These were good little cars but they were cheap. Toyota hangs on to designs as long as it can to squeeze more profit, much of which is reinvested in the company. In Today’s money, a rather basic Starlet was upwards of $22k. The present day Corolla goes back to 2004 and a new one is like $17k. The longer Toyota makes a platform the cheaper it gets. The cars of the Starlet era were produced all over the world and were immensely popular due to their reliability and simplicity. They strive to find the best balance of quality and price and of course profitability. Paul, perhaps I can add a little perspective on the Toyota Way. You’d need a good salary to float a loan for one of these in these high rate times. Kind of like the Yaris now, a Corolla was only a little more, like fifty bucks, more money and was larger, more versatile car. This was the height of import restrictions and dealers routinely marked them up. So why so popular with new and old teachers? Well, these teeny like appliances were not, ahem, cheap. Everything on a Toyota of the generation was superbly well made and intelligently thought out. I could never get comfortable in a Starlet but as a car type person, I could only admire its beautiful quality. There were good reasons for this: the Starlet was too small for anyone above 5’7″ or about 150 lbs maximum, as this was a very small car. On the other end of the spectrum, quite a few young, female teachers drove them, too. Mostly it was retired school-marm types that owned them. These things sold well in Victoria BC where our repair shop/tire store was. But for a certain contingent, the loss of small, RWD cars was lamentable, and for a few more years Toyota gave them a chance to enjoy one before the inevitable switch–or to buy one durable enough to still be on the road thirty years later, as this one is.Īh, Starlet, such a forgettable car that I had forgotten it. It’s a bit ironic: In the seventies FWD was the hot new thing, with the Golf and Civic as its new standard bearers. And keep in mind that a contemporary VW Rabbit/Golf had about 70 hp and weighed a fair amount more. Keep the engine on the boil with the slick-shifting four- or five-speed, and it all worked reasonably well for the times. The U.S.-spec 4K 1,290cc four was rated at either 58 or 62 hp–but the curb weight was all of about 1,600lbs. I’m not exactly suggesting that the Starlet was a drifter in the form that it left the showroom of your friendly Toyota dealership. Or for that matter, almost any other engine that pointed rearward. One could hop up its little push-rod four (available in 993, 1,166, and 1,290 cc versions), or drop in one of the bigger Toyota DOHC fours, a process as easy and common as dropping a big-block Chevy into a ’57. YouTube has many tributes to the Starlet’s prowess in all manner of speed thrills. Indeed, from very early on, there was plenty of enthusiasm about the Starlet’s racing, rallying, and drifting potential. I’m not sure exactly what “Starlet Unlimited” is, but I’m guessing it’s some sort of enthusiast’s entity. Not everyone was overjoyed by the switch to FWD, and the Starlet was the last connection to old-school RWD–a tossable mini-AE-86, if you will. The Starlet developed a cult following very quickly. It’s the only one in Eugene that I know of (I shot this fine little yellow one in Portland). Even after well over 300,000 miles, it’s never had a significant mechanical issue. I know a guy who picked up a Starlet over twenty years ago and still uses it as his daily driver. Maybe the Starlet was intended to be the Tercel’s backstop in case the latter had teething issues. sales run of only a few years, and its successor, the FWD Starlet 70 Series, never was offered here. The Starlet, slotted below the FWD Gen-1 Tercel, played an outsider’s role during its U.S. The FWD Tercel was born a paragon of reliability, and the first FWD Corolla in 1983 was equally bulletproof from day one. Why? It’s likely Toyota was just being cautious, not wanting to repeat GM’s mistakes in that company’s rush to embrace FWD. But the even smaller Starlet hung in there with its old-school RWD and leaf-sprung rear axle, the same underpinnings that Toyotas had worn when they were known as Toyopets. Toyota’s first major foray into FWD was the Tercel, in 1978. and Japan) in 1973 with their seminal Civic. Honda redefined the mini-hatchback market (in both the U.S. And they’ve become cult-mobiles in the eyes of their loving owners for the obvious reason of their “right-wheel-drive”. They’re not exactly common on the streets anymore, but that has nothing to do with their reliability–which was legendary, thanks to their well-proven and simple drive train. The last such car was the Starlet, which wasn’t replaced by a FWD version until 1985. ( first posted ) Discovering the RWD Toyota Avanza in Mexico recently made me consider how relatively long Toyota hung on to RWD in their small cars.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |