GM made the X cars, which were pretty impressive if you never drove them. So, the signal was recognized that the days of making Valiant-based, Torino-based, and Nova-based cars was over.
When I hear about this or that person saying that it was obvious by this time that the Japanese made better cars – I was there. They made better cars, but those cars weren’t by any means as good as all cars made a decade later.
I can admit that this was a terrific car – for 1976. I can appreciate people buying it before 1980. However, everyone knew better cars were coming soon from the Big Three as well.
I shan’t bash Detroit directly, that’s been done to death, yet I do wonder where all their cars are today and that doesn’t just mean sedans. I’ve owned several domestic sedans/cars that were quite good at the time I had them. I can’t say for certain that they were as good as anything else on the market when they were new and competing in the marketplace as I usually purchased them used, but they generally did the job they needed to for me.
A decade after this Corolla was built, most 1986 US-branded vehicles were indeed better than they were before. And the Corolla and its cohorts were also better than they had been. In some cases (coincidentally as with the now decade newer Corolla) Detroit actually rebadged them as their own or in some cases as with the Corolla more or less built them under license. In 1986, we were two generations newer with the Corolla. The Omni was still the same car as a decade earlier and never evolved, it never even spawned a sedan or wagon version which it easily could have. The Fairmont was dead and buried, renamed LTD, then reimagined to great fanfare as Taurus. And the X-cars sort of eventually redeemed themselves as A-bodies while the slightly smaller Cavalier is usually either called a cockroach or a Cadavalier, despite selling in the millions, albeit perhaps at a loss – this BTW was the real competitor to the Corolla as was the Escort, not the Fairmont or Citation, you’d have to look at the Corona/Camry otherwise.
I wasn’t living in Chicago at the time this Corolla was introduced, my impression though was that the US brands weren’t exactly immune to rust either. Volare seems to spring to mind readily and mid ’70s Pintos, Gremlins, and Vegas weren’t too plentiful by the 90s either.
The Corolla went on to still be produced today, improving year after year and generation after generation, and being sold the world over. The Fairmont, Omni, and X-car names unfortunately didn’t survive their first generation, no matter how good they may have been. Detroit did end up going back to and specializing in the spiritual successors to their large cars, just renamed them Yukon, Tahoe, Expedition, Explorer, Durango, Trailblazer, etc – You’ll note that when Detroit thinks there IS equity in a brand name, they do reuse that name for decades, just like most of the imports do. Come to think of it, the Nova name did survive one more inning, but it was applied to the rear end of a Corolla. I’ve long wondered why Fairmont wasn’t still used for the small LTD that was pretty much a Fairmont or for the Taurus, Ford for some reason seemed to want to rid itself of the association, doubly odd seeing as how they have a penchant for using F-names for their cars. Volvo itself continued to build and sell the 240 (that the Fairmont emulated?) through 1993.
I had a 1978 SR-5 Liftback for 13 years – 137,000 miles. Overall, a great car, except for the five water pumps I had to have installed over that term – in one case, two within six months. After I got rid of it, a few months later, I received a call from a former boss who asked me if I had owned a ’78 SR-5 Liftback. I said yes, and he said, “Well, it appears I bought it.” He found an old registration card in the glove compartment. He drove it for another five years until the body rust just became too much. Still, not the greatest car I’ve ever owned but by George, in general, an incredibly reliable, practical and almost-fun car that served me pretty well (excepting those five water pumps) for a long time.
I still want one of these. I always liked the looks and practical design. A wagon would be nice too but I always liked these.
Great era follow when the 4th Gen – E70 (1979 to 1987) came in several HB versions for the ’80s . This one I associated with the back of the 1971-73 Volvo P1800 shooting brake ( …or the ”Snow White’s Coffin” ) with a Mustang II grille.Although the window+hatch combination of the estate Volvo was more similar to that of the Tercel ’80
I’d completely forgotten these existed – they did sell a few over here.
They seemed a bit of an oddball, with their GM-US design and I think were largely dismissed as a poor man’s Scimitar or HPE.
Mind you, after a few years with a Scimitar or HPE, one wonders who’d be the poor man..?
I remember these too, they really held their value as used cars in So. Cal. .
-Nate
When Toyota introduced the FX16, I was reminded immediately of this ’76 SR-5 Liftback.
I drove one of these once; it was the lone Toyota in our Hertz fleet when I worked there as a transporter in ’77 and ’78. I liked it, but probably not too surprising since my car at the time was a ’74 Datsun 710. I think I envied the hatch; since I got rid of that Datsun I’ve never since owned a non-hatchback vehicle. I also drove a ’78 Datsun 510 that our location had in its fleet, the lone imports back then (probably about opposite nowdays).
About 6-7 years after I’d worked for Hertz a co-worker owned one of these, but his was a standard (the one I drove at Hertz was an automatic). Strangely I remembered there was a light on the brow of the instrument panel that shown down on the automatic transmission quadrant on the “hump” of the floorpan, he told me his manual had that same light, and he’d wondered what it was for on his manual it just lit the shift boot. A rare case of inattention to detail, seems that Toyota forgot to nopop the light on manual Corollas (at least his, maybe they eventually caught on).