This is the story of my Corolla, so far. It begins in June of 2023, browsing Facebook Marketplace to see if there is anything remotely interesting for sale. At this point in time, the only car I didn't really have that I wanted (aside from my forever-project 510s) was a good example of a rear wheel drive 70's Japanese economy car. Something along the lines of a B210, a first-gen GLC, Corolla, etc. It was something that was really getting to me, as maybe 10-15 years earlier, getting something like this would have maybe been slightly easier, and DEFINITELY cheaper, but those days were behind us and time felt like it was running out. I tend to gravitate towards the most basic end of the spectrum when it comes to trim levels, so when I saw an ad, in my state, for an almost completely base spec '75 Corolla coupe, I nearly lost my mind. The price was extremely high on my usual price spectrum, but as I had been very actively following the prices for cars like this, it was unfortunately about as cheap as I was ever going to see one again. I felt like now was my chance.



Now if you're a person who thinks it's still 1995, or who lives in a drier climate where cars like this have a much, much better chance of still existing, this price may seem insane. Hell, it probably seems insane even if you know the current market, due to the undeserved "boring" reputation Corollas have gained thanks to shows like Top Gear, etc, but as I had been following the prices of the RWD Corollas for years by this point, I knew I had to hop on this one before somebody else bought it and either parted it out, or ruined it in some other way. I was already actively kicking myself for selling my 4th gen Corolla wagon for a mere $1200 a few years earlier, before prices for the E70 generation skyrocketed...

I instantly messaged the seller to let him know I was interested, if not serious about buying it no matter what. I did not have the cash at all at the time, but I knew I had to make it mine or regret it forever. I had only done this once before (to this level) with my van, which was another situation of actively seeking out a very specific vehicle to the point where it was completely consuming my thoughts, and I knew if I didn't get THE ONE, I'd never forgive myself. I ended up getting the seller's phone number so we could actually speak on the phone, rather than just use messenger.

I explained myself, my interests, my cars, and what I generally do. He explained the origin of the car, and where he wanted it to theoretically end up. The car had been in dry storage since the early '90s and he happened upon it at a farm auction, where he submitted what must have been a VERY low bid, and ended up unintentionally winning the car. Even knowing that he must have paid pennies on the dollar, this is a very unlikely scenario, so I see paying a premium for a car that was virtually free as more of a finder's fee. The odds of finding a relatively solid 3rd gen Corolla that has avoided salty roads for over 30 years, under 3 hours away from my house, is basically one in a trillion. We were on the same page. I wanted the car in good hands as much as he did, and I had successfully convinced him that my hands were indeed good ones.

Now I was in the sticky situation of basically agreeing to buy a car that I did not have the money for. Not a common scenario for me, but I knew this was worth it. I reached out to a few friends to see if I could get a loan. My friend Jake was in Poland at the time, making money but unable to really spend it, and being a fellow car enthusiast he understood the position I was in and offered to send me some money. I was going to get paid for a job in a few weeks so I knew I could pay him back somewhat quickly. However, due to the geography and the amount of cash, the transfer was going to take a little while. Thankfully the seller had agreed at this point to hold the car for me for about a week as I sorted out the details. Everybody else he had dealt with online was either somebody who said the car was worth about a 12-pack of beer at the most, or somebody out of Chicago who was agreeing to buy the car sight unseen...most likely to part it out. This seems to be a somewhat common thing in Chicago, specifcally with these 3rd gen Corollas for whatever reason.

Once the money was secured, and in my hands, I was ready to make plans to come check out the car. I had just recently purchased my friend Andrew's car trailer, and a '95 F-150 for the sole purpose of pulling the trailer. Good timing, as this took the complication of lining up a truck or trailer out of what could have been a logistical nightmare. Due to the wait for part of the loan from Jake, my friend Sam who had lent me money for car purchases at least twice in the past, and is always down for a road trip, lent the remaining cash to me and agreed to be my co-pilot for the trip out to get the car. It was about 2.5 hours away, and Sam lives in the same town I work in, so I hooked up my trailer in the morning and brought the whole tow rig to work with me, so we could head straight there when I got off.

