toyota corona

More than two years ago I posted my wallpaper @ work:


Yes, two Carinas and a Corona doing a tandem drift!

Well, today you can see this exact picture in motion in this video:

The white Carina sedan is an AA63, the black Carina coupe is also an AA63 and the Corona is an AT142. That lovely sound is from the squealing the tires and those three 4AGEs screaming down that corner! I love it! :)

BTW: Currently I have a different wallpaper (to be precise: an orange Luxembourgh Levin), but I think this is a good reason to switch back to this one! ;)

Not entirely a Carina this week, but it is as near as it can be:

Toyota Corona CT141 taxi
The Corona T140 series featured the last of the Corona lineup used as a taxi! The Corona T140 taxi was basically a Corona in the middle with a Carina A60 front and rear end.

After the T14 series taxi was finally phased out in 1991 Toyota replaced it with the Crown S130 taxi lineup, which became a separate model from the S150 model (Toyota Comfort) onwards.

It is beautiful to see someone saved one of these ubiquitous taxis and remained it as close to stock as possible! The only thing missing in this picture is the taxi sign on the roof! :)

Found at Life doodling.

Got a mixed bag of Toyota commercials from Japan: Starlet KP60 Trans Europe trial, Corona T100, Celica XX mk1, Chaser MX30 and the KE30 saloon!

Even though I live in Europe, in a country next to Germany I still have no idea what the Trans Europe Trial actually is... It must have been something like Toyota wanted to prove the Starlet was an excellent car for European roads, therefore it would certainly be an even better car for the Japanese roads!

The Corona T100 looks like it would have been sophisticated back in a day, but with those features (central warning light, 5mph bumpers) you can even find on BYDs nowadays!

And that Chaser MX30! Of course if you first run it flat out on the saltflats (who put those lines there??) you definitely need to wash your hair!

Almost two weeks ago I posted a couple of videos of Magnum P.I. like commercials by Toyota for the Mark II GX61. I was wondering why the salary man was in both commercials, but now Zeb from GX61 cleared that up: that man is Shigeo Nagashima, a professional baseball player who played with the Yomiuri Giants till 1974. After that he became the manager of the Yomiuri Giants till he got fired in 1980. After that he didn't do anything till 1992 when he became manager of the Yomiuri Giants again.

To quote Zeb from GX61:
So THAT’s why these cars often have baseball bats on the parcel tray!

Probably the Toyota commercials funded his unemployment during the early eighties. He did a some more commercials than the two with the 1982 and 1983 GX61!
1981 Corona T130:
1981 Corona T130 commercial

1984 Mark II GX61:

And in 1988 he did a commercial for Visa:

Now what is that last commercial supposed to say?

I have a weak spot for the Toyota Corona T14 series: they are closely related to the Toyota Carina and Celica.

I found this great bosozoku styled Corona some time ago on multiple meetings and picture galleries:

Bosozoku style Toyota Corona T14

It has been modified seriously with a sharknose, fins, big lip, oil cooler, deep dish wheels, tsurikawa and a big V-shaped exhaust! Unfortunately I could not find a picture rear of the car including the V-shaped exhaust:

Bosozoku style Toyota Corona T14

Unfortunately this is the only Corona T14 I could find grachan/bosozoku styled pictures of... On the other hand I could find shakotan styled Coronas in large amounts:

Shakotan styled Toyota Corona T14

That is very understandable: this last RWD Corona and they are mainly used for drifting nowadays. This series offered a cheap, relatively lightweight car and featured some new generation engines with great potential. Where did we hear that before?

Drifting Toyota Corona AT141

During the 70s Toyota created a great diversity in platforms: they had the Publica (P), Corolla/Sprinter (E), Celica/Camry/Carina (A), Corona (T), Mark II (X) and Crown (S) and a few other platforms on which they built their cars. Toyota decided to merge the Corona and Celica platforms to cut costs and did this starting with the Corona T14 and Celica/Camry A5 generations. The Celica/Camry/Carina wheelbase remained the same, but the Corona wheelbase shrunk by 25 mm.

Factory stock Corona TT140 sedan

The Corona was positioned above the Carina and offered, just like the Carina and Celica, independent rear suspension on all luxurious and sports models. The wagons were based on the same platform as the Carina so Toyota only changed the front section to match the Corona look. The rear section of the wagon is entirely the same as the Carina, including the live axle.

Factory stock Corona sedan and wagon

Later on Toyota also offered the Corona as a taxi with an additional LPG engine (Diesel was already available). This Corona was basically a mix and match of the Corona and Carina: front looked like the Carina while the mid and rear section were Corona. Later taxi models featured the Carina taillights.

The 1982 and 1983 Corona taxi

The Corona hardtop Coupe was targeted as the grand tourer edition of the Celica and positioned between the Celica and the Soarer. It offered great luxury above the spartan Celica and Celica XX models while it had less luxurious options as the new Soarer.

All varieties of the Toyota Corona hardtop coupe

Toyota had borrowed some styling cues for the Corona T14 from BMW: the nose had a slight wedge in it, its rear section featured a BMW style rear door and its boot and taillights were slightly borrowed from the BMW 7 series of that era:

This Corona sedan shows its BMW lines

The Corona offered, like the Carina, a great variety of engines: from the 1.5 liter 3A-U till the 2.4 liter 22R. Of course it featured the sporty 135hp 18R-GEU and 130hp 4A-GE in the GT and the performance 160hp 3T-GTE engine in the GT-T.

The mighty 3T-GTE twin cam 16 turbo engine

After this series the Corona and Carina models merged, the platform changed to FWD and started to feature a bit more dull styling. The Corona T14 series is the last great Corona.