1980 Toyota Corolla Station Wagon

Posted on Feb 17, 2019 in Editorials | 2 comments

The fourth-generation Corolla was a gigantic sales success in California, but you won’t see many of these TE72 wagons even in rust-free regions these days; nearly all of them were driven into the ground and replaced by RAV4s or Priuses a decade or two back.

Since we had wagon Junkyard Finds on Monday and Wednesday, let’s make this a Junkyard Wagon Week with this third one!

The 3T engine was a 1,770cc pushrod unit that made just 70 horses in California-emissions-spec 3T-C form. On the plus side, the 3T sipped gas and was nearly impossible for even oil-change-deferring Americans to kill.

The drift kids like these cars, because they’re cheaper than the AE86 Corollas but are still rear-wheel-drive and can take a variety of stupid engine swaps (or stupid boost on the 3T-C).

This one is a longtime San Francisco Bay Area resident, with a 2001 Cal State Hayward (the name was changed to Cal State East Bay a few years ago, which was a real diss to the people of Hayward) sticker next to a bunch of $200-ticket-if-you-don’t-have-one City of Berkeley residential parking permits.

Yamaha, Kawasaki, and the San Francisco Opera all get bumper-sticker shout-outs, right next to the bought-from-a-street-vendor-on-Telegraph-Avenue-in-1983 QUESTION AUTHORITY sticker.

A 24 Hours of LeMons team is assembling a TE72 for the Arizona race next month, so I grabbed this car’s allegedly-hard-to-find distributor for them.

Even in Australia, the TE72 wagon was special.