I ended up taking off about an hour early, to ensure we had a little daylight left by the time we got to the seller's place. I headed to Sam's to grab him, and we were off. About 20 miles into my journey, I found out the hard way that I had not checked to make sure I had the right ball in my hitch, as we hit some rough terrain and my trailer popped off the ball, took out my trailer light plug setup I had just installed, and hopped all over the place before running into the truck's tailgate. Thankfully, safety chains exist for a reason, and I learned what that reason is the hard way. The connector was blown to bits, and some of the wires had been worn away, but thankfully the plug still worked mechanically and electrically, so we were still good to go after I swapped on the correct ball. A stupid mistake, and a lesson learned. At least it happened on the way there, and not the way back.

Once we finally arrived, it was a bit surreal to actually see the car in person, and the condition. I knew it was pretty solid from the photos, but the car is realistically unbelievably solid for ANY part of the country. I've seen several Corollas of this generation in warm climates with worse rust than this car has. We started it up and it ran, but had basically zero brakes, among other issues. Still, the car was as advertised, so I didn't hesitate to shake on it. The deal was done. We looked around the property a bit, as we both have interests that extend beyond cars, but usually require rustling through a rural barn, but came up empty-handed. They had an interesting motorcycle and a moderately interesting bicycle, but nothing we had to have. The car was the main attraction, and next we had to get it on the trailer.

Thankfully this was a drama-free experience. The seller was a younger man who had put some time into the car and was a bit sad to see it go, to the point where his mom felt it was appropriate to get one last photo with the car going onto the trailer. After this, I got my own photo, and we were ready to head home.


I couldn't have been happier.

The trip home was, thankfully, very uneventful. Just pleasant chatting and a humorous stop at a rural gas station. I dropped Sam off and headed to my place, where I parked the trailer hooked up to the truck overnight, as I was completely worn out from a full day of working, driving, and experiencing a trailer owner malfunction. The next morning I backed the car off the trailer, pulled it into the yard and took a quick look at it before heading back to work. The car was extremely dusty, and needed some TLC, but I was ecstatic.












Now, the previous owner had gotten the car to the point where it did run and drive, but that was about it. They had swapped on a Weber DGEV, added an electric fuel pump and a pressure regulator, installed new tires and painted the rims, and I think that was about it. The fluids all looked ancient, the brakes barely functioned, clutch master cylinder was leaky, muffler was gone, etc. It was good enough to see that it would work, but not something I'd trust to actually drive. However, I wasted no time fixing that issue. That night when I got home, I promptly pulled the interior out to clean it, hacked together a muffler solution (which is still on the car), and fixed a few odds and ends. People always do silly stuff on Weber installs, so I fixed a few things in that department that were irritating me. I think within a day we had bled all the brakes and kinda transformed the car from something extremely dangerous, to something that could actually be used around town. There was plenty to do still, but rapid progress.




The very next day, I drove the car to work. No real issues to speak of. Even took the interstate the whole way! Risky...



That night after work, I went over the whole car with some boiled linseed oil, since the paint was super chalky and the whole car had spent so much time with dust getting in the paint and rust. Looked so much better after this treatment.


One funny thing I discovered the next day was that the very manual-feeling brakes was down to the fact that somebody had welded shut the port that feeds the brake booster. I had a spare on one of my extra 20R manifolds, so I swapped that on and immediately had nice power brakes. No idea why this was done by some previous owner along the line...



The rear view mirror was also destroyed, so I robbed a basically identical one out of my yellow 510. Perfect fit and color.



I had done pretty much all I could without buying parts at this point, so I started ordering bits and pieces. The car had horrendous vapor coming from under the hood at stops once it had warmed up, because it desperately needed a valve cover gasket. The unnecessary electric fuel pump was mounted to the floor of the car, so it was extremely noisy. I ordered a NOS mechanical fuel pump. The front end was super worn out, so I ordered tie rods, a pitman arm, and an idler arm.





I have a handful of cans of R12, so I of course had to try charging the dealer installed AC system. Sure enough I did get it to take a charge, but the compressor sounded like it needed lubrication which I stupidly didn't install prior to charging, so I took the belt off for now. I know it does work though!



Various other little tasks needed to be done. The dash speaker was toast, so I took a random Mopar one I had on a shelf and welded a couple washers to it to make it mount in the stock location. Also welded together a couple rods from an old piece of Ikea furniture for a makeshift battery hold-down. Finally there was no insert for the glovebox, so I made one out of an old cardboard box. Once it's full of stuff, you'd never really notice...





At this point, the car was relatively sorted, so I decided to tackle some cosmetic issues I had. For one, the rims were painted a dull bluish grey color that I kinda hated. From any promotional images I saw, the rims would have been a dark color, similar (if not identical) to the steel wheels on my '77 Toyota pickup. I went and bought more of the same paint I used to paint those rims, which lays down amazingly well, and did the Corolla rims. Couldn't have been happier with the result.







Another issue I had was the headliner, which was originally covered with a very thin, white textured vinyl, but had been mostly ripped off of the foam backing by the previous owner. There were two big mouse holes chewed through the foam as well, which were visible as a result. I decided to have some fun with the headliner and cover it with some funky fabric, but first was getting it out. There are six flexible clips that hold the headliner backing to the roof of the car, and five of the six broke on removal due to rust. I was going to need these for re-installation, so this ended up being a roadblock. Thankfully Toyota parts are always out there if you look hard enough, and I was able to buy the five remaining clips for about $20, shipped to my door. Once they showed up, I got to work selecting fabric and recovering the headliner. I had a few sheets of this orange velvet, and decided it might be a fun look that wouldn't be too dark. I cut it to size, glued it on, reinstalled the clips and put the headliner back in. It turned out pretty good, but I think I'll most likely end up recovering it with something closer to the original vinyl down the line.







I also went to the big car show in July and found a few NOS smaller-diameter chrome exhaust tips from the '70s. Figured this would be a nice period-correct touch. Really like the angle and the appearance. Of course I had to add a period-correct metal license plate frame as well. I hoard them for these cars.




Nothing else super notable happened except a whole lot of driving and some tuning here and there to try to improve it. I did take the Weber off after a few months of ownership to find that the adapter was bolted on straight over the original carb riser, which was causing some undesired restriction. Got rid of the plate to improve the flow.




But yeah, mostly a whole lot of enjoying the car. I've put a few thousand miles on it since I got it, and plan to just continue improving it and enjoying it as I go. The only way I think I'd ever get rid of this car is if I found an even nicer original one, but that's unlikely to happen. Most are either in worse shape, or have been repainted or "restored". I prefer a car that shows its age. Here are a few more random pics. As the car currently sits, I have the radiator out to get repaired as it has had a leak since I got the car. Never anything too major, but I figure I might as well fix it if I plan to keep the car forever. This spring it will be back in action.










Now for a little pre-history on the car. This car was bought brand new on May 15th, 1975 by an "H. Pipes" at Bob Mandal Toyota in Gulfport, MS. The envelope says "Port Toyota" which was from Port Motors, the previous iteration of the dealership which sold Toyota, Fiat, Subaru and Saab, which had just recently been purchased by employee Bob Mandal in January of that year.




The car was only with the original owner for maybe about a year before either trading it in or selling it to Watson Motor Co. in Clovis, NM in early spring of 1976. This is one of two dealer stickers on the back of the car. It was at this dealership for a while, and on October 14, 1976, an aftermarket Clardy Customatic AC system was installed by them.



The car seems to have stayed at that dealership into 1977, I found an ad for the dealer that may or may not have my exact car as part of their spring "clean sweep sale"



There was another dealership in Clovis that had the car for a bit run by Doc Stewart, which also put their sticker on the back. No idea if that was before or after Watson Motor Company got the car. At some point, Douglas and Janice Kracht bought the car in New Mexico, and moved to Iowa in about 1979. At this point, the car had about 33,500 miles on it. The car stuck around the Storm Lake, IA area. In May of 1982, Dale Tigges bought the car from the Krachts and had it registered until about 1991, when the car was parked. It sat until sometime in 2020 when the car was purchased by the guy I got it from at the farm auction. This means the car was on the road in Iowa for possibly 12 years under normal use, as when I got the car it had somewhere around 130k miles on it. Wish I had more information, but I'm happy to know what little I do about its history. I'm just glad it was parked for so long rather than getting crushed or any other number of fates it could have met.

Last updated: 1/21/2